ᵀʳᵘᵉ ⱽᵃˡᵒᵘʳ | ᴴᴾᴬ ᴰᵉᵇᵃᵗᵉ ᶜˡᵘᵇ

#SeverusDebate

Hello everybody and good day! It is Amaya here back with a post for this week's debate, I actually found this topic to be a very interesting one aswell as struggling to decide on which side to pin for. Ultimately I have chose the For The Notion argument and shall be relaying that in this post!

Now when it comes to getting sorted into a house at Hogwarts it all ultimately comes down to the traits that someone possesses and the ones that they values the most. This process of getting sorted is both very quick and rather abrupt: as soon as students arrive at the castle in Scottland and walk into the Great Hall for the first time, just like that they are sorted. Before any lessons are even thought about let alone taken they just sit on a stall infront of the entier school and within a handful of seconds their house is announced by the Sorting Hat, and off they go to sit with their new house mates.

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Now personally I have always thought this to be a rather rushed and not an entierly organised way or system to place all of these students into a house, this is mostly because of how quickly it is done. At eleven years old children can be very susceptible to change as they are still figuring out who they are completely, for some of them adding in the fact that they are magic and inside of a wizarding school is the biggest revelation they will ever have in their entire lives and so can change a lot about them.

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This change may not be instantaneous and take years to even set in; my point here is change. From eleven years old through to eighteen things are one hundred percent going to change and developed and in a lot of cases they will end up entirely different as they near adulthood and leave childhood behind. So, being sorted via your traits as a child and having to stay situated in that particular house can deter somebody away from exploring those other areas and leave them more isolated in their personality and abilities. For many of the characters that we know that attended Hogwarts, it is easy to imagine just how different their lives could have been if they were placed in another house and been pushed into developing different skills.

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This brings me to Severus Snape, a man who people both see as good and bad depending on the way that you view him and how you intemperate his actions. Despite all of this Severus was once too a child and a wizarding child at that who went to Hogwarts, got sorted just like every other student and went on with his life - no matter how staggering and hard it may have been. So is it possible that Severus could have been sorted into another house that would have lead his personal life to be that of a much happier one? Well I certianly do think so and it all begins with the house of the lion.

Now it may actually come as a suprise to some people that Severus Snape throughout his life despite being in the serpent's house showed the Gryffindor traits a lot more than you may believe. Now there are only really four top and true traits for the Gryffindor house the first of which being that of a daring personality. No matter if you love Snape or hate him it is undenable that some of the acts he preformed held a very daring nature, I'm not even referring necessarily to the larger stunts.

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For instance let's take Remus Lupin's condition into , in their adolescent Severus followed Remus down into the age of the Womping Willow unaware of the werewolf that would have been waiting at the end. He only acted on this in the first place after Sirius Black practically dared him to follow and see for himself what was down there, he would have been aware to some degree that something was off at least but still went ahead and followed his curiosity regardless of any danger - something that a Gryffindor would definitely do.

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Now with this in his mind for the rest of his life when Remus returned to Hogwarts to teach the fact that the boy had lycanthropy would have resurfaced and been at the forefront of Severus' mind - he did make the man's wolfsbane potion after all. Still when the golden trio were in the Shrieking Shack along with Sirius and Remus, Severus came charging in wand pointed at the men ready. It did not matter to him personally that he was heading straight towards a werewolf and supposed murderer who had escaped Azkaban, he went to protect Harry and so the fact he was also endangering himself did not matter. This within itself is a very daring task to go through with which is something Snape would have acted on impulse on, no planning out just go go go which again is a very Gryffindor move.

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Nerve is something that accompanies other traits such as courage and determination leaving somebody to be seen as rather brave. A large majority of Severus' life can be cut down to how he held his nerve whilst seemingly risking it all in the long run. The moment that the Dark Lord decided to go after Lily and her son was the moment that Severus decided to shift his loyalties, the fact that he had to go through the murder of the woman he loved and still pretend to be in of the person who did it and those that ed the action would have made it an even harder pill to swallow.

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Working as a double agent for two sides of an ever growing - potentially world ending - war is quite possibly in hind sight one of the hardest things to do and keep up with, making sure that nothing every slips into the wrongs hands, needing to keep up facades around the right people and at the end of the day, everything could easily blur together making it very easy for right and wrong to become jumbled and a whole array of things to potentialy go wrong. The amount of demanding attention to every aspect of his own life and others would have meant Severus had to constantly be vigilant for all of his adult life, there was quite literally no time that he could let his guard down in fear that the wrong person would find out something that they should not know and for all his hard work to come crashing down on himself.

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The amount of nerve it takes to work for the people who killed the person you loved the most and contiue for the rest of your life to them is tough enough on its own if you take out of the equation the hidden underlying double agent aspect of his life. Not only the fact Severus had to stay in of some of the people he detested the most but having to live most of his life in a facade for the greater good is pure nerve, to stick to the fakeness in sheer hope that something good will eventually come is way more than a long shot. Severus gave up living his own life for himself and instead chose to live it for someone else and something better in the long run that he would never actually get to see himself.

Courage is arguably the most recognised trait of a Gryffindor student with their bold and spontaneous decisions making them seem like some of the bravest of students. This of course can be summed up with the word courage - an outstanding bravery that goes beyond all else. Every single action that Severus exhibited especially after Lily's death required more courage than you're probably thinking: having to go on doing and living in ways that he no longer wished to with no choice in the matter at all whilst purely hoping for something good to come of it all in the end.

