The Japanese Version Of Deltarune

The Hidden Tragedy of Snape's Sacrifice is He Died at 20, Not 38

Where does the idea of selfish Severus Snape and his possessive love come from? Do people really believe that Snape died in the Shrieking Shack at 38, at the hands of Voldemort? Do they honestly think that, until he was 38, he lived a normal, happy life, full of hope and dreams, right up until that last minute when everything was suddenly ripped away from him?

Snape didn’t just die in that moment. His life ended 18 years earlier, when he was 20 years old, standing on a hill in front of Dumbledore. That’s when he gave up everything—his freedom, his future, and his life—in exchange for the safety of the Potter family: James, Lily, and Harry.

From that moment on, Snape no longer lived for himself. He had no control over his own fate; his life had been bargained away to protect others. Every step he took after that was part of a long, ongoing sacrifice.

People say they don’t like Snape because he didn’t make up for his mistakes the way he should have, that his redemption arc wasn’t complete. Excuse me? I’m not sure what more a person can give than their life. What’s more precious than their time and youth? What’s more important than their freedom? Snape sacrificed all of that—what else did he even have left to give?

He was barely out of his teenage years when he chose to give up everything—his youth, his dreams, his ambitions, even his loyalty—for people who didn’t care about him. Yet, Snape stayed on that path with unwavering courage for the next 18 years, never backing down.

In truth, Severus Snape was a boy who lost his life at 20. The only thing is, they didn’t bury him until he was 38.

Does anyone else find it ironic how the fandom clings to the idea that Snape is the biggest reason Sirius left Grimmauld Place in Order of the Phoenix...despite the Half Blood Prince stating that"Harry clung to this notion because it enabled him to hate Snape which felt satisfying..."

This feels satisfying to Harry because Harry believes that Snape doesn't care that Sirius is dead, but it isn't until 'The Prince's Tale' in The Deathly Hallows that we realise that this isn't true either.

One of the basic things you have to understand about Snape is that his hatred or dislike of people does not stop him from saving or trying to save people. This all starts from the turning point on the hill all those years ago, when Dumbledore humbles Snape into turning his selfishness into selflessness.

Snape asks for James and Harry's life too. And when Dumbledore tells Snape Harry must die, and states "how many people have you watched die?" Snape responds "lately only those I could not save."

Sirius is one of those people.

Sick

my comic for @aabadendingzine which is out for free over here.

extra stuff/commentary under the cut | like what i do? support me on ko-fi 💙

helloooo how's it going? i really hope you enjoyed the comic <3 it's rare for me to draw such wholesome things, i know [bats eyelashes]

DFGHDJKF ok i know, it's evil, the entire zine is evil you should go read it!!!!!!! but also, i remember coming up with this prompt and the image of mikeko trying to wake a dead apollo up evoked such a visceral reaction in me that i audibly went "NOOOOOO" when i thought it up LOL

the fourth page is the first page i ever thumbnailed bc i knew EXACTLY how i wanted this thing to end!

i think my favorite page of this comic is the 2nd page (the 4th page being my second favorite bc what can i say, i'm evil wheezes) i just really enjoyed drawing the montage of apollo going about his life and kristoph just. being there. always watching him.

i keep thinking about how spark brushel mentioned feeling like he was being watched those past 7 years. i imagined apollo would get a taste of that once he starts trying to find out the truth behind what happened in his first case.

and as for my favorite panel, I REALLY LIKE THIS ONE!! it's just fun shoving every important element alluding to the case 7 years ago to the moment when zak died!

and it's not very obvious but an element i really like about this one is zak still on the chair he died on. it's just his torso visible and i would've loved to make it more obvious that he's there but oh well.

i can't think of anything else to add about drawing this so i'll end it by saying: PLEASE GO READ THE ZINE, IT'S SO SOS SOSOSOS FULL OF LOVE FOR HURT AND TRAGEDY AND THE WAY MY FELLOW ZINEMATES EXPLORED THAT IS SUCH!!! GOOD AND HEARTWRENCHING STUFF!!!!!!!!!

i had to take a break from reading the zine when i went out to finish it bc my chest started to physically hurt bc ohhhhh lordy, it just hurt. it just hurt a lot! (please do read the trigger warnings before reading the thing bc this zine deals with a lot of heavy stuff!)

i like to joke about how i'm evil and enjoy evil things such as angst no comfort which. well, it's kind of true LMAO so i'm thrilled that i was able to be a part of this zine and cook up something completely terrible <3

here's the link for it again, go read it!

