Indestructible VII - Miscellaneous Cards I
All right, as promised here are the remaining miscellaneous bits I need to cover along with our look at Severus himself. I’ve decided to fold the discussion of occlumency in here too, since it’s not that complicated to need a long post by itself.
However, for the sake of length, I’ll be posting this in sections. The first three cards in this set first, and the other three later.
In “Part VI - Dark Marks and Dark Arts,” we moved ahead in the alphabet from A for Albus and alchemy, to D for dark and death. Let’s continue skipping along the alphabet here and see what we’ve got.
This time:
F, for flight.
I, for immortality.
L, for love. (Can’t forget that.)
Next time:
O, for occlumency.
P, for purity.
T, for tower, with a side jump back to C for cave.
Then we can get back to our main subjects, S for Severus and V for Voldemort. And then I can finally go back to talking about moral arcs and that gravity assist thing I mentioned a while ago, and explain my two readings of the last books. Which I’m really eager to do after I get through all this stuff.
So, onward.
*
Let’s talk about flight.
And then Harry saw him. Voldemort was flying like smoke on the wind, without broomstick or thestral to hold him, his snake-like face gleaming out of the blackness, his white fingers raising his wand again -
[DH, chapter 4]
Fragmented visions were breaking across the surface of his mind -
--He was hiding around the high walls of the black fortress--
No, he was Harry, tied up and wandless, in grave danger--
--looking up, up to the topmost window, the highest tower--
He was Harry, and they were discussing his fate in low voices--
--Time to fly . . .
[…] Harry’s scar seared again -
-- and he rose into the night, flying straight up to the windows at the very top of the tower--
[DH, chapter 23]
Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout were standing at a smashed window.
“He jumped,” said Professor McGonagall […]
You mean he's dead?” Harry sprinted to the window […]
“No, he's not dead,” said McGonagall bitterly. “Unlike Dumbledore, he was still carrying a wand... and he seems to have learned a few tricks from his master.”
With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, bat like shape flying through the darkness toward the perimeter wall.
[DH, chapter 30]
Two girls were swinging backward and forward, and a skinny boy was watching them from behind a clump of bushes.
[…] he watched the younger of the two girls swinging higher and higher than her sister.
“Lily, don’t do it!” shrieked the elder of the two.
But the girl had let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flown into the air, quite literally flown, launched herself skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.
[DH, chapter 33]
These are the fragments about unsupported human flight that we get in DH, the only book where this skill appears. Previously it’s been implied to us that it’s not thought to be possible, but DH shows us otherwise.
And we see it, or something like it, done only by three people:
Lily, as a child, seems to have invented some flight-like capability to stay aloft for a short time and fall lightly, though she uses a swing to get aloft and never that we see does more than parachute down, as it were, for all that the text uses the word "flown" to describe the motion.
Voldemort, as an adult, we see levitate himself to the top of a tower from a standing start, and also fly forward through the air, keeping pace with riders mounted on brooms and other vehicles.
Severus, as an adult, we see flying forward “bat like” through the air after leaping from a high window.
Now, some fans, like Minerva, assume that Severus must have picked up this trick from his nominal master, perhaps as a reward for his, er, devoted service. But Minerva of course is entirely wrong in her belief about who Severus’ master is here. And I think she’s also got it precisely backward about who learned what from whom. Severus is the master here, not Voldemort. Regardless of how it appears to the uninitiated.
Voldemort does not, that we have ever seen, give actual disinterested rewards to his followers that don’t suit his own further goals. Even Bellatrix’s fervent devotion gets rewarded only with humiliation and opportunities to further serve; Barty Jr. gets less than that. For taking out one of Voldemort’s two chief enemies, Severus receives a fake exoneration that’s necessary to Voldemort’s plans and a thankless job that needs filling in a castle full of people who hate him. I don’t see Voldemort teaching Severus one of his own very special powers, which Severus doesn’t have any obvious need for in fulfilling his duties for his master, fitting in there anywhere. Nor is there any evidence that Voldemort ever even considered the idea of developing unsupported flight before he demonstrates it in DH.
Severus, however, we already know to be an experimenter and inventor of spells from an early age; to have every reason to share something with his lord that might gain him a little favor and so shore up his precarious position; and to have already been introduced to the idea and a demonstration of a proto-skill that could easily have served as inspiration: Lily’s leap.
