More cartoon Severus since the last one was pretty well received. I drew this months ago but wasn’t pleased with how he looked. Now… I guess it’s better than I thought
It means a lot to me that Snape does what he does to undermine Voldemort even while canonically terrified of him.
Snape pales noticeably when he is asked to return to Voldemort. In Occlumency lessons, he gets distinctly uncomfortable at Harry’s slinging his name around like it’s nothing:
“Dumbledore is an extremely powerful wizard,” Snape muttered. “While he may feel secure enough to use the name … the rest of us …”
His report to Dumbledore of Voldemort’s anger over losing the diary conveys enough of his fear that Dumbledore describes it to Harry as “terrible to behold”. He hesitates for the space of a heartbeat before entering the Death Eater meeting in The Dark Lord Ascending. And of course, he pales until his face resembles a “death mask” as he understands that the borrowed time he has been living on is up. And on each of these occasions, we see him continue his difficult work anyways.
These small moments give us a glimpse of the human under the mask that Snape presents to Voldemort, and help us start to understand the considerable toll that his work must have taken on him.
YES. I don’t know why people seem to think the whole process was just about putting up his shields or something mechanical like that. Voldemort tortured a Death Eater for… No reason at all, when he first returned. Snape had sent him to his death, triggered the mechanism that made the killing curse backfire, switched sides, protected Harry in front of him, kept him away from the stone, and tried to get Sirius kissed (while believing Sirius to be on Voldemort’s side). The man was walking on a fraying tightrope. It would have been terrible writing to make him particularly zen about it all.
