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I ended my last with:
We are totally misjudging Lily based on the “The Prince’s Tale.” Because these were never meant to be Severus’s memories of Lily.
They’re his memories of what went wrong between them.
I want to clarify this last point. And then I’ll be done, really, for quite a while.
Most of us who dislike Lily do so on the basis of Snape’s memories of her. (Well, we certainly don’t do it on the basis of Harry’s!) We assess her as a bad friend to him; we complain that we never see any encounter between them that doesn’t begin or end with her being angry or critical of him. We say we never see them just being friends, and so we question her commitment to the friendship.
When I first read SWM I took Lily to be a popular girl standing up for a loser outsider that she barely knew, and I liked her for it. Re-reading that scene as someone defending her supposed “best friend” infuriated me past measure. What kind of friend was that?
And so it was possible to view Lily as a user. I saw her sometimes as someone who tolerated Severus pre-Hogwarts because he was her only source of info on the WW, who then started drawing back from HIM before he’d done anything deserving of her disapproval, merely because Sev was a socially-awkward geek whom her other friends teased her about.
What we forgot to consider was that those memories were not necessarily a representative sample. Snape wasn’t giving those memories to Harry to give Harry a fair and balanced picture of who his mother was. *
Severus was trying to tell Harry who HE was, and how he got there. Partly because Harry had to trust him to accept Dumbledore’s message from him; otherwise Harry would have assumed Snape faked a memory to entrap him. But had that been all, the memories would have ended there, with the message.
Instead, Severus goes on to show Harry his outrage over how Albus used both of them. He shows Harry that he continues, nonetheless, to obey Dumbledore’s orders. He shows him that cutting off George’s ear was an accident, that he had never intentionally injured a Harry-clone. He shows himself crying over Lily’s letter and photo. And in the final memory he shows Harry that Snape now rejected absolutely the use of the word “Mudblood” [he interrupted Phineas with urgent news to object to it], that Severus was the one who armed Harry (and BTW that Severus was worthy to carry Gryffindor’s Sword), and that, though still loyal to Dumbledore, he wasn’t (or was no longer) blindly dependent on his mentor. His final words transmitted to Harry were: “Don’t worry, Dumbledore, I have a plan…[emphasis mine.]”
Severus wanted to be known. “Look at me!” His dying request.
The point Severus was trying to make to Harry was never about Lily at all. It was about himself. He needed Harry to know that Severus had loved Lily, had unintentionally driven her away, had forsaken all other loyalties and ambitions for her sake when he discovered that he’d endangered her, and had never swerved from that commitment.
So these memories were not selected by Snape to give a comprehensive portrait of Lily or of their friendship. They are not about what Lily’s like, or what it’s like to be her closest friend. They are about what it’s like to drive her away.
The miscommunications on both sides, and his missteps.
One recurrent theme is Lily’s lack of understanding of magic. We see three separate times when Lily responds negatively because she doesn’t understand Sev’s usage: when he first tells her she’s a witch, when he drops the branch on Tuney and she thinks he did it deliberately, and her strictures on Mulciber using Dark Magic. Similarly, we twice see Severus’s early disdain for Muggles (Petunia) and insensitivity to Lily’s closeness to people he doesn’t value. Then there’s the prejudice between their houses (though I think the train scene was also thrown in to show Harry that no, James really always WAS a total jerk). Later, he shows Lily’s disapproval of his friends and his own inability to see why she disapproved, the misunderstanding over the Marauder versus the Mulciber prank, and finally “the word” and Severus’s inarticulateness when he apologized, his inability to persuade Lily that the “way” he would choose was hers, if she would let him. But with that option completely lost to him, he makes other choices….
Reading smallpotato’s post on Lily as abusive, where she goes down the checklist: it’s a fairly compelling condemnation of Lily IF we take the memories Snape gave Harry to be representative of Severus and Lily’s usual interactions. However, if we re-read the Lily section of the Prince’s Tale NOT as a record of their normal relationship but as his record of how that relationship went sour, then what he’s pulling out for examination are exceptional incidents.
And we do in fact get three quite clear signs that their early friendship was a real one, and valued by both parties. Reread the scene that ends that ends with Lily accusing Severus of deliberately hurting Petunia. Before Petunia’s interruption, they are talking like friends, sharing confidences and hopes, and he uses his superior knowledge of the WW to impress her. But she doesn’t ONLY ask him about magic (as I have sometimes misremembered when casting her as a user).
“How are things at your house,” Lily asked.
“Fine,” he said.
“They’re not arguing anymore?”
“Oh yes, they’re arguing.” [tears leaves apart] “But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.”
“Doesn’t your dad like magic?”
“He doesn’t like anything much.”
Note: he gives her neutral/partially forthcoming responses, not a “F*** you for asking” snarl. And Lily perseveres until his third “Keep away” answer, then switches her questions back to magic, which he’s obviously happier talking about. And she hangs on his every word, until Petunia interrupts.
Which is exactly what a well-socialized (and mature for ten!) child would do with a friend she cares about who’s in a tough situation she can’t directly help with—ask enough to indicate she cares and is willing to listen, but respect the friend’s indication he’s not ready to talk. (And presumably Severus is sometimes able to talk about such matters with her, since Lily knows enough to ask in the first place.) Smallpotato asked: “Do we see Miss Lily ever, but I mean *ever*, understanding, valuing, supportive or respectful of Sev's feelings, friends, opinions or activities?”
Well, there we did. In fact, it was mostly that being missing in the Mulciber/Potter conversation that had so strongly persuaded me that Lily had already emotionally ditched Severus. Shouldn’t Lily, if still a friend, have responded even more strongly to her friend’s near-death than to his unhappy home life? But Sailorum reminded me that Lily didn’t know Sev had almost been murdered and that Lily probably assumed that he had snuck down that tunnel because he wanted a thrill. So, to her eyes, Sev got a bit more of a thrill than he had wanted, and was just sulking now over the ignominy of having been rescued by Potter. And with that bad attitude, no, Lily wouldn’t sympathize.