Thus the common fan theory that Severus, inspired by the memory of watching Lily on the swings, at some point refined and developed the trick from merely falling lightly to actual sustained flight, in effect teaching himself how to fly. And then, upon his returning to his spying, eventually showed his trick to his master to curry favor, who naturally went on to keep it entirely for himself (and possibly forbid Severus from teaching anyone else).
I prefer this theory. It’s a neat, tidy theory that accounts for everything we see without positing anything we don’t have other evidence for, and doesn't require characters to undergo personality transplants.
It also has a certain poetic shape to it, given the context of the overarching Severus-Lily storyline and what Severus ultimately does for himself and others with the memory of that brief experience of friendship and connection. And, like that friendship itself, unsupported flight only makes a direct appearance on the page here in DH. In the book where we finally, for the first time, get a sketch of the truth about Severus Snape and what he did.
We even get the same word-image repeated in both the Lily scene and the scene of Severus’ flight: in the latter he’s described as a “bat like” shape as he flies, while in the former, shortly after the swing demonstration, we read of young Severus in his overlarge coat: He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older self.
I think in the outward image of unsupported flight we have another of those metaphors that indirectly reveal Severus’ inner character and arc, just as we have in that shining doe patronus. In his flight, as in his patronus, we see Severus as an adult take what he gained from that early childhood connection with Lily, refine it and distill it to its essence, and forge it into something pure and potent that he can use as he goes forward, driving himself on. The memory of a fragile and ordinary friendship becomes the source of a profound, selfless love in Severus. A love that guides him and, in the form of the doe, helps him guide her son. A love that catches him in the midst his worst fall, and so shows him how to catch himself.
That’s what the basic skill behind flying is, after all, isn’t it? Learning how to catch yourself before you hit the ground. Which is also, in a way, a metaphor for what learning to love and guide yourself is too, no? Which Severus did.
I think in both the patronus and in flight we get visible outward symbols for Severus’ inner alchemical ability to forge self-sustaining, determined love out of the scraps of genuine human connection that he experienced, and to use this to guide and sustain himself, and help himself guide others, as he goes forward.
Which makes the fact that he apparently taught Voldemort how to fly suddenly look rather interesting, doesn’t it?
I think this is one of those clues to something bigger buried in the text behind the outer story.
I’ll come back to it when I talk directly about Severus and Voldemort.
*
For now, we can entertain ourselves with a little look at Voldemort’s favorite hobby: immortality.
There is a curious creature possessed of the ability to endlessly reinvent itself while remaining in essence the same, to diminish and then rebirth itself as needed, so that each single biologically unique exemplar of this being is fundamentally, dynamically, immortal. Not invulnerable to death by violence, but not subject to the otherwise-virtually-universal law of senescence and breakdown leading to final death from old age.
No, not the phoenix. A real creature in our own world.
Meet Turritopsis dohrnii, better known as the immortal jellyfish.
T. dohrnii is a tiny (~4 millimeter wide) species of jellyfish commonly found in the Mediterranean sea and off the coast of Japan. And unlike virtually any other known species of animal life on Earth, it has a peculiar highly-developed ability for regeneration that renders it, in scientific terminology, biologically immortal. Meaning that each individual genomic sequence - a single unique pattern of genes, not a family line of related genetic individuals - can, if not killed off by some form of violence, theoretically continue indefinitely without succumbing to cellular breakdown and senescence.
A hydrozoan (hydra-like creature - interestingly, recall that Severus referenced the hydra in his Dark Arts speech), it starts life as a tiny seedlike larva, which settles onto the seafloor and develops into a colony of branched polyps, or hydroid. Medusae (your typical freeswimming bell-and-tentacles jellyfish form) then bud off from these polyps and mature, to eat and reproduce in the usual way, forming new genetically-distinct larvae. All of the polyps and medusae from this colony, however, are genetically identical clones, all expressing the same single genome of their original larva.
And each of these medusae has the bizarre ability, if needed due to environmental stress or disease, to plant itself on the seafloor, revert back to its juvenile hydroid colony form, and regenerate polyps to bud off new medusae. All of them still perfectly genetically identical to that original larva, and thus forming one biological individual.
Sort of the way Fawkes is still Fawkes, even after he’s immolated himself and been reborn as a (physically-separate but not different) new phoenix chick.
Curious, isn’t it. A pattern of repeated change, enabling something to stay the same and still live. Death that is not final, if you want to think of it that way.
I think Voldemort missed the boat when it came to understanding how true immortality works, and that’s why he was pants at managing it without destroying himself.