Everyone Dreams of Going to Hogwarts

Every fan of Harry Potter has indulged in the fantasy of waiting for an Owl to deliver the fateful letter that will declare your future as a witch or wizard at Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry. Every one of us old or young had dreamed of riding the train at Kings Cross Station, taking the boats across the black lake and seeing the castle for the first time, of having dinner in the great hall, of finally figuring out where you belong in the world and it just feeling right. They fantasize about seeing their common room for the first time finally feeling that warm sense of belonging and meeting the friends that you will keep for the rest of your life. Every single one of us had fantasized about meeting our professors, exploring the grounds and discovering our latent potential. It’s a comfort for many of us and happy place to go in our minds to escape reality.

For the witches and wizards of the Wizarding World that childhood fantasy is their reality. They too wait with bated breath for their letters. They too fantasize about finally feeling that “at home” feeling, the feeling that you finally belong to something bigger and more wonderful than their wildest dreams. The chance to prove themselves. The chance to start over for many, the chance to leave their sometimes abusive homes for a place that finally actually feels like home to them. Harry was one of those people. Dumbledore was one of those people. Hermione, Ron and even Neville all find this sense of belonging sooner or later. They all find their forever home at Hogwarts the way we all dream.

Now imagine being Seveurs Snape.

You live in a house with a father that doesn’t understand you and screams and yells at you and your mother on a daily basis and you feel so alone in the world. You have one peer who appreciates in you the magic that allows you to rise above the squaller and cruelty in which you live. You have one friend who sees you for who you are and appreciates that about you truly, while being forced to inhabit a world that not only doesn’t understand you but is actually often openly hostile to you. Hogwarts, you beleive, will be your escape from this hell, and best of all you get to take this wonderful friend with you. You are being whisked away to a fairy tale castle where dreams come true and you will finally feel safe and finally feel a real sense of home. You stay up all night all week waiting by the door in the early morning for the letter that is finally going to change your life. You pour over it with your best friend, going over every aspect of this incredible opportunity in your mind over and over. You’re planning how you’ll make the most of it. You finally let yourself look forward to something, to open your heart to something, to dream of something. Your greatest hearts desire to this moment is finally coming true.

Then you get on the train.

And the hell begins before the first day has ever even started. Your friend is angry at you for something entirely out of your control, and even though you make up destiny has deigned that on this day you will meet the person that will destroy any hope you ever entertained of Hogwarts being a home at all. His name is James Potter. His partners in the crimes which will forever change your life are Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and Sirius Black. From the moment you meet you are ridiculed by them, physically abused by them, and the worst part is from this day forward it is never going to end.

Your best friend is put not just in a different house but in the house that hates your house the most, and from this day forward you will forever have a strain on the only true friendship you’ve ever had. From this day forward you will have to meet them either in secret or at least in private to avoid angering both your houses at best and facing ridicule at worst. The moments you stole with this friend in the muggle hell will ironically be the only moments of peace you’ll truly have with them. Not only that, but they are sorted into the same house that 4 of your worst tormentors reside in.

But it’s even worse. Because although at home you can escape form your father and potential school bullies by hiding yourself away in some nook or cranny, making yourself scarce, staying out late at night in the woods or just being as quiet as possible; you will never be able to escape the torment that now awaits every day. You have classes with them, you run into them, you see them trying to take away the only friend you have every day. And it doesn’t even end there, now they have a tracking device that you don’t know about, but somehow they manage to find you no matter where you hide. No matter where you go they are somehow always there. No matter who you talk to, they all act like you’re crazy. Because none of the other professors or students know about the marauders map they find you strange for jumping at every blow of the wind. Because they don’t know about the map they don’t believe you at all when you try to explain that somehow James Potter and his gang seem to pop up conveniently every single place you go to hide and they even blame you for trying to figure out how to protect yourself. They tell you you’re bringing it on yourself for being too weird or too jumpy or too nosy. Even your best friend in the world is starting to doubt you. You feel like you’re going insane.