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There was never any guarantee that Severus' double life would amount to anythihg in the end but he still went along with it. He still went on though knowing that it was the only way that there would be a chance of protecting Harry and saving the world. I'm aware that I have already said this but the fact that Severus sacrificed his own life in many different ways for the change of a better world is one of the most courageous acts anyone can go through with.

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Again though he did have small acts of courageous bravery aswell, if we go back the the incident at the Shrieking Shake with the golden trio and Marauder's, Snape here protects the children despite the fact that Harry had just attacked him. When outside and seeing that Remus had transformed into him werewolf form, he stood arms stretched infront of the three teenagers to protect them. Even when Sirius emerges as an animagus and attacks Remus and Severus himself gets clawed at, he still stays put not budging or even thinking about it.

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Now although chivalry is not something I would automatically connect to Severus Snape during his life especially before he started Hogwarts there were times when the boy was honourable and rather polite. This is seen in a large part with his interactions with Lily Potter, both before and after school. Before the wizarding school crept into his life he had found a friend in Lily and became very close to her eventually leaving to a crush forming. Crush or not though when Petunia - her sister - started insuling her Severus stood up and defended the girl having a rather angry reaction to the words that the muggle spoke.

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Even when school did pick up and the two became separated by their houses, Severus still kept his friendship with Lily - at least at the start - as much as he could continuing on their friendship as it had been before; just because of their separation he did not stop that from getting in the way of their friendship and he certainly did not let the house rivalry get in the way of how he treated her for the first few years.

There are indeed a few reasons to why Severus became a death eater but one of the biggest influences in the decision came down to his friends. These were of course other Slytherin students who in many ways were more twisted and deceitful in nature, they fit being one of Salazar's students very well and could use their cunning in many different ways; one of which was to manipulate and convince Severus of what to do with his life. Severus was actually quite naive to just how dark and menacing some of his friends and their intentions were so when they either egged him on or tried to evoke him to act on something, it was most of the time with much darker intents in mind than the boy was aware of.

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I'm not going to deny that Severus did have a very deep fascination with dark magic as even in his first year he knew more curses that some of the seventh years however, due to the people that he was constantly surrounded with in Slytherin house, these interests only grew and got worse again adding onto the darker parts of him and eventually leading to his path of becoming a death eater.

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It was the fact that these friends got him into darker magic more deeply that actually ended in his friendship with Lily being severed. If he hadn't been coerced and lead to fall deeper into this dark magic to begin with then the years of manipulation would not have taken place and the fact the he became a death eater and fell out with Lily may have never even taken place.

This is where being placed in Gryffindor could have helped him on so many levels. Being around Lily more firstly would have made him more comfortable and helped Severus to feel less isolated and lonely, this is the point I bring up first because if this one thing changed - his comfort and confidence - then everything else would have naturally fallen into place.

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When it came to the bullying that he endured by the Marauder's it wasn't actually Snape that envoked this reaction out of the Gryffindor boys, it was them that instigated it on the train ride to Hogwarrs in their first year. They didn't just pick on him because he was with Lily but because he was desperately trying to convince Lily to be a Slytherin alongside himself as he both had already allowed himself to believe that is where he would be placed and also didn't want to be alone and loose his only friend in the process. Yes it was a little selfish but if he had been sorted into Gryffindor and not had these thoughts before ever even getting to the castle then the Marauder's would have had no or very little meaning to go after him again and again with their bullying throughout the years. I'm not saying that they would have been friends or that the bullying would have stopped all together but it would have certianly been in smaller and less harsh degrees.

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I understand that Severus' interest in dark magic was something he had gained before even meeting Lily so I know that no matter what house he was placed into this would never entierly go away, that being said though the boy would not have been surrounded by other people who were also obsessed with it. There would have been no people that genuinely encouraged him to delve further into it and act on any dark and negative impulses, instead I believe being in the lion's house may have somewhat deterred him away from delving really deeply into this area and instead it would have just stayed at a skin deep level opposed to something truly evil.

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Which leads on to one of the pivotal desisions Severus ever made - becoming a death eater. Now, I can say with almost one hundred percent certiantly that if he had been placed into Gryffindor and surrounded by people like Lily a lot more often, there would have been nobody to coherce him into ing Voldemort's ranks. I know that if this didn't happen and Severus never became a double agent then a lot of Harry Potter's story would fall through and not entierly work out however I am viewing this all from Severus' point of view and him personly with his own life.

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There are two main reasons and focuses of this argument here, the first being that Severus would have fit into the house well with the traits that he has shown throughout his life despite being a Slyhterin student. The second is how it would have affected and made him as a person. Being in the lion's house would have ultimately changed so much about the man. Along with his Gryffindor traits developing more and leaving him a more brave and confident man, Severus would have ended up a lot happier than he ever had been so yes he could have fit into the Gryffindor house somehow but it also would have helped him in his personal life feel so much better.

#FeatureThis | CuratorReview

Sources ::

Gryffindor/Slytherin | Moral High Ground

Sirius' Jokes | Protect Harry | Death Eater

Traits | Brave Man | Art 1 | Art 2

PhotoPea | DeviantArt | Google Images | PicsArt