Dark Arts

Snape and his passion about the dark arts

3 Answers. ‘The Dark Arts,’ said Snape, ‘are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.

The more I read the books, the more it becomes clear to me that Snape was an incredible wizard in his own right. And the reason I don’t think he gets enough credit is because he was interested in a particularly controversial branch of magic: The Dark Arts.

‘Snape knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in Seventh year’ says Sirius. It seems like, from an early age, or perhaps due to his parents, Snape developed an interest in the dark arts. And he’d even started controlling his magic before he got to school.

Then he arrives at school, and by all accounts he’s a damn good student. He writes far more than everybody else in the DADA exam, and he seems much more interested. That’s Hermione-ish behaviour to me. But evidently he’s more inventive than even Hermione because…

He starts correcting his goddamn textbooks

That potions book seems to be the accepted text for those potions. For at least twenty years it hasn’t changed as the set text for N.E.W.T level. Yet here’s Snape, a fifteen year old boy, improving the methods inside. Even Hermione is nowhere near this, and she’s exceptional. And at the same time, he’s also inventing his own spells and curses.

But this is where I think his problem is. I think he was so interested in the dark arts that he gravitated towards Voldemort naturally. Maybe he just wanted to learn more about them, and he saw Voldemort as a potential mentor. Remember, aside from him listening in on the prophecy, we don’t actually hear mention of Snape commiting any crimes. It doesn’t seem like he was out there torturing people in the same way the Lestranges were. Maybe he didn’t know the extent of what he was getting into? Just a thought.

So he turned spy for Dumbledore, and – to steal his phrase – ‘fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard, the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen’. That’s some next level shit right there.

Also, he:

• Saves Dumbledore’s life, contains the ring’s curse in his hand. I’m not even sure Dumbledore could have done that if the roles were reversed.
• He saves Katie Bell, and Dumbledore admits that Snape knows a lot more about the dark arts than he does.
• He’s a ridiculously good Legilimens, and a brilliant maker of potions (remember the Wolfsbane?)
• He can goddamn fly, which shows that – despite being a double agent – he’s still eager to learn from Voldemort.

He’s not quite in the same level as Dumbledore or Voldemort, who had unparalleled natural talent. But I think he was doing his best to make himself an exceptional wizard, and if he hadn’t died so young I think he might have been.

Thoughts?