See, the functional examples we have of immortality, in both legend and science, are dynamic, not static. The ability to change outwardly and renew oneself, while in one’s inner essence (biological or spiritual) remaining the same. NOT, as Voldemort thinks, preserving an outward individual instance of oneself and doing whatever inward damage is necessary to keep it enduring forever (whether that outward form be a material or immaterial form). Voldemort fled from anything that even resembled death for a moment, and thus - of course - he failed to grasp the idea of true rebirth, of dying back into life the way a phoenix does. He would shy from the flames in the first place, and thus would never be able to rise from the ashes after.
Of course he couldn’t make the Philosopher’s Stone, and had no interest in trying to make one. Alchemy requires one to go through (a certain form of) death, to allow oneself to be completely undone and then re-formed on a higher level. With the level of spiritual damage he’d already done to himself, I’m not sure he even could have made successful use of Flamel’s stone even if he did get hold of it. Though he was able to sustain the Quirrell host with unicorn blood, in a “terrible half-life” at least. Brr.
*
All right, moving on…
Love.
(A note before I go further: I’m not making any specific religious argument here, and I think the same general principles I’m talking about hold whether one thinks in terms of natural or divine origin for things, whether or not you believe in any sort of creator being or what have you. We’re all working with enough common moral ground in our discussions here, I think. But the worldview of the HP books, and the worldview of many of us on this comm, has necessarily been influenced by certain general aspects of western culture shaping the ideas we’re using, including the historical influence of Christianity. And JKR does seem to be attempting to tell some sort of Christ story, however offensively distorted and flat it ultimately falls. So I’m going to quote some religious sources here because they express the concepts in familiar, concise ways that I think fit with the books, and Severus’ character as I understand him. I’m not, by any means, suggesting these are the only right ways of looking at this stuff, or proselytizing - I’m complicatedly-pagan myself as it happens. I hope this ok, and I’m sorry if I inadvertently step on anyone’s toes here.)
We throw the word “love” around a lot when discussing these books, but as our dissatisfaction with Albus’ little speech to Harry about his so-called purity and ability to love shows, I think we need to be clear what we’re talking about when we use the word.
There are, I think we can all agree, different kinds of love. Personal love for people we know, general impersonal love for humankind, emotional feelings of affection for specific individuals, love expressed in action for the sake of others regardless of our internal feelings… The unifying constant is a recognition of connection to other people that calls forth some response on our part. The types of such connections, their circumstances and strengths, and the types of response called forth, can differ. But some understanding of basic reciprocal human connectedness is essential to any notion or expression of love.
The ancient Greeks (and CS Lewis following up on them) thought in terms of four fundamental types of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape.
Storge, in this model, refers to natural empathy or affection, particularly within the family, such as that between parents and children. Philia is the dispassionate love between friends, affectionate regard between equals, though it can extend into loyalty toward family and community as well, and into enjoyment of an activity. Eros, of course, is intimate love, particularly though not only sexual; it is fundamentally sensual. In Plato’s definition, with contemplation it can become an appreciation for beauty in itself as well as within the specific beloved.
And agape, though it could include deep love for one’s children and spouse, referred to the love of humankind for the divine and vice-versa; in later Christian thought, it became understood as the love of God for his children and the type of unconditional love for others that Aquinas singled out as meaning “to will the good for another.”
Agape, of course, is thus the Greek word that Paul uses throughout the famous and much-quoted chapter 13 of his first epistle to the Corinthians, the chapter upon love, the “greatest gift.”
If you want to read the whole thing in various translations (it’s short), and see the nuances, you can play with the options on this page here. I’ll just quote you the last famous few verses (NRSVCE here) :
12-13: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly,b]">* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
(*the famous "through a glass darkly," of course, but also, interestingly enough, translatable as "in a riddle.")
I find myself coming back to this chapter often when I think about Severus. As I said in my first essay, despite what Dan Hemmens identifies as the pseudo-Calvinist worldview structuring much of the Potterverse, I find Severus in some ways a very Catholic-seeming figure - what with the monastic garb and the vows, the devotion to a mother and child, and the fundamental implication of his moral arc that redemption or renewal or whatever you want to call it, the movement away from spiritual death, happens not simply via a professed belief but by sustained commitment to moral work, to change reflected in concrete actions.
And the fundamental spark and driver of Severus’ moral arc, of his growth and change that leads him to dedicate himself so ferociously to his good works regardless of the cost to himself, is of course love.