So you try to have your tormentors expelled. You try so hard to figure out something, anything that will end the days on end of suffering and abuse. But you’re the weird kid. You’re the ugly kid. You’re the emo goth kid. Nobody gives a shit about you and you know it. You know you’re on your own. You’re a half blood, so the the people in your house who were supposed to have your back ignore you at best and tease you about it at worst for letting Gryffindor students get the best of you. Any hope you had of Hogwarts being your home has been destroyed.

So you try to follow James and The Gang around. Yes everyone sees you as creepy for this, becusse you don’t have a map that magically tells you where they will be at all times. You have to go about it the old fashioned way. You hide behind bushes, you peak around corners. Yes everyone finds you creepy now on top of everything else, but it’ll be worth it if you can finally enjoy what was promised to you at age 11, a home. You’ll finally be able to breathe.

But no. Instead what happens is your tormentors figure out that you know that they are putting the lives of students in danger by wandering the grounds with a werewolf against the wishes of the headmaster. You know that if you can just prove it that the torment will be over, but what you don’t know is that they are one step ahead of you, and for the unimaginable crime of trying to thwart them; they are going to plan to inflict a dangerous illness of lycanthropy on you at best, maul you to death at worst. You are close to both your proof and your death when one of them gets cold feet at the last minute and decides he doesn’t in fact want to go to prison.

You think “maybe it’s finally over now”, “maybe everyone will see now that they are cruel, that this is what they’re really like”, “maybe I’ll finally get a moment of peace, maybe Dumbledore and Lily will finally beleive me”. But no. Of course not. Because remember, you’re the weird emo Slytherin kid and your life is secondary. It always has been. Dumbledore swears you to secrecy to protect one of your tormentors, so you get no justice for the attempt on your life. Because Dumbledore had forbidden you to speak about your traumatic experience of almost being murdered, your best friend doesn’t beleive you at all and instead blames you for sneaking around. They don’t even give you the chance to defend or explain yourself. Instead you’re made out to be the creepy bad guy who wants to destroy the Potter Gang out of jealously.

Worst of all you secretly suspect that your best friend has a thing for the person who makes your life a living hell every single day. You see the stolen glances and the way they look at each other, the way she is never totally on your side. You tell yourself that this is all in your head, that Lily would never betray you that way. That all the hours you spent dreaming of Hogwarts together will mean more than a crush. But oh, sadly you are very wrong there too.

Not even a few months after attempting to take your life your abusers are back at again. Remorseless as ever they hunt you down like dogs and follow your every footstep. You haven’t a moment of peace even to do your normal school work. The only place you are safe is your common room, and even then you can’t let your guard down.

Then one day it happens.

The little pieces of happiness that you’ve managed to tuck away from yourself are cruelly ripped away. They manage to find you again. The torment us as usual. They all gang up on you, each taking a go for their own amusement. They fling you on your back, force you to vomit, force you to listen to their emotional abuse while they make a go at hitting on your best friend, and the torment does not end there. Now they are picking you up off the ground and taking off your clothes. Now on top of every other humiliation they have amused themselves by sexually humiliating you in front of everyone in your class including your closest ally. Every part of you is on fire inside and out and the depth of horror and hurt inside you is so big you don’t know what to do with the feeling. Then your friend finally steps in. But now you’re so hurt and angry that it’s bursting out of you in the worst possible ways.

Now the worst thing finally happens.

You call your best friend a slur; something you know will hurt them more than any other thing, because you’re destroyed, because you’re angry at them for letting it get this far, because you’re humiliated and because you’re tired of not being held in a higher regard than the person who has ruined your life; because you’re sick of their moralizing and their pitty.

Now you’ve lost the only person you’ve ever really felt close to. Now you’ve lost any human sympathy forever.

And it’s not over yet. Now you’re upside down again. And this time they aren’t content with exposing the rest of your body for the world to see. Now they are out for blood, and the revenge they have settled on is Sexual Assault. They remove your underwear to expose your most private parts to the world and there is nothing you can do about it. Nowhere you can go. No one who cares. No one who will come to your rescue.

Snape must have felt so hopeless it’s a wonder he didn’t try to end his life. People have done so over much less.

