Epitome Redefined- A long overdue Legilimency Report on Severus Snape

Like JK Rowling, I was left alone to my thoughts on a train journey while listening to some good music. But unlike JK Rowling, this blog/post/cluttered mess of randomness is not going to be a huge thing like Harry Potter (I’m a soothsayer like that, predicting the future of the creations of my wildest imaginations- PS: This is NOT a double bluff to improve the popularity of this article).  One by one the thoughts started to make a train on their own and it would have been disrespectful to them if I hadn’t taken an effort to jot them down. Also since this is my first attempt at writing, I have decided to break all norms of blog writing, mostly because I do not know what norms to conform to, and not edit anything out of my blog. I hope I do not regret that decision. I’m regretting it already. Crap. I can’t delete that too. Note to self- Think before you start writing a sentence.

Anyways, I’d like to start things off with some warnings and disclaimers we usually come across so that I can save my ass, you know just in case. Like the Mutual fund guys who say “Mutual fund Investments are subject to market risks. Please read the offer documents carefully before investing” at 5x or 10x speeds; like the warning before dangerous ads “All stunts are performed by trained experts under controlled conditions. PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME”. Like the above warnings I hereby give you my warning about this post. As we are inherently programmed to ignore warnings like the “Terms & Conditions” that come with everything nowadays, I would be lying if I didn’t mention here that I am slightly inclined to put some shady clause in my following warning just for fun. But I shan’t be doing that. Maybe some other time, probably.

So here goes nothing. The author (I’m a big fan of referencing myself in the third person, I think) does not claim to be an expert in the matters discussed in this blog and has only written it down for nefarious purposes which is explained to you in slight detail in the “About Me” section of this blog (Please read it only in case you’re interested in the inner workings of a crazy mind). The views stated in this article should be seen as the ramblings of a mad desperate man who is trying to …. Sorry, that sentence got away from me. Or you could finish the sentence however you wish. In this age where we are increasingly finding 22 things to do to blah blah blah and 15 things you should know before you blah blah blah, etc. here’s something that the author is not claiming to be tried out or to be believed in. This article is a clever mixture of many lies and exaggerated truths with the occasional pinch of truths. I won’t tell you if that is a lie in itself right now. Please proceed at your own risk and exercise sound judgement (something which has been lacking in the author’s head) when reading the blog.

Is Severus Snape the ultimate role model for unconditional love? Love is the last thing that comes to most people’s minds when they think about Snape. But for me it’s the most important thing that Snape represents. Is he the one we should all be yearning to be when it comes to love? Not because he loved just one person. Most people fall in love over and over again. And that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. It's about being true to the person you're in love with. Even when you know you can no longer be together with him/her. Snape fell in love with Lily and it changed him forever in ways he himself wouldn’t have imagined in his strangest dreams.

Love is not about making yourself happy. It’s about making the person you’re in love with as happy as you are humanely capable of. Love is not about wanting to be together with the person you’re in love with because you don't want to be heartbroken. It's about wanting him/her to be happy even after you’re left heartbroken. Love is not about chickening out at the first sign of trouble. It’s about having the courage to battle the troubles together whatever happens. Love is not about how you care in the beginning. It’s how much we cared till the end. It's not about telling him/her you deserve someone better. It's about giving it your all and striving to be that better someone.

Love always has and always will be about giving yourself fully to an individual, nothing held back. It has been about loving without fearing for any consequences that might occur in the future. It’s about enjoying his/her little quirks and sharing the same weird habits which would probably help rekindle the love further in time and intensity. For me the single most important thing about love probably has to be to expect nothing in return while giving everything you possibly can and have. Love without expecting any love in return. And I have Snape to thank for that valuable life lesson. That has to be the reason for this blog, designated to take a look into the inner mind of the bravest man who has ever lived without using my powers of Legilimency or mind reading in simple terms (But I have to make it look like I used Legilimency to make this long overdue Legilimency report).

Snape knew that he wouldn't be able to be together with Lily and he still loved her with all his heart. That love extended to the son she had with a person he probably hated all throughout his Hogwarts life. But for his one true love Lily, that was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He knew that it was about making her happy for as long as he can. Even after her death he must have assumed that she'd be happy in her afterlife if her son lives a happy life. But he couldn't show her son that he cared for him as deeply as he cared for Lily. Why do you think that is? Because he still expected nothing in return. Not gratitude. Not respect. Not love. Nothing at all.

When he agreed to look after the boy as per Dumbledore’s instructions, he only had one request. “No one must know.” He chose to reveal everything in the end not because he was expecting anything even at that point, but because he was released from the burden of expecting anything from anyone with the end of all things for him which was his death.  He had remained truthful to his one defining characteristic till the very end. To not expect anything in return from the one you truly love.