Personal love, to begin with, love for a very specific individual - though even then it is a love, let us note, that was, if ever, reciprocated only very partially and temporarily, and soon not at all.
From whatever bits of storge he may received from his dysfunctional family, put together with this early and relatively ordinary experience of love - at best it seems to have been a childlike philia, later perhaps potentially inflected with something of eros - he gradually moved into adult philia, for his friendship with the Malfoys and Minerva, among others, seems genuine enough. Of adult eros we can say little, given how little we see of his life, except that he does seem to have a fairly well-developed appreciation for beauty, if his verbal poetics and his patronus are any indication.
Storge may recur here in his attempts to protect and guide the children under his care as best he knows how - as Head of House he acts in fatherly role to his Slytherins, as well as secretly as Harry’s protector, or patron in the sense called upon by the patronus charm, and we know he takes that type of duty toward children quite seriously.
He also, it becomes clear over the course of the books, uses that early and profoundly-impactful experience of personal love for Lily, together with these later adult developments, to drive himself forward morally, growing his capacity for love in feeling and action to the point that he achieves a remarkably sure and selfless, impersonal love for people in general. Not a feeling of affection, but a love that arises in and is expressed through his consistent actions to save and protect everyone he can, regardless of his own personal attitude toward the individual in question or of the cost to himself.
This is an active form of unconditional love, of agape, founded in the recognition of the fundamental inherent worth of every person, and it is not a terribly common or easy form of love. And he’s not perfect in it. But he is quite determined and steadfast in it. For he has an immense strength of heart, of his cor, and he follows its lead faithfully. And that his love is at heart pure is, I think, conveyed by the strength and beautiful purity of his patronus - I agree with mary-j-59 here and read the patronus, not simply as symbolizing some eternal desire for Lily (whatever Severus himself seems to believe), founded on some simple happy childhood memory, but as founded in and expressing the strength and purity of his fierce and devoted, protective love.
To quote the KJV this time, John 4:18: "For perfect love casteth out fear." Is that not the perfect description of a patronus in action? And consider Harry's reaction to the doe.
Severus’ arc shows us in action another ancient idea, that of the ladder of love: expressing easier, more natural and individual forms of love can lead one to understand and express the higher, more general forms of love that require conscious commitment and work.
Indeed, if you want a single simple image to describe Severus’ arc, the ladder of love is I think it. Love, and its understanding and expression, is absolutely central to what he does, who he is, and his role in the books - and he is absolutely central to our understanding of the role of love in the books, beyond the surface picture JKR attempts to get us to believe.
Which is why that horrific opening scene of DH is made particularly, achingly, poignant in its Severus-related symbolism for me by the inclusion of one small detail.
A name.
I’m going to quote the relevant section at length here for you.
Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at the slowly revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds.
“Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort.
Snape raised his eyes to the upside down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, “Severus! Help me!”
“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.
“And you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, stroking the snake’s snout with his wand-free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily. Now that the woman had woken, he seemed unable to look at her anymore.
“But you would not have taken her classes,” said Voldemort. “For those of you who do not know, we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently, taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A broad, hunched woman with pointed teeth cackled.
“Yes … Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all about Muggles … how they are not so different from us … “
One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape again.
“Severus … please … please … “
“Silence,” said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s wand, and Charity fell silent as if gagged. “Not content with corrupting and polluting the minds of Wizarding children, last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense of Mudbloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept these thieves of their knowledge and magic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirable circumstance … She would have us all mate with Muggles … or, no doubt, werewolves … “
Nobody laughed this time. There was no mistaking the anger and contempt in Voldemort’s voice. For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked. Several of the Death Eaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor.
“Dinner, Nagini,” said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and slithered from his shoulders onto the polished wood.
Charity.
Charity, of course, being an old word for a certain kind of love.
Indeed, in the beautiful old King James translation of 1 Corinthians 13 that is how we find the word usually translated today simply as “love,” Paul’s agape, rendered:
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
I don’t think any of us here read that scene without flinching for Severus, just as much as for Charity.
For the inward agony we sense in him, behind that dark impassive mirror of a face, that so precisely reflects the outward agony on display here.
Or rather, perhaps we should say that the outward agony here tells us of that inward agony of Severus’. What he can’t afford to show directly.
How on earth is he supposed to save charity here?
*
Occlumency, purity, and the tower and cave will come together as the other half of this alphabet set. And the bits of the Severus-centric material will be posted as they are finished.