Hogwarts was never truly a home for Severus Snape. Even in adulthood he works in the place that was the site of innumerable traumas and heartaches. Everyday he faces trigger after trigger of the worst day of his life, while protecting the progeny of the only person he ever felt close to and the person who cruelly ripped away any chance he had at normal life. This is why I feel for Severus Snape so much in every scene. He is confronted every day with the worst memories a person can endure yet he chooses to be brave anyway. He chooses to do the right thing anyway. He puts other people’s well-being first anyway. He chooses the side of the light beyond all that had conspired to make a sociopath out of him. He holds a place in his heart for love and he protects that love with his entire being. Platonic love is just as powerful as romantic love and Severus Snape is the perfect example of this. A person even in the worst circumstances can still make the most difference in the world, can still choose to be their own person and make their own choices. Even when the world is wholly against him, Severus Snape is the pinnacle of integrity.

This is why he’s my favorite character. He’s the bravest character in the narrative, but he’s also the character with the most integrity.

my manifestation of

hey . my boyfriend and i saw you across the bar and we're really digging your vibe

the most accurate snape quote i’ve ever read by someone on a forum: “Risking himself to save others is the pattern of a man who believes in a good beyond himself, his own interest, his own loves and hates. For those who believe Snape can only be motivated by revenge- keep in mind- he had his chance at revenge on Black when Black was unconcious after the Dementors attack. What did he do? He conjured a stretcher and delivered him to Pomfrey for medical attention, in sharp contrast to Black’s own recent treatment of the unconscious Snape, dragging him and bumping his head into things. Snape changes over the course of his lifetime. Snape never becomes a nice person. He does become a good one.”

I’m rereading OOTP right now and I find that scene between Severus and Sirius in the kitchen to be highly relevant in the context of Severus as a feminine-coded character (and Sirius as a representation of toxic masculinity). Sirius is very outwardly aggressive in this scene in a conventionally masculine way, while Severus weaponizes his sarcasm and wit in a way that could be thought of as a more “feminine” form of defence. While Harry describes Sirius’s voice as getting progressively louder and angrier, he describes Severus’s voice as “soft” in contrast (as he usually does, which is also interesting in the context of Severus as a feminine man/GNC character). Sirius gets up and tries to intimidate Severus physically, and Severus grips his wand inside his pocket in a way that reminded me of a victim of domestic violence preparing to defend herself against her abuser.

I’m not sure how much of this was intentional considering how rigid JKR’s views on gender have unfortunately turned out to be, but I can’t help but read Severus as a feminine character, especially since he’s meant to act as a stand in for Lily in the same way as Sirius acts as a stand in for James. It’s very easy to read Sev as gender non conforming and/or LGBTQ, although given JKR’s own views it’s doubtful she meant for us to read him that way (but fuck her, she’s a massive transphobe, the characters are ours now, we can do what we like with them).

Note to self, start checking your inbox regularly. These changes to Tumblr are killing me because the notifications when I get messages or asks are hit-or-miss at best.

Anyways, this is such a great observation! I'm only just learning about coding and that that is even the term for it from reading about it from other Snape bloggers like @idealistic-realism00, @raptured-night, and @professormcguire since I only took the required English courses both my undergraduate years and beyond that my major was in sociology.

So, I'm not really any kind of expert but I do have a lot of personal experience from being biracial and queer myself just with learning to read between the lines and find representation for myself where I can and I think that is the case for a lot of people from less represented, marginalized backgrounds. We have a certain instinct for these things so even without any kind of formal study we sort of know the "codes" (for better or worse depending on what the author's intent is and if it's a negative dog-whistle or something more positive to get around censorships of the time) if that makes any kind of sense.

For me, I always saw Sirius and Snape as two sides of a coin. There were some very obvious parallels and contrasts between them and this really goes to that in a lot of ways for me. Both Sirius and Snape are two men who made pivotal choices in their youths that very much define them and have led to a great deal of internalized guilt and impacted their behaviors as adults. Both Sirius and Snape find themselves confined to their childhood homes at different points, Sirius at Grimmauld Place with Kreacher and Snape at Spinner's End with Peter Pettigrew (both Kreacher and Peter are characters that also are known for betraying Harry and costing him someone he loves at different points and making a turn around in regards to Harry because of kindness or mercy he showed to them).

Where Sirius made the choice to make Peter the Secret Keeper with only James, Lily, and Peter knowing and it ultimately led to the death of the Potters and him being sentenced to twelve years in Azkaban, Snape also unwittingly delivered part of the fated prophecy that led to Voldemort targeting the Potters. Most interesting for me is that Snape's friendship with Lily and Sirius's friendship with James could be read as either platonic or a case of unrequited romantic feelings. There is the observation in SWM made by Harry that while Sirius was clearly a looker who attracted the attention of girls, his attention was fully on James and not on those admiring glances. So, when looking at Sirius's relationship with James through a comparative lens to Snape's with Lily they could be platonic friends or both Sirius and Snape could have had romantic feelings for their best friends while, ironically enough, Sirius had to watch James fall for and succeed in winning over Lily just as Snape had to do the same.

