Snapedom

totalreadr requested that I post my extensive Severus and Lily thoughts here on Snapedom, as a meta essay...so here they are (I hope nobody minds, considering the recent kerfluffle). This can also be my response to the December '07 challenge. ;)



First, I'd like to re-emphasize that Severus Snape is my favorite character in the books, I can/do identify with him, and my desire to thwack him in some instances does not diminish my love of the character. In the Severus/Lily fic I'm writing (getting close to having the first chapter ready), I give him some opportunities that he didn't have in canon, and he's able to avoid some serious mistakes and learn some lessons a lot sooner and avoid tragedy. So, I have much love for the character, even though I want to smack him sometimes. Anyhoo, on to Lily...

Lily wasn't perfect and had her faults, but I'd say she was as good a friend as she knew how to be to Severus. It would have been nice if she could have gotten through to him before SWM, but she didn't. She tried, but he wasn't taking the hint. I think she would have had to spell it out for him point blank (before SWM, because I view his calling her Mudblood as the 'point of no return' for them). If Severus had been more socially adept (perhaps if he had better social examples at home) and been less screwed up in the head (oy, don't get me started on his wrongheaded thinking) then what she said already would have gotten, through, I think. Alas... :( Not her fault, though!

Incidentally, I think Lily was feeling attraction to both Severus and James (for slightly different reasons), but couldn't act on either feeling for...somewhat similar reasons. James was being a bullying arrogant toerag, and Severus was going down a bad, bad road (hanging with DE wannabes, using the word Mudblood, etc).

[Additional note: I tend to think Lily was hoping Severus would change more so that she could move the relationship forward (or at least keep him as a friend) and that she was flattered by James' attention (hence the attraction) and merely wanted him to change so he'd stop being a bully and stop bullying Severus, at that point. But that is more likely because I'm an unrepentant Severus/Lily shipper, so I'm biased there, LOL. I do think that Severus believed that Lily might be attracted to James in a more serious way and was jealous.]

Since JKR said in an interview that Lily could have loved Severus romantically if he hadn't gone to the dark side, I ascribe her blushing at his intense look (during convo about Whomping Willow/Mulciber/James) as a sign of that. I could be reaching, but that’s my theory and I’m going with it. ‘Cause I’m a sap of a Severus/Lily shipper. My favorite Snily fics tend to be the ones where Severus never calls her Mudblood and they are able to have a happy ending (I don’t find many of these). A sap am I.

I'm taking JKR's word that Lily was attracted to James in some way at SWM. I'm not sure I see it (other than he's handsome and I'm sure he wasn't a butthole 24-7). She seemed pretty miffed at James and I think she didn't talk to Severus because...what would she say? "Oh, you poor thing!"? I don't think that would have helped/been welcome by Severus. So she focused on James and trying to talk sense into him. Also, Severus seems like the type who may have wanted her to stay out of it completely, due to pride (he may have wanted to get out of it on his own). So she may have thought she was pushing it just intervening at all, but couldn't help herself.

As for her mouth twitch/almost smile, I think it was going to be nervous laughter over seeing her best friend (who she was also attracted to, in my theory) in his undies. I also find the theory that she may have secretly enjoyed the irony of Severus being hoist by his own petard, interesting. She probably knew it was his own spell being used against him, and I doubt she thought it was a very nice spell to have invented in the first place.

I can see where Severus got…um…confused and messed up in some spots, however. James is supposed to be one of the good guys and he is definitely abusing the more neutral spells (even if he isn’t using Dark Magic), so I can see where Severus might think “what’s the difference?” Not that there isn’t a subtle difference. But I could see where he’d be all WTF on the matter.

Note: I don’t think Lily was friends with the Marauders until 7th year (that’s the year she started dating James, right?) and she wasn’t defending James’ behavior. She seems to think being cruel with more neutral spells is also a ‘very bad thing’ (tm).

Personally, I think Severus had descended into apathy by the point of SWM. I think he had disdain for humanity in general and thought the world was pretty crapsack. He was Slytherin and had connections there and LV was the new power in that pureblood-prejudice saturated world and he wanted to be a powerful wizard, so he aspired to be a DE. Bad and shortsighted: yes. Oh, so bad. I don’t think he really bought the blood purity hype, but he wanted to fit in with his housemates and the DE crowd and figured it wasn’t a battle worth fighting. I think he was taking a ‘that’s just the way the world is’ sort of stance regarding his status as a half-blood and the status of Muggle-borns. Also, I think he was viewing the word Mudblood as any other bad word (like dropping the F-bomb), which doesn’t make it better (maybe worse). Terrible lack of empathy, I think. On that note, even if he called Lily a bitch or an idiot or something, I could see her being almost just as hurt. So, lashing out at her when she was trying to help was a bad thing to do to be going on with, and using a racial slur made it that much worse. I just want to smack him, in that scene.

What James did to Severus was so deplorable (torturing and stripping him) in the SWM scene, that I wish we had been shown James’ ‘redemption’ and how he changed. I trust that Lily wouldn’t have dated him (let alone married him) if he hadn’t changed, but I would have liked to have seen it. Especially, since James was still having a hex war with Severus when he and Lily were dating. I would have liked to have seen a counterpoint to that. I would like to have seen the good in James on display. As it is, I feel like I just have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I have a lot of sympathy for Severus (rotten home life, dirt poor, sorted into a House that doesn’t mix with the other Houses and is filled with blood purists, bullied, etc), and I think he has some very admirable qualities (a certain kind of brilliance, creativity, bravery) but he made some very bad choices. I don’t think he was bad at heart as a kid, and he was never unredeemable, and I think he did develope his heart again (even if it was buried under layers of bitter buttholishness), but, oy, the bad choices! It’s a real shame that *someone* (Lily, Dumbledore, whoever) couldn’t talk sense to him.

To sum up: I like Lily. I like Severus (although I doubt I would have the patience for him in real life and he definitely has issues). I’m not so fond of James, LOL.

PS: I always thought that the Whomping Willow incident had happened the night immediately before Lily and Severus had their talk about that subject, and that this is the first chance that Lily had to talk with him about it. I have a feeling that, since she only heard through the rumor mill (I don't think any of the Marauders told her about it - I think she heard about it from a friend) that Severus was saved by James from something (and may not have known how serious it was), she wasn't going to bring it up until he mentioned James (since she may have figured Severus might be embarrassed). [Holy run-on sentence, Batman!] And I think she was loath to believe Severus's theory about Lupin to be true, because she might have hated to think that Lupin was really afflicted with such a thing. And if he was, she wouldn't want to be a part of 'outing' him.

PPS: Severus seems to be off in La-la Land after Lily disses James. That would have been a perfect opportunity to listen to her (now that his fears have been addressed), instead of going off into dreamland. Very self-centered of ol' Severus Snape, there. Tsk and d'oh! Perhaps if he had been less focused on the whole James issue, he would have been able to explain why he didn't see the difference between 'Mulciber and Avery' and 'James and The Marauders', in a way Lily would understand and could address.

Okay, so those are my thoughts. Your millage may vary. Peace and Love, my fellow Snape fans.