Not To Stir The Wind In The Direction Of My Ship, But There Are So Few Thoughts Floating Around RE The

Not to stir the wind in the direction of my ship, but there are so few thoughts floating around RE the Unbreakable Vow and how JKR has structured the dynamic that leads to Severus and Draco’s interactions in HBP that I need to gush about it for a few moments. 

Warning: I love these two bastards more than language has words to express.

Most of the opinions I’ve seen on Tumblr seemed to play around the edges of the idea that Snape favoured Draco in order to maintain his Death Eating mask and prevent Draco from going to Lucius crying treason! betrayal! – and, in turn, that Severus’ relationship with the Malfoys was more of a façade it was better to maintain in order not to incur in the dark side’s displeasure than a genuine bond. But then we have scenes such as the one above.

The brevity of their interaction in this paragraph in no way hinders my singling it out as the best example from which to draw a few conclusions regarding the relations between Draco and Severus pre-HBP. Draco’s barging in to say they’ve found Montague jammed inside a toilet on the fourth floor: he’s in some hurry, has no ulterior motive other than conveying this piece of information, and is surprised at what he finds. Severus is focused on Potter and his attempts at Occlumency; he has no clue as to what Montague has done with himself, and certainly doesn’t expect Draco to barge inside his office in such a manner. This is Severus and Draco at their most unprepared, unsophisticated and unrehearsed.

Draco “speeds” inside Snape’s office, banging the door open without knocking (isn’t it odd how this doesn’t seem to faze Severus in the least — and, in fact, to Draco’s “Oh – Sorry,” Severus replies, “It’s all right, Draco,” which is probably the most pleasant we’ve seen him so far?) and the first words Draco utters, even before assessing the situation, are Professor, Sir. 

At this point, Draco has no reason to show more respect than he usually would – to, as Potter would put it, ‘suck it up to Snape’; he hasn’t even realised that Potter is in the room. Not only does the easy way with which Draco piles up his Sirs and Professors and Sorrys seem like something for which Severus would have an obvious appreciation, but it also contrasts so nicely with Potter’s grudging acknowledgement of Snape’s authority (“Yes,” said Harry stiffly. “Yes, sir”) and with the way Dumbledore has to correct Harry’s omission of the word Professor when talking about Snape, that I struggle to believe JKR didn’t put it there intentionally.

Later, in the same book, when Umbridge requests Veritaserum, Draco is sent to fetch Severus; when he returns, he ’holds the door open for Snape’. Again, I have no doubt Potter would see this as an instance of Draco’s eagerness to harm Potter and suck it up to Snape, but it is such a precise, deliberate detail, that I have a hard time believing JKR didn’t put it in order to show that different people bring out different sides in each person, and just as Potter is a different boy with those he likes than he is with Snape, so is Draco. How many people in Severus’ life have held a door open for him so readily and easily? It seems such a natural result of this sort of behaviours for him to take a liking to Draco.

I suppose it would be fair to argue (though you wouldn’t catch me doing so) that one could attribute Draco’s familiarity with Snape and his office to a normal student/Head of House dynamic. Comparing their interactions with Potter and McGonagall’s doesn’t lend much support to the idea: we don’t see Potter barging inside McGonagall’s office without knocking nor do we see McGonagall calling Potter anything other than Potter – though we do see her addressing a greater number of people by their first names than we ever see Severus do. Severus addresses very few people by their first names – certainly no student amongst them – but he consistently calls Draco Draco. 

So maybe Snape really does like Draco – not only as Lucius’ son, but as a student, as a wizard (in CoS “Snape moved closer to Malfoy, bent down, and whispered something in his ear. Malfoy smirked, too,” which seems to me a clear hint at some sort of private tutoring happening between Snape and Draco, if not in the form of official private lessons, then at the very least in the shape of informal demonstrations) and as a boy whose personality he does not find wholly intolerable. 

And, indeed, it turns out that he likes the Malfoys at least enough to be concerned about them when Voldemort returns:

‘“I saw the Death Eaters! I can give you their names! Lucius Malfoy – “ Snape made a sudden movement…’ 

This is a wonderful detail from GoF. Made a sudden movement is too clumsy and awkward and distracting a phrase for a writer to interrupt a dialogue with if she didn’t want her readers to take away something from it. Snape’s timing is too precise for it to be have been a careless mention: it’s not concern about Voldemort’s return or about Potter naming names that causes him to move - his sudden movement happens exactly after Potter mentions Lucius. Whatever he was thinking about – whether he was worried about Lucius himself or worried about Lucius returning to kneel at Voldemort’s feet, thus condemning a student – a Slytherin, in fact – as well as his whole family to Voldemort’s whims — the timing of it at the very least seems to be a clear hint to the fact that it’s related to the Malfoys.

So it wouldn’t be completely out of character for Severus, whose every display of emotion – both negative and positive – seems to be amplified to an almost unbearable extent, to grow to like and care for someone to such a degree as to agree to go the way of all flesh should he fail to protect him. Of course, when he agrees to take the Unbreakable Vow, he probably wasn’t expecting Narcissa’s wording to be so vague. Narcissa, in a frenzy of cunning and terror begotten of desperation, gets him to agree to three requests:

1. “Watch over my son, Draco, as he attempts to fulfil the Dark Lord’s wishes.” There’s no mention of a specific task or of Dumbledore’s demise, here: Severus is agreeing to protect Draco for as long as he is a follower of the Dark Lord — whether or not he manages to kill Dumbledore, whether or not Voldemort ever gives him another task afterwards.

2. “To the best of [Severus’s] ability, protect him from harm.” Even more vague. There isn’t even a single mention of Voldemort. Take it literally, and Severus is basically agreeing to protect Draco for as long as they’re both are alive.

3. “Should it prove necessary, if it seems Draco will fail, carry out the deed that the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to perform.” This is what I assume Snape thought would be the only clause of the contract –  to Narcissa apparently the last and least important.

Canon isn’t very explicit about what happens afterwards. Has the vow been lifted? If it has, shouldn’t Severus have concerns far greater than Draco while fleeing Hogwarts? And yet, in The Flight of the Prince, when the Unbreakable Vow is supposed to have been lifted and Potter is trying and failing to aim a Stupefy at them — with Dumbledore’s murder still fresh in his mind and self-loathing distorting his face, Severus still takes the time to turn and make sure to tell Draco to run away before fighting Potter and eventually dashing towards the gates. What happens afterwards, what physical repercussion the Vow has when one is in mortal danger (how else was Severus able to get to the bathroom so quickly when Draco lay bleeding on the floor?) and what their interactions were like during DH, is, of course, the stuff of fanfiction. But oh, of how many meaningless details is a good story made of.