In the case of Snape and Sirius there is also a degree of regression and arrested development stemming from trauma (and both men at different points make the clear mistake of seeing Harry as a stand-in for James as a result of said trauma). Where Sirius spent twelve years in Azkaban able to hold onto his sanity against the Dementors in part because he knew he was innocent and the truth of what happened was a deeply unhappy thing for him, Snape spent decades in Dumbledore's service at Hogwarts (a place with its own unhappy associations for him having found it was not a refuge from life at Spinner's End with Tobias as he had hoped but another place where he would be bullied relentlessly, overlooked by his Head of House and housemates for being a poor half-blood with no status, subject to institutional failures resulting from yet more adult authority figures in his life not protecting him, groomed by Voldemort's followers and responsible for alienating his closest friend as a result) teaching children when clearly he does not have the temperament and, courtesy of his role as a spy, concealing his own truths and intentionally not allowing people to know the best of him. In a sense, both men had a negative public image that ran counter to the full truth about them and both of them died without being able to see those misconceptions vindicated (Sirius died still presumed by the Ministry and general public to have been the traitor who turned his friends over to Voldemort and murdered innocent people and Snape died knowing he had delivered information to Harry that would lead to his death and unsure of the outcome of the war with everyone thinking him a coward and murderer).

There's just, a LOT of parallels there between the two when you start to unpack them as characters. Even the fact that they both came from domestic dysfunction and unhappy home lives. It makes their mutual antagonism all the more of a tragedy because if not for Sirius's prejudice (which is arguably more understandable given his family and their long tradition of being sorted into Slytherin) against Slytherins and antagonism of young Snape on the train and the years of bullying and bad blood that followed, these two men had the most potential to understand each other. Alas, they do not, but it is their likenesses that makes their differences in how they clash all the more interesting because, as you noted, there are stark differences there. Sirius is all overt masculine energy; hot-headed and physically imposing while Snape is more strained, the ice to his fire.

Most striking to me was always the difference in how little respect Sirius showed to Snape's body while he was unconscious (further demonstrating how little Sirius has changed from the teenage boy who once stood with James and exposed Snape to laughing schoolmates) versus how Snape conjured a stretcher while still under the impression he was the one responsible for betraying the Potters (and the death of Lily). In that way, we get to see how Snape has developed as a person away from his past choices and learned from them. He may still regress, as he does quite plainly when forced to return to the Shrieking Shack and is confronted by Sirius and Remus there, but he isn't quite in the full state of arrested development as Sirius (but given his circumstances in Azkaban that isn't entirely surprising either; there is a tragedy to Sirius's character for all that there is as much of a darkness as there was in Snape during his time as a Death Eater and the fact so many Marauder apologists who double as "Snaters" refuse to acknowledge that outside of romanticizing the angst of it all while vilifying Snape is quite possibly an even greater tragedy, imo) which is why Sirius's death came in part due to his inability to move beyond his past and find it within himself to treat Kreacher with a modicum of understanding or empathy (in addition to his desire to be part of the action again and recapture his lost youth when it was him and James in the Order together) while Snape's death came only after he had to reconcile with the fact his original raison d'être for becoming a spy (to protect Harry for Lily as penance) ran counter to what was needed to defeat Voldemort for good and he still chose to stay the course instead of pursue his own agenda and act on his own self-interests.

In short, Sirius's death was partly due to the fact he couldn't move beyond the past. While Snape's death came as a result of the fact he had grown enough as a character to set aside his past motivations and see things through because he had become someone who conjured stretchers even for hated enemies and risked his life to save all those who he could save (including Sirius and Remus).

Thanks for the ask and I'm so sorry it took so long to respond but it gave me even more to think about. The masculine vs. feminine coding just adds an extra element to Snape and Sirius's dynamic when it was already interesting to me and I've always had a lot of thoughts about how those two were written with so many parallels and points of contrast. Love this ask!

as promised, here is the flashback scene from p3wm act 4 where strega escapes from the kirijo group