And then the wrap-up.
We’re getting there. I promise.
However, for the sake of length, I’ll be posting this in sections. The first three cards in this set first, and the other three later.
In “Part VI - Dark Marks and Dark Arts,” we moved ahead in the alphabet from A for Albus and alchemy, to D for dark and death. Let’s continue skipping along the alphabet here and see what we’ve got.
This time:
F, for flight.
I, for immortality.
L, for love. (Can’t forget that.)
Next time:
O, for occlumency.
P, for purity.
T, for tower, with a side jump back to C for cave.
Then we can get back to our main subjects, S for Severus and V for Voldemort. And then I can finally go back to talking about moral arcs and that gravity assist thing I mentioned a while ago, and explain my two readings of the last books. Which I’m really eager to do after I get through all this stuff.
So, onward.
*
Let’s talk about flight.
And then Harry saw him. Voldemort was flying like smoke on the wind, without broomstick or thestral to hold him, his snake-like face gleaming out of the blackness, his white fingers raising his wand again -
[DH, chapter 4]
Fragmented visions were breaking across the surface of his mind -
--He was hiding around the high walls of the black fortress--
No, he was Harry, tied up and wandless, in grave danger--
--looking up, up to the topmost window, the highest tower--
He was Harry, and they were discussing his fate in low voices--
--Time to fly . . .
[…] Harry’s scar seared again -
-- and he rose into the night, flying straight up to the windows at the very top of the tower--
[DH, chapter 23]
Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout were standing at a smashed window.
“He jumped,” said Professor McGonagall […]
You mean he's dead?” Harry sprinted to the window […]
“No, he's not dead,” said McGonagall bitterly. “Unlike Dumbledore, he was still carrying a wand... and he seems to have learned a few tricks from his master.”
With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, bat like shape flying through the darkness toward the perimeter wall.
[DH, chapter 30]
Two girls were swinging backward and forward, and a skinny boy was watching them from behind a clump of bushes.
[…] he watched the younger of the two girls swinging higher and higher than her sister.
“Lily, don’t do it!” shrieked the elder of the two.
But the girl had let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flown into the air, quite literally flown, launched herself skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.
[DH, chapter 33]
These are the fragments about unsupported human flight that we get in DH, the only book where this skill appears. Previously it’s been implied to us that it’s not thought to be possible, but DH shows us otherwise.
And we see it, or something like it, done only by three people:
Lily, as a child, seems to have invented some flight-like capability to stay aloft for a short time and fall lightly, though she uses a swing to get aloft and never that we see does more than parachute down, as it were, for all that the text uses the word "flown" to describe the motion.
Voldemort, as an adult, we see levitate himself to the top of a tower from a standing start, and also fly forward through the air, keeping pace with riders mounted on brooms and other vehicles.
Severus, as an adult, we see flying forward “bat like” through the air after leaping from a high window.
Now, some fans, like Minerva, assume that Severus must have picked up this trick from his nominal master, perhaps as a reward for his, er, devoted service. But Minerva of course is entirely wrong in her belief about who Severus’ master is here. And I think she’s also got it precisely backward about who learned what from whom. Severus is the master here, not Voldemort. Regardless of how it appears to the uninitiated.
Voldemort does not, that we have ever seen, give actual disinterested rewards to his followers that don’t suit his own further goals. Even Bellatrix’s fervent devotion gets rewarded only with humiliation and opportunities to further serve; Barty Jr. gets less than that. For taking out one of Voldemort’s two chief enemies, Severus receives a fake exoneration that’s necessary to Voldemort’s plans and a thankless job that needs filling in a castle full of people who hate him. I don’t see Voldemort teaching Severus one of his own very special powers, which Severus doesn’t have any obvious need for in fulfilling his duties for his master, fitting in there anywhere. Nor is there any evidence that Voldemort ever even considered the idea of developing unsupported flight before he demonstrates it in DH.
Severus, however, we already know to be an experimenter and inventor of spells from an early age; to have every reason to share something with his lord that might gain him a little favor and so shore up his precarious position; and to have already been introduced to the idea and a demonstration of a proto-skill that could easily have served as inspiration: Lily’s leap.
Thus the common fan theory that Severus, inspired by the memory of watching Lily on the swings, at some point refined and developed the trick from merely falling lightly to actual sustained flight, in effect teaching himself how to fly. And then, upon his returning to his spying, eventually showed his trick to his master to curry favor, who naturally went on to keep it entirely for himself (and possibly forbid Severus from teaching anyone else).