Should that be the ultimate objective for all of us when it comes to love? To love someone unconditionally expecting nothing in return? It’s not like such love is unheard of. We see love like that all around us. We see parents loving and caring for their kids for as long they can without expecting anything in return. They don't care about the voice in their head that tells them that once their kid becomes successful or finds someone for himself, he/she might leave them. They'd still love them with all their heart.

Snape's story is not a typical love story. In fact it is further off from any typical love story I have ever known my whole life. How does a typical love story go? Girl meets boy. They fall in love and live happily ever after. Snape's story is nowhere close to that. He might have secretly been in love with Lily from the beginning. In fact I'm sure that he realized that he was in love with her within a few weeks of knowing her. But that didn't falter him from his defining characteristic. To expect nothing in return from the person you love. He would do anything for her if only she had asked. If she wanted him to be with her for the rest of her life, he'd have agreed to that. For him being in love meant Lily’s happiness. Lily being happy was more important to Snape than the two of them being together.

He stepped aside when he realized that she was happily in love with James. But he never stopped loving her. Not for one second. After all that time and everything that had happened he still loved her with everything he had. Even the mighty wizard Dumbledore couldn't fathom the depth of his love and affection for Lily. (But maybe that's just because Dumbledore was gay. But wouldn't the same rules be applicable in gay relationships too? I'm thinking yes, and Dumbledore learned a life lesson that day.)

Stepping aside from someone's life when you're deeply in love with them requires courage, courage to battle the perpetual heartbreak that you’ll have to endure. Snape had become so used to it because he had been living with it all his life from the point Lily grew farther away from him. The heartbreak must have been like a constant companion that reminded him to not give up on his love. Loving her from a distance without letting anyone know must have been really difficult. He wasn't ready to throw his ideals away in the wind and that’s probably the reason he never wanted anyone to know. Courage and strength to live through something like that is damn near impossible, never often seen in mere mortals like you and me. That might be the reason the character Snape is fictional, because you cannot convince someone that such a person can exist in real life. But Snape's character is the epitome to which we should all be yearning towards if we are to truly experience love. Because even though true love is eternal, Snape broke that barrier redefining the epitome to be aimed at.

People say love is eternal, that it lives forever. Why is it so? (I’m asking questions to a reader over a computer screen. I’m really getting paranoid. Maybe I should just make all the questions henceforth seem rhetorical. Yeah. That’ll work. Won’t it? ) Is it because we all become somebody’s mom and dad that our love lives through our children even after we die? Does that mean you’re the aggregate sum of every single one of your ancestors till date? (OMG is my dad watching this right now then? Dad, could you please stop peeping into my life? I feel weird.) Maybe love does last forever. And maybe that’s the reason we should all try to find love instead of shying away from it.

People sometimes believe that love should be the most important thing in life. Although it is really important, I don't believe that it should be the most important thing in our life. Being humans we have a basic need for survival. Keeping ourselves alive requires time and effort. If you do not think that is important, you wouldn’t be alive long enough to do the thing that you think is the most important thing in your life, love. Also there is that big thing called life. Life is short, but it’s the longest thing you’ll ever experience. And you have a responsibility to live it to the fullest. Maybe life will get in the way of love sometime and that will sometimes have to be prioritised before love. But that doesn't mean love is unimportant. If you try to find time between the challenges life throws at you and love with all your heart, the universe will be a better place for that one person you love even though it’ll just be for a brief time.

Even though you may not matter in the grand scale of things, the things we do in our short time in this world does matter to someone out there even if we are not able to see who it is. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and their ancestors before them. We are indebted to them. If all the scientists in the world had thought “Why am I doing this? I’ll be dead in a short while anyway”, we wouldn’t have been able to use the many results of all their achievements and would have had to start from scratch every single time. Love is the one thing that unites us all as a species. We matter. Even if it is for just one person in the whole world, whose life is enriched by something we did. I agree that humans live for a minuscule dot or probably smaller in the cosmic calendar. When we look at it like that we feel small. But you don’t have to. If you live your life fully, full of love and happiness, the mode of dust which is our life would look like a giant star to you and everyone around you. And isn’t that all that matters?

True love is not for the weak hearted. For it requires the courage to rip out your heart and place it in front of your loved ones ready to be trampled upon. To quote from a favourite book of mine, “You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you.” True love comes only to those who are willing to risk everything with the courage to face anything that comes their way. When it comes to the matter of love, I believe Snape has showed us where the epitome is. The question is how many of us are courageous enough to traverse down that not so well trodden road risking everything we hold dear in this world expecting absolutely nothing in return?