J.K. Rowling Shares New Severus Snape Story On Pottermore

By Maryann Yin 

Snape Riddle

Harry Potter enthusiasts will be counting down the 12 days of Christmas with new stories on Pottermore. Over at the Pottmore Insider blog, fans were tasked with cracking a riddle (embedded above) about “a house in Spinner’s End” to unlock the first piece. Perhaps J.K. Rowling decided to continue challenging her fans with Ravenclaw-style puzzles as she did on Twitter earlier this year.

SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know more, you should stop reading now!

With this new story, we find out that both the anti-heroic Potions Master Severus Snape and Harry Potter’s mother Lily Potter (née Evans) were raised in the town of Cokeworth. This new information confirms that Severus has been in love with Lily since he was a child.

MTV.com reports that “it’s an extra wrinkle for the complicated relationship between Snape and Lily. Despite his constant harshness toward Harry throughout the series, we eventually learned that Snape loved Harry’s mother ever since they were students together at Hogwarts — and as a result of her death at Voldemort’s hands, Snape dedicated the rest of his life to protecting her son, even if theirs wasn’t always the friendliest student-teacher relationship.”