I prefer this theory. It’s a neat, tidy theory that accounts for everything we see without positing anything we don’t have other evidence for, and doesn't require characters to undergo personality transplants.
It also has a certain poetic shape to it, given the context of the overarching Severus-Lily storyline and what Severus ultimately does for himself and others with the memory of that brief experience of friendship and connection. And, like that friendship itself, unsupported flight only makes a direct appearance on the page here in DH. In the book where we finally, for the first time, get a sketch of the truth about Severus Snape and what he did.
We even get the same word-image repeated in both the Lily scene and the scene of Severus’ flight: in the latter he’s described as a “bat like” shape as he flies, while in the former, shortly after the swing demonstration, we read of young Severus in his overlarge coat: He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older self.
I think in the outward image of unsupported flight we have another of those metaphors that indirectly reveal Severus’ inner character and arc, just as we have in that shining doe patronus. In his flight, as in his patronus, we see Severus as an adult take what he gained from that early childhood connection with Lily, refine it and distill it to its essence, and forge it into something pure and potent that he can use as he goes forward, driving himself on. The memory of a fragile and ordinary friendship becomes the source of a profound, selfless love in Severus. A love that guides him and, in the form of the doe, helps him guide her son. A love that catches him in the midst his worst fall, and so shows him how to catch himself.
That’s what the basic skill behind flying is, after all, isn’t it? Learning how to catch yourself before you hit the ground. Which is also, in a way, a metaphor for what learning to love and guide yourself is too, no? Which Severus did.
I think in both the patronus and in flight we get visible outward symbols for Severus’ inner alchemical ability to forge self-sustaining, determined love out of the scraps of genuine human connection that he experienced, and to use this to guide and sustain himself, and help himself guide others, as he goes forward.
Which makes the fact that he apparently taught Voldemort how to fly suddenly look rather interesting, doesn’t it?
I think this is one of those clues to something bigger buried in the text behind the outer story.
I’ll come back to it when I talk directly about Severus and Voldemort.
*
For now, we can entertain ourselves with a little look at Voldemort’s favorite hobby: immortality.
There is a curious creature possessed of the ability to endlessly reinvent itself while remaining in essence the same, to diminish and then rebirth itself as needed, so that each single biologically unique exemplar of this being is fundamentally, dynamically, immortal. Not invulnerable to death by violence, but not subject to the otherwise-virtually-universal law of senescence and breakdown leading to final death from old age.
No, not the phoenix. A real creature in our own world.
Meet Turritopsis dohrnii, better known as the immortal jellyfish.
T. dohrnii is a tiny (~4 millimeter wide) species of jellyfish commonly found in the Mediterranean sea and off the coast of Japan. And unlike virtually any other known species of animal life on Earth, it has a peculiar highly-developed ability for regeneration that renders it, in scientific terminology, biologically immortal. Meaning that each individual genomic sequence - a single unique pattern of genes, not a family line of related genetic individuals - can, if not killed off by some form of violence, theoretically continue indefinitely without succumbing to cellular breakdown and senescence.
A hydrozoan (hydra-like creature - interestingly, recall that Severus referenced the hydra in his Dark Arts speech), it starts life as a tiny seedlike larva, which settles onto the seafloor and develops into a colony of branched polyps, or hydroid. Medusae (your typical freeswimming bell-and-tentacles jellyfish form) then bud off from these polyps and mature, to eat and reproduce in the usual way, forming new genetically-distinct larvae. All of the polyps and medusae from this colony, however, are genetically identical clones, all expressing the same single genome of their original larva.
And each of these medusae has the bizarre ability, if needed due to environmental stress or disease, to plant itself on the seafloor, revert back to its juvenile hydroid colony form, and regenerate polyps to bud off new medusae. All of them still perfectly genetically identical to that original larva, and thus forming one biological individual.
Sort of the way Fawkes is still Fawkes, even after he’s immolated himself and been reborn as a (physically-separate but not different) new phoenix chick.
Curious, isn’t it. A pattern of repeated change, enabling something to stay the same and still live. Death that is not final, if you want to think of it that way.
I think Voldemort missed the boat when it came to understanding how true immortality works, and that’s why he was pants at managing it without destroying himself.
