41
" If this came as a surprise to Dumbledore, then he hadn’t seen Snape’s doe Patronus for years, or perhaps ever before. As far as we know, the only people who ever saw the doe were Sirius, Dumbledore, Harry, and Ron. Dumbledore worked with Snape, depended upon him, but never asked him the private source of his growing strength. Perhaps he assumed that with time, Snape’s memories of Lily would have faded or been replaced. But Snape’s Patronus is powerful and effortless: it must be never far from his mind that all his protective powers have grown from that one original source, the "
― Lorrie Kim , Snape: A Definitive Reading
46
" With confirmation that the messy intruder was Snape, this line is much funnier: “Evidently Sirius’s bedroom had been searched too, although its contents seemed to have been judged mostly, if not entirely, worthless.” (HP/DH, 179) Even in the passive voice, the sentence resounds with Snape’s disdain for everything to do with this room and its late owner. Rereading this sentence in light of Snape’s memory involves extraordinarily layered perspectives and time shifts. We readers are going back in our own time, looking at this sentence anew and remembering how we read it before. The narrator is showing Harry’s perspective as he reads the evidence of the room, recognizing that someone had been there before him, reconstructing the probable process of that person’s search and the probable conclusions they eventually reached, considering again how the room looks but from the point of view of the unknown intruder. This person had judged Sirius, and not favorably. Snape is not in the scene at all, yet we can imagine his presence vividly throughout. "
― Lorrie Kim , Snape: A Definitive Reading
50
" a baby. No wonder it meant so much to Sirius to give Harry the Firebolt. He learned that they had had a cat, that Petunia had sent a hideous vase, that James had been proud of his baby’s ability on a broom . . . ordinary things that Harry would have given anything to have in his life growing up. The letter was an “incredible treasure” to Harry, as it would have been to anyone: “He stood quite still, holding the miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while inside him a kind of quiet eruption sent joy and grief thundering in equal measure through his veins.” (HP/DH, 181) This is blood magic, this uncontrolled rush of painful love for and from his mother flooding all Harry’s being, changing him, bathing him in the oxytocin that is the Muggle name for the magic of love flowing in the blood to create more love, to help infants grow, to hasten healing, to create empathy and protectiveness. This is what Harry craved, having known 15 months of it and then no more until he gained his friends at Hogwarts. This is what child Snape craved when he gazed greedily at Lily, who had been raised with such love. This is what Voldemort craved so badly that he didn’t even know he craved it until he saw Lily’s love for baby Harry and then the force of his craving sent him howling into nothingness, unable to regenerate a human body until he stole the oxytocin in Harry’s blood with Lily’s love still in it. "
― Lorrie Kim , Snape: A Definitive Reading
57
" All these years, he convinced himself of Harry’s arrogance, of his resemblance to James and not Lily, of flaws that Harry did and did not have, because he couldn’t endure the guilt of what he had taken from this child. Lily’s baby showed up at Hogwarts ten years later, abused and half-starved, prone to headaches, constantly aware that the mass murderer who attacked him would return to finish the job. Snape had been terrified to let himself feel the life he had really given Harry. Better to believe that Harry didn’t suffer. That Potter was so insulated by his arrogance, he could barely feel pain at all. That criticism would simply bounce off him without effect. The ordinary things in Lily’s letter, the garish bad taste of a godfather’s room, the quiet birthday teas . . . these are the things that Snape took from Harry. By tearing the photo, he recreated what he had done to Harry’s family when he asked Voldemort for the mother’s life but not the father’s or child’s. There was no magic to this act, but it raised emotion and cast a spell nonetheless: a mundane spell for remorse. Snape showed Harry through the memory that he understood what he had done. This memory is an apology. "
― Lorrie Kim , Snape: A Definitive Reading