Severus Snape: Death Eater

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Mun Note: This post has been one that I have debated making for a long time as it is rather incendiary toward pro-Severus rhetoric as a general rule. As I have stated on countless occasions, my take on Severus is canon divergent – if not canon defiant in some respects. 

However – one aspect of Severus that, short of a dramatic AU – never falters or changes is the fact he willingly joined the Death Eaters under Voldemort’s reign. His opinions and shifting position within that group notwithstanding, his initial choice was that of an active and willing participant and I will not ignore this simply as a result of his socioeconomic status and position as an abused youth – because these factors are direct contributions to why he joined in the first place.

Abuse does not necessarily make a person kind. While there are those who rise up as Harry did to achieve great acts of kindness and exude incredible amounts of forgiveness, not everyone goes that way. Severus was bitter and he was angry, but above all else he was vicious, ambitious, and violent. 

These are aspects to his character I will never ignore, and this post is meant to piece together many factors already present on the blog in order to paint a more concise picture of why Severus became a Death Eater and what lengths he was willing to go to as a Death Eater for the people he cared about.   

Factor One: Fractured Home

I have covered Severus home life rather extensively on this blog, so first and foremost we will begin with important links.

• Family Dynamics – We will be looking more in depth at Severus ‘brothers’ in the social circle portion of this post, but this is a god general overview. A more in depth look at Eileen and Tobias is already linked in on that page.

• Timeline Of Severus Snape – A detailed look at the abuse Severus underwent and Tobias’ motives behind the abuse that Severus himself is unaware of. Tobias’ actions against his son are as inexcusable as Severus’ actions during the First War – including Severus’ act of patricide. Knowing motives, however, provides context. Every action has a reason, and Severus was surrounded by more dysfunction than he ever came to understand. 

• Timeline Fun Facts – The TL;DR version of the previous link for people who prefer light reading, this post outlines Severus’ direct crimes in the first war. 

Severus observed and was victim to rampant domestic violence, the dark side of alcoholism, the volatility inherent in a relationship that is born of the unhealthy belief of fixing someone and believing in apologies. He was a victim of pervasive poverty. Food was often a commodity. Eileen died of an easily curable illness because they could not afford the ingredients for the potion that to many, would be considered a minor expense. 

Severus was easily motivated by the allure of escaping this life. He had an overdeveloped sense of debt toward acts of kindness that was often manipulated, but ultimately there was a desperate greed within him for something – anything – better than what he had, no matter how he had to go about obtaining it. 

The growing hate he harbored toward his father, his inability to understand his mother’s refusal to leave and the obvious disparity between himself and those in his house and in general at school bred a deep and genuine anger inside of Severus that was hot and volatile. He lashed out violently as often as he could – and the Death Eaters harbored that hate and directed his violence toward outlets that suited their designs. 

While Severus did learn to maneuver within their circle in order to maintain control over his own moral structure, what must be understood and what cannot be ignored is that Severus had REAL HATE inside of him when he joined. A deep, twisting, hungering fury that lusted for a means to expose itself – the Death Eaters provided Severus many things he needed, but the most unforgivable of them is doubtless the unhealthy outlet for his anger he held no other resources for dealing with. 

This lack of support does not excuse his path. It is merely an aspect that contributed to it. I will never excuse Severus’ actions in the first war, merely explain them and acknowledge how they defined him. My Severus is many things – but a victim of circumstance is stretching it. He had hate that held no purpose, no direction. He had anger that he willfully used to attack people based on race. Not being inherently racist himself does not excuse him from committing horrific acts of racism. Doing it because it helped him heal doesn’t make it right. 

Factor Two: Social Circle

When I was developing Severus, I started with him having five dorm mates – four originals and Lucius Malfoy, because we did not yet know the age difference between them. When the Order of the Phoenix was released, I rearranged Severus’ dorm and changed many aspects of his relationship to Lucius, while maintaining other ones. That, however, is a separate headcanon. 

Taking the names J.K. Rowling provided us in Mulciber and Avery – and later. Wilkes – I applied them to the people I had already created as Severus’ friends. Even when we came to learn that Lily was a friend of Severus’ I did not change these people in his life because the significance of them defined my portrayal too completely to do so. 

At this point in time, I was living in a group home facility – and I mention this because gang mentality is something that my group home covered very extensively. 

For a bit of background, this facility is one of the largest in my country, with eighteen homes each housing 10-14 youth aged 12-19, supported living homes for youth aged 18+ to help them better integrate into society and apartment complexes for independent living. 