See, the functional examples we have of immortality, in both legend and science, are dynamic, not static. The ability to change outwardly and renew oneself, while in one’s inner essence (biological or spiritual) remaining the same. NOT, as Voldemort thinks, preserving an outward individual instance of oneself and doing whatever inward damage is necessary to keep it enduring forever (whether that outward form be a material or immaterial form). Voldemort fled from anything that even resembled death for a moment, and thus - of course - he failed to grasp the idea of true rebirth, of dying back into life the way a phoenix does. He would shy from the flames in the first place, and thus would never be able to rise from the ashes after.
Of course he couldn’t make the Philosopher’s Stone, and had no interest in trying to make one. Alchemy requires one to go through (a certain form of) death, to allow oneself to be completely undone and then re-formed on a higher level. With the level of spiritual damage he’d already done to himself, I’m not sure he even could have made successful use of Flamel’s stone even if he did get hold of it. Though he was able to sustain the Quirrell host with unicorn blood, in a “terrible half-life” at least. Brr.
*
All right, moving on…
Love.
(A note before I go further: I’m not making any specific religious argument here, and I think the same general principles I’m talking about hold whether one thinks in terms of natural or divine origin for things, whether or not you believe in any sort of creator being or what have you. We’re all working with enough common moral ground in our discussions here, I think. But the worldview of the HP books, and the worldview of many of us on this comm, has necessarily been influenced by certain general aspects of western culture shaping the ideas we’re using, including the historical influence of Christianity. And JKR does seem to be attempting to tell some sort of Christ story, however offensively distorted and flat it ultimately falls. So I’m going to quote some religious sources here because they express the concepts in familiar, concise ways that I think fit with the books, and Severus’ character as I understand him. I’m not, by any means, suggesting these are the only right ways of looking at this stuff, or proselytizing - I’m complicatedly-pagan myself as it happens. I hope this ok, and I’m sorry if I inadvertently step on anyone’s toes here.)
We throw the word “love” around a lot when discussing these books, but as our dissatisfaction with Albus’ little speech to Harry about his so-called purity and ability to love shows, I think we need to be clear what we’re talking about when we use the word.
There are, I think we can all agree, different kinds of love. Personal love for people we know, general impersonal love for humankind, emotional feelings of affection for specific individuals, love expressed in action for the sake of others regardless of our internal feelings… The unifying constant is a recognition of connection to other people that calls forth some response on our part. The types of such connections, their circumstances and strengths, and the types of response called forth, can differ. But some understanding of basic reciprocal human connectedness is essential to any notion or expression of love.
The ancient Greeks (and CS Lewis following up on them) thought in terms of four fundamental types of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape.
Storge, in this model, refers to natural empathy or affection, particularly within the family, such as that between parents and children. Philia is the dispassionate love between friends, affectionate regard between equals, though it can extend into loyalty toward family and community as well, and into enjoyment of an activity. Eros, of course, is intimate love, particularly though not only sexual; it is fundamentally sensual. In Plato’s definition, with contemplation it can become an appreciation for beauty in itself as well as within the specific beloved.
And agape, though it could include deep love for one’s children and spouse, referred to the love of humankind for the divine and vice-versa; in later Christian thought, it became understood as the love of God for his children and the type of unconditional love for others that Aquinas singled out as meaning “to will the good for another.”
Agape, of course, is thus the Greek word that Paul uses throughout the famous and much-quoted chapter 13 of his first epistle to the Corinthians, the chapter upon love, the “greatest gift.”
If you want to read the whole thing in various translations (it’s short), and see the nuances, you can play with the options on this page here. I’ll just quote you the last famous few verses (NRSVCE here) :
12-13: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly,b]">* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
(*the famous "through a glass darkly," of course, but also, interestingly enough, translatable as "in a riddle.")
I find myself coming back to this chapter often when I think about Severus. As I said in my first essay, despite what Dan Hemmens identifies as the pseudo-Calvinist worldview structuring much of the Potterverse, I find Severus in some ways a very Catholic-seeming figure - what with the monastic garb and the vows, the devotion to a mother and child, and the fundamental implication of his moral arc that redemption or renewal or whatever you want to call it, the movement away from spiritual death, happens not simply via a professed belief but by sustained commitment to moral work, to change reflected in concrete actions.
And the fundamental spark and driver of Severus’ moral arc, of his growth and change that leads him to dedicate himself so ferociously to his good works regardless of the cost to himself, is of course love.
