Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Places/Spinner's End

Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter - Place
Spinner's End
Location	Unknown
Permanent Residents	Severus Snape
First Appearance	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

General Overview

The house at Spinner's End, a gloomy house with a book-lined parlour, is the home of Severus Snape.

Extended Description

We first see this house when Narcissa Malfoy, followed by Bellatrix Lestrange, her sister, visit Snape in an attempt to get Snape's promise that he will help Narcissa's son Draco with the mission that has been set for him by the Dark Lord. We find Snape in residence, along with Peter Pettigrew, who has been sent to Spinner's End to assist Snape, and is most annoyed that Snape treats him as a servant. Pettigrew does try to listen in on their conversation, but Snape, knowing he is there, fires a spell through the bookcase and into the secret staircase where Pettigrew is hiding, sending him away.

We later find out that Snape is not the only character from the books in this particular down-at-its-heels mill town. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we learn that Snape had been friends with Lily Evans (who later became Harry's mother), and had known Petunia Evans (Harry's Aunt Petunia) as well.

Analysis

We never learn much beyond the fact that Spinners' End is overshadowed by a large factory smoke stack, and that the entire neighbourhood is very run-down. From Snape's memories in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we learn that Snape grew up in an impoverished family; the descriptions of this, his childhood home, seem to be of a piece with this. It is uncertain whether Snape's childhood home was planned out in any detail before we are first introduced to it in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, as it could have been as easily sketched in to fit Snape's character, as his character could have been designed in part to have sprung out of this background. We do know that Snape's childhood was mapped out to some extent as early as the start of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as Petunia refers then to a conversation that she had with Snape; and we believe that it had been planned, to some extent, even earlier than that, as the relationship between Lily and Snape is a critical part of Snape's personality and relationship with Harry in particular, and Gryffindor House in general.