Two other scenes show that Lily at first valued her friendship with Sev.
On the Hogwarts Express, Lily blames Sev for her quarrel with Petunia—humanly, but most unjustly, since she violated Petunia’s privacy as much as Snape did, and it’s Evans, not Severus, who chose to rub her sister’s nose in it. Bad Lily! But it’s Snape who’s being insensitive—his “So what?” really takes the cake. Bad Sev! Nonetheless, Lily DOES allow Sev to talk with her and “brightens” in response to his excitement. Then when James takes issue with Severus’s favored house and the matter goes downhill, Lily doesn’t participate until the two strange boys descend to open insult of Severus, when she “sat up, rather flushed, and looked from Sirius to James in dislike. ‘Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.’ [she said in a] lofty voice.”
She gives up her anger AT Sev to get angry on Sev’s behalf. Moreover, she has no wish whatever to interact with the jerks; she wants only to remove herself and Severus from their attack. This contrasts painfully and pointedly with her behavior in SWM, of course, and I’m sure Severus was well aware of it.
Finally, there’s the reaction to her sorting. As soon as the hat cried, “Gryffindor,” Snape let out a tiny groan—and Lily looked back at him with a sad little smile. They both know that Lily’s sorting will separate them, and they both mourn it. (And for anyone who thinks either of them should have talked the Hat into mis-sorting, the Hat didn’t seem to hesitate in either case—as it had with Harry, Hermione, and Neville. So it doesn’t seem that either Sev or Lily had the opportunity to make a request to be sorted to hir friend’s house.)
SWM, I think, Sailorum’s best efforts notwithstanding, still only makes sense if Lily, by then, had already distanced herself from Severus. Though she hadn’t yet admitted it to him, and perhaps not to herself.
But this re-interpretation is really a good thing for Snapefen. Being misled by the fact that all the Lily-memories were bad ones, we thought that the relationship—and she—were bad. But if she really had been worthy of his love, and if they were once truly friends, and if he might have had a chance for more—had his insecurities, misunderstandings on both sides, and their respective houses not gotten in the way—then Severus lost, or rather destroyed, something of real value. And then he’s not a sad little dweeb clinging to the memory of a friendship-that-never-was as his one light in this cruel world, but a figure in a tragedy.
And what’s especially poignant is, Severus first gained Lily’s attention and interest by knowing more than she; he was “oddly impressive” telling her about mysteries. Rowling said Snape joined the DE’s partly in hopes of impressing Lily. We interpreted this as Jo meaning that Snape thought Lily liked powerful bullies like James, and tried to make himself one. But if Severus also thought he was going to learn mysteries of life and death such as few knew, that finally makes a different kind of sense.
(*Wouldn’t it be nice to think that Snape left Harry a vial of memories left behind Dumbledore’s portrait? With his happier memories of Lily? This is what she was really like, this is why I valued her, this is what we were like together…. Sigh. Good thing I’m not a diabetic—I think I’d be in sugar shock from just the thought.)
We are totally misjudging Lily based on the “The Prince’s Tale.” Because these were never meant to be Severus’s memories of Lily.
They’re his memories of what went wrong between them.
I want to clarify this last point. And then I’ll be done, really, for quite a while.
Most of us who dislike Lily do so on the basis of Snape’s memories of her. (Well, we certainly don’t do it on the basis of Harry’s!) We assess her as a bad friend to him; we complain that we never see any encounter between them that doesn’t begin or end with her being angry or critical of him. We say we never see them just being friends, and so we question her commitment to the friendship.
When I first read SWM I took Lily to be a popular girl standing up for a loser outsider that she barely knew, and I liked her for it. Re-reading that scene as someone defending her supposed “best friend” infuriated me past measure. What kind of friend was that?
And so it was possible to view Lily as a user. I saw her sometimes as someone who tolerated Severus pre-Hogwarts because he was her only source of info on the WW, who then started drawing back from HIM before he’d done anything deserving of her disapproval, merely because Sev was a socially-awkward geek whom her other friends teased her about.
What we forgot to consider was that those memories were not necessarily a representative sample. Snape wasn’t giving those memories to Harry to give Harry a fair and balanced picture of who his mother was. *
Severus was trying to tell Harry who HE was, and how he got there. Partly because Harry had to trust him to accept Dumbledore’s message from him; otherwise Harry would have assumed Snape faked a memory to entrap him. But had that been all, the memories would have ended there, with the message.
Instead, Severus goes on to show Harry his outrage over how Albus used both of them. He shows Harry that he continues, nonetheless, to obey Dumbledore’s orders. He shows him that cutting off George’s ear was an accident, that he had never intentionally injured a Harry-clone. He shows himself crying over Lily’s letter and photo. And in the final memory he shows Harry that Snape now rejected absolutely the use of the word “Mudblood” [he interrupted Phineas with urgent news to object to it], that Severus was the one who armed Harry (and BTW that Severus was worthy to carry Gryffindor’s Sword), and that, though still loyal to Dumbledore, he wasn’t (or was no longer) blindly dependent on his mentor. His final words transmitted to Harry were: “Don’t worry, Dumbledore, I have a plan…[emphasis mine.]”
Severus wanted to be known. “Look at me!” His dying request.
The point Severus was trying to make to Harry was never about Lily at all. It was about himself. He needed Harry to know that Severus had loved Lily, had unintentionally driven her away, had forsaken all other loyalties and ambitions for her sake when he discovered that he’d endangered her, and had never swerved from that commitment