Personal love, to begin with, love for a very specific individual - though even then it is a love, let us note, that was, if ever, reciprocated only very partially and temporarily, and soon not at all.
From whatever bits of storge he may received from his dysfunctional family, put together with this early and relatively ordinary experience of love - at best it seems to have been a childlike philia, later perhaps potentially inflected with something of eros - he gradually moved into adult philia, for his friendship with the Malfoys and Minerva, among others, seems genuine enough. Of adult eros we can say little, given how little we see of his life, except that he does seem to have a fairly well-developed appreciation for beauty, if his verbal poetics and his patronus are any indication.
Storge may recur here in his attempts to protect and guide the children under his care as best he knows how - as Head of House he acts in fatherly role to his Slytherins, as well as secretly as Harry’s protector, or patron in the sense called upon by the patronus charm, and we know he takes that type of duty toward children quite seriously.
He also, it becomes clear over the course of the books, uses that early and profoundly-impactful experience of personal love for Lily, together with these later adult developments, to drive himself forward morally, growing his capacity for love in feeling and action to the point that he achieves a remarkably sure and selfless, impersonal love for people in general. Not a feeling of affection, but a love that arises in and is expressed through his consistent actions to save and protect everyone he can, regardless of his own personal attitude toward the individual in question or of the cost to himself.
This is an active form of unconditional love, of agape, founded in the recognition of the fundamental inherent worth of every person, and it is not a terribly common or easy form of love. And he’s not perfect in it. But he is quite determined and steadfast in it. For he has an immense strength of heart, of his cor, and he follows its lead faithfully. And that his love is at heart pure is, I think, conveyed by the strength and beautiful purity of his patronus - I agree with mary-j-59 here and read the patronus, not simply as symbolizing some eternal desire for Lily (whatever Severus himself seems to believe), founded on some simple happy childhood memory, but as founded in and expressing the strength and purity of his fierce and devoted, protective love.
To quote the KJV this time, John 4:18: "For perfect love casteth out fear." Is that not the perfect description of a patronus in action? And consider Harry's reaction to the doe.
Severus’ arc shows us in action another ancient idea, that of the ladder of love: expressing easier, more natural and individual forms of love can lead one to understand and express the higher, more general forms of love that require conscious commitment and work.
Indeed, if you want a single simple image to describe Severus’ arc, the ladder of love is I think it. Love, and its understanding and expression, is absolutely central to what he does, who he is, and his role in the books - and he is absolutely central to our understanding of the role of love in the books, beyond the surface picture JKR attempts to get us to believe.
Which is why that horrific opening scene of DH is made particularly, achingly, poignant in its Severus-related symbolism for me by the inclusion of one small detail.
A name.
I’m going to quote the relevant section at length here for you.
Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at the slowly revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds.
“Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort.
Snape raised his eyes to the upside down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, “Severus! Help me!”
“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.
“And you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, stroking the snake’s snout with his wand-free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily. Now that the woman had woken, he seemed unable to look at her anymore.
“But you would not have taken her classes,” said Voldemort. “For those of you who do not know, we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently, taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A broad, hunched woman with pointed teeth cackled.
“Yes … Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all about Muggles … how they are not so different from us … “
One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape again.
“Severus … please … please … “
“Silence,” said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s wand, and Charity fell silent as if gagged. “Not content with corrupting and polluting the minds of Wizarding children, last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense of Mudbloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept these thieves of their knowledge and magic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirable circumstance … She would have us all mate with Muggles … or, no doubt, werewolves … “
Nobody laughed this time. There was no mistaking the anger and contempt in Voldemort’s voice. For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked. Several of the Death Eaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor.
“Dinner, Nagini,” said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and slithered from his shoulders onto the polished wood.
Charity.
Charity, of course, being an old word for a certain kind of love.
Indeed, in the beautiful old King James translation of 1 Corinthians 13 that is how we find the word usually translated today simply as “love,” Paul’s agape, rendered:
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
I don’t think any of us here read that scene without flinching for Severus, just as much as for Charity.
For the inward agony we sense in him, behind that dark impassive mirror of a face, that so precisely reflects the outward agony on display here.
Or rather, perhaps we should say that the outward agony here tells us of that inward agony of Severus’. What he can’t afford to show directly.
How on earth is he supposed to save charity here?
*
Occlumency, purity, and the tower and cave will come together as the other half of this alphabet set. And the bits of the Severus-centric material will be posted as they are finished.
And then the wrap-up.
We’re getting there. I promise.