This facility took in youth from all walks of life, from all social, racial and mental health backgrounds and had something of a sorting arrangement to ensure that various delinquent behaviors and mental health issues were placed together in order to better arrange for treatment. Many of these youth came from the kind of abject poverty that most of us have only ever read about. Many of them were plucked out of gangs, which was why gang mentality was such a heavy focus, in order to educate and hopefully aid youth from falling into the trap of them. 

I built Severus’ friends based on the people my facilitators described and based on people I knew who admitted to fitting the profiles presented – either in group therapy or privately, during our huddled youth talks that so often happened when staff were not watching. The roles of each of Severus’ friends were chosen very specifically and all play active parts in Severus ultimate decision to become a Death Eater, so lets take a very brief look and go from there.

• Eric Avery, Lucius Malfoy: The Benefactors 
  Seemingly benevolent to Severus, these are people who took interest in him even though he was of no benefit to them. He feels he owes them everything, that without them he has no hope of achieving anything on his own merits in a world where he is so outclassed by people like them.

• Lucas Mulciber: The Protector 
  Lucas provided Severus with something he had never before experienced – a sense of security, and autonomy. Lucas taught Severus to protect himself and in so doing, was in many ways Severus’ greatest defender as a result. Severus attributes his skills to Lucas, meaning he owes Lucas for everything he has achieved in his own defense. 

• Destin Wilkes, Lily Evans: The Friends
  I include Lily here because she filled one of the most important roles, that was later supplanted ( albeit unintentionally ) by Destin. Lily fulfilled Severus need for love and affection that was so hard to come by at home and at school, where everything was a matter of favor curried and bartered and won.

  His choice to cling on to his benefactors and protector had Severus surrounded by toxicity that was not safe for Lily, and this environment lead to Severus attacking her in the end – ultimately proving every misgiving she rightfully had. 

  Severus’ resulting depression, and later the loss of his mother, were not Lily’s fault nor her problem to aid him with. What Severus chose to do as a result of feeling as though he had no love or hope in his life is on him and him alone. That he clung to the person that pulled him back from that edge, is as much his own projections as they are a reflection on Destin who made the effort to begin with. 

Now, whether or not Lucius preyed upon Severus deliberately is again, another headcanon. Eric, however, absolutely targeted Severus from day one. Now – as a literal child – Eric’s actions were not malevolent in nature. Eric is part of the Sacred Twenty Eight – he was a firm believer in blood purity, in that being pure made you better, and being among the Sacred made you stand above even the best. 

Eric Avery was the epitome of entitled rich boy, and Severus was fascinating to him. Where James Potter and Sirius Black saw something to mock in Severus’ poverty, Eric saw – in essence – a toy. Something he could pick up and put down at leisure – like a doll that had fallen in the mud, Eric took joy in improving Severus’ appearance, in making him presentable and treating him like a project.

A game in a sense of prince and pauper – and Severus absolute awe, gratitude and manner of treating the affluent fueled Eric’s ego. Severus made Eric feel like everything he had been taught to believe was true – he was better than others – but he also gave him a reason to believe that being better meant helping others to also be better if he wanted. And Eric liked the praise, the attention, that Severus threw at his feet for want of anything else to give. 

Eric was the Believer of the group. He was the one who saw Voldemort as a saviour of a type of idealized pureblood society he was raised and – consequently due to treatment at Hogwarts – enforced to believe was being actively threatened. He was also charismatic and sociable, which were traits that Severus and Lucas both lacked. They were moths to Eric’s considerable flame, drawn in by what he offered them – a semblance of love, of kindness, that they so desperately cleaved to, by the time they realized how Eric used them, they were happy to comply regardless. Lucas, the soldier at Eric’s beck and call, Severus, the sycophantic shadow both felt by the time they recognized Eric’s dysfunction that they owed him too much to turn away.

Lucas was reluctant to share Eric’s affections and actively resented Severus their first year. This made Severus strive for his attention, and fight for his good review in fear that Lucas would take Eric away from him. It was not until Lucas saw evidence of abuse on the train leading into second year that things shifted between them. Lucas was not yet resigned to Severus taking away Eric’s attention, but he recognized a means of keeping Severus away from Eric in an effort to get Eric to forget his interest – aware, even then, that Eric was fickle at heart.

In taking Severus under wing, Lucas committed himself to some of what Eric received – but as surely as he scorned Severus for simpering to Lucius and even Eric himself, Lucas deplored the behavior when it was directed at himself. He took his frustrations with Severus out on Severus at first, all under the guise of teaching him – and it was the fact Severus never complained, that he bore up under pain with all the grim determination of a Mulciber that earned him Lucas’ genuine respect.

