This pattern is woven through each book – Snape is bad Snape is good Snape’s a total git Snape saved your life over and over. We see Snape’s life as a young, neglected boy with (heavily implied) warring parents, his unrequited love for someone who married his school bully, and his stressful life as a double agent. Imagine squeezing out of the grasp of a murderer, and then working directly against him. In these memories Harry saw Snape’s frantic conferences with Dumbledore about the prophecy and how he begged for some way to keep Lily safe from Voldemort and later, when her death made him wish for his own. Not just the usual teenage reprobates, but future supporters of the most powerful Dark wizard of all time. Once at Hogwarts the two friends were sorted into different houses, and later Snape fell in with the wrong crowd. Growing up in their tiny Muggle town of Cokeworth, they bonded over their magical powers like other kids do over toys. He practically fell into Snape’s memories, and discovered a little thin-faced boy who once knew a girl called Lily Harry’s mother and Snape were childhood friends. In Deathly Hallows, when Harry approached the Pensieve, he was grief-stricken and broken by battle. As adults, they learn Snape is far more complex.

To escape into someone else’s head would be a blessed relief.nothing that even Snape had left him could be worse than his own thoughts.Īs children, Harry, Ron and Hermione had looked at the sarcastic and strict Professor Snape as something of a pantomime villain – the bitter Potions master, stewing in the dungeons. The stone Pensieve lay in the cabinet where it had always been: Harry heaved it on to the desk and poured Snape’s memories into the wide basin with its runic markings around the edge. Harry then goes to the headmaster’s office and finds the Pensieve. Voldemort’s voice then sounded through the corridors, challenging Harry to meet him in the Forbidden Forest in an hour. In his dying moments, he told Harry to take his memories and look at him one last time. Professor Snape is dead on Voldemort’s orders, and Harry saw it all.

We take a closer look at the chapter from Deathly Hallows that changed everything. A walk inside Snape’s memories transformed him in Harry's mind from sniping Potions master to ‘the bravest man he ever knew’.

Snape snape severus snape