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There was one comment I wanted to pull out from the recent Lily threads for separate discussion.
I’m glad Hwyla pointed out that Lily almost had to have been a prefect in SWM. I’d been wanting someone to bring that up.
Warning: Lily-bashing ahead. At least I can't come up with any way to have Lily look good in SWM if she's really a prefect as well as Snape's supposed best friend.
Is it credible that Lily, a scant year later chosen to be Head Girl, was NOT a prefect in SWM?
Can anyone make a case (without violently contorting) that she was not?
Yet if she was: what does that say about her behavior in SWM? It was her perfectly duty as much as Lupin’s to discipline James and Sirius—both to stop their misbehavior, to punish them, and to prevent (one hopes, although in this case probably futilely) recidivism. Why isn’t Lily in there docking house points from Gryffindor and issuing detentions?
I mean, imagine if Hermione had found Cormac McLaggen and a couple of his friends ganging up on Ron. Or Percy witnessing several Gryffindors setting on Penelope. Would either of them credibly react as Lily does?
We know what we think of Prefect Lupin’s cowardice in not stopping his friends. But at least we understand his motives.
Lily’s motives…. Is she guilty of more favoritism than Snape at his worst, unwilling to punish her own house? (At least the Slytherins, as Whitehand points out, actually make considerable effort to make sure Snape doesn’t directly see their worst misbehavior. James checked to make sure Lily was watching before he started in on Snape!)
Is she a coward like Lupin, whose girlfriends have made her aware they will ostracize her if she punishes the wrong people (two popular, rich, good-looking Gryff boys, one a Quidditch star) or takes too many house points?
Is this James’s way of getting Lily to commit publicly to engaging him one-on-one rather than prefect-to-misbehaving student?
Or is she simply too weak to enforce her authority?
I can’t come up with any way to have Lily be a prefect and not look worse than Lupin.
And I can’t come up with any plausible reason why the future Head Girl wouldn’t have been Prefect.
(Oh fine, I can so. Mary Sue Macdonald, who was Lily's superior in all conceivable and inconceivable ways, was Gryffindor prefect fifth year and a shoo-in for Head Girl in Seventh. But Mulciber, who adored her, killed her sixth year in a fit of jealous rage--you'll be happy to know DD prevented his being expelled. Alternatively, the MoM pulled her from school to serve as head of the DMLE to lead the fight against You-Know-Who. She asked (with her dying breath or from her new position of power) that her mantle be passed to her lowly friend Lily, as a symbol of hope for Muggleborns that despite their inferior blood and abilities,they too might be granted a position of power if they pleased their superiors. The End.)
Bad fanfic aside, discuss?
I’m glad Hwyla pointed out that Lily almost had to have been a prefect in SWM. I’d been wanting someone to bring that up.
Warning: Lily-bashing ahead. At least I can't come up with any way to have Lily look good in SWM if she's really a prefect as well as Snape's supposed best friend.
Is it credible that Lily, a scant year later chosen to be Head Girl, was NOT a prefect in SWM?
Can anyone make a case (without violently contorting) that she was not?
Yet if she was: what does that say about her behavior in SWM? It was her perfectly duty as much as Lupin’s to discipline James and Sirius—both to stop their misbehavior, to punish them, and to prevent (one hopes, although in this case probably futilely) recidivism. Why isn’t Lily in there docking house points from Gryffindor and issuing detentions?
I mean, imagine if Hermione had found Cormac McLaggen and a couple of his friends ganging up on Ron. Or Percy witnessing several Gryffindors setting on Penelope. Would either of them credibly react as Lily does?
We know what we think of Prefect Lupin’s cowardice in not stopping his friends. But at least we understand his motives.
Lily’s motives…. Is she guilty of more favoritism than Snape at his worst, unwilling to punish her own house? (At least the Slytherins, as Whitehand points out, actually make considerable effort to make sure Snape doesn’t directly see their worst misbehavior. James checked to make sure Lily was watching before he started in on Snape!)
Is she a coward like Lupin, whose girlfriends have made her aware they will ostracize her if she punishes the wrong people (two popular, rich, good-looking Gryff boys, one a Quidditch star) or takes too many house points?
Is this James’s way of getting Lily to commit publicly to engaging him one-on-one rather than prefect-to-misbehaving student?
Or is she simply too weak to enforce her authority?
I can’t come up with any way to have Lily be a prefect and not look worse than Lupin.
And I can’t come up with any plausible reason why the future Head Girl wouldn’t have been Prefect.
(Oh fine, I can so. Mary Sue Macdonald, who was Lily's superior in all conceivable and inconceivable ways, was Gryffindor prefect fifth year and a shoo-in for Head Girl in Seventh. But Mulciber, who adored her, killed her sixth year in a fit of jealous rage--you'll be happy to know DD prevented his being expelled. Alternatively, the MoM pulled her from school to serve as head of the DMLE to lead the fight against You-Know-Who. She asked (with her dying breath or from her new position of power) that her mantle be passed to her lowly friend Lily, as a symbol of hope for Muggleborns that despite their inferior blood and abilities,they too might be granted a position of power if they pleased their superiors. The End.)
Bad fanfic aside, discuss?
I suppose one can take the 'some' to mean she approved of his other Slytherin friends? (Of course between her and Sirius we don't know of any that did not become Death Eaters. Maybe Rabastan Lestrange was quite pleasant in his school days and only became radicalized after his brother married Bellatrix?)
In the post-SWM conversation she calls them "You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"
So she is calling people who are still in school and may or may not be planning to join Riddle's group Death Eaters. (We know Regulus and possibly Draco were recruited while still at school, but I doubt this was the standard procedure. Draco was being used to punish his father and Regulus had his cousin speak for him.)
The overt agenda of the Death Eaters (before Riddle showed his true colors) as presented both by Regulus and by Sirius was very close to a view that was common among a large part of British wizards. For all anyone knew they were calling for restoring traditional wizarding values and dabbling in traditional mysterious magic, AKA Dark Arts.