As expected, the WotM calendar on Jo’s site is displaying happy birthday wishes for January 9th to Severus Snape.
Since birthdays began showing up on the site, with Neville Longbottom being the first on July 30, 2004, and over the course of the next year, much speculation has gone into the significance of which characters are mentioned. Are they all on the “good” side? Will they all survive? are they Jo’s favorites?
And what about the characters that have not been wished a happy birthday? Albus Dumbledore, Tonks, Mad-eye, Luna? Well, we now know that Dumbledore was probably no longer alive in Jo’s mind that first year. Some of the others I mentioned were introduced in OP which Jo was hiding behind the Spoiler Dark Mark on her site at the time. So can we take this to mean Snape survives? Is he “good”?
The significance of his inclusion on the calendar could simply be because he was Head of Slytherin House, and each of the four Heads of Houses were included, Flitwick, Sprout, and McGonagall.
Still it is hard to know, and it’s another one of the mysteries Jo continues to weave for us.