Things shifted after that. Lucas began truly training Severus, working hard to bring Severus toward his level so that he could be a genuine partner to fight against and keep his own training on an appropriate level. Lucas demanded of Severus something utterly new – self-respect. This command, this decree to find his own equal footing made Lucas in many ways his source of self-esteem. Lucas taught him to want equality, to fight and strive for more than scraps. He insisted only an equal could fight him, and Severus strove to become that equal, which in turn forced him to see himself more and more confidently as time went on. 

Severus, as a result, bases an unhealthy amount of his self value on his capacity as a warrior, and his skills as a potioneer as it was an area he excelled at so immensely, even Lucas sought his aid in the subject, vaulting the importance of it to an astronomical degree and convincing Severus it was his area of expertise, the means to which he could escape his poverty on his own merits – because if it was valued so highly even by Lucas, then there was no question to him that it was one of his greatest attributes.

Destin was the outlier. He came from a moderately wealthy home, an acceptable background and a family that held certain expectations of him. He was expected to be studious, to obtain work in the legal or medical fields and to network himself appropriately provided doing so did not interrupt his focus. He was never the focus of Severus’ adoration, never placed on the same pedestal as the purebloods, and never really all that interested in him outside of course work and the occasional conversation.   

He was not a friend of Eric or Lucas in a desperate way – they shared his dorm and it behooved him to be amicable, but he did not stand for certain behaviors and in fact confronted Lucas on multiple occasions for his violence, and even manipulated Severus to back him up by utilizing his friendship with Lily as a means to get him to pipe up. 

Destin was not racist in a time when it was extremely dangerous to be vocal against Voldemort’s ideals, and was positioned well enough in society to feel secure in confronting those his own age on deplorable behavior. He was observant enough to know Eric was superficial and that something wasn’t right with Lucas. Severus he was ambivalent toward, but not so much so he did not notice dangerous warning signs when they bled out right in front of him.

Possessing a strong sense of morality and a slightly protective edge over his house mates, Destin kept an eye on Severus and because of this, was there when the other hit a low so dangerous, had someone not been present he surely would have died. On that day Destin shouldered responsibility for Severus in a way that eventually became unhealthy for both of them. 

Destin fell into the same trap with Severus that Eileen fell into with Tobias, determined to save him from himself to the point he became more embroiled in the group. He became closer to Lucas, who seemed to understand the implications of what happened so much better than Eric, and together they formed a support group that provided Severus everything he thought he lacked in life. Security, stability, opportunity, and affection.    

Factor Three: Personal Goals

Eric was falling more and more in love with the Dark Lord. He spoke of all the opportunities Severus could gain, feeding into his greed, his desire to stand as equal among his friends, and he followed Eric willingly to the fold because he wanted those promises to be true. He wanted a world where he would be above someone else for a change, a world where he was a man of value. Eric was seductive, speaking of the Death Eaters as a larger community of what Severus had in the dorm. Brothers in arms, benefactors, friends.

With Lucas following suit, Severus felt as though he was taking Hogwarts with him into the adult world. That home was coming with him and he felt safe in his choice. The pureblood rhetoric made him nervous, but he believed, because his companions did, that he could earn his way. Destin was pressured by the three of them, and when they showed their marks he reluctantly took to his own, to keep an eye on Severus, and certain that he could do this arbitrarily. That he could continue toward his career and ignore the mark on his arm.

He was wrong. In the end Destin found that Severus was not worth the weight of his own morals. Destin despised the men they were becoming, and he turned traitor violently. He died, and though he was marked the best of them upon his tombstone it did little to change the fact Severus felt responsible for Destin, and it made him all the more determined to protect what brothers remained.

Severus did many violent and brutal things in the war, to protect himself, to protect whom he cared for – but he also did them for what he could gain, for personal vengeance and for something as simple, at times, as an outlet. He has not forgotten the man he once was, the man he had the potential to be, and the man he knows he must be when the second war rears its head. That man was selfish, cruel, and petty in his bitterness, and it defined as much as it changed him. 

All of which, combines to make Severus the man he is as a teacher, and why mine diverges in so many senses from canon when it comes to certain types of abuses – while simultaneously being no less monstrous. Severus is not a good man. He is not an evil man either. He is complicated, and morally gray and should never be labelled as either, for he will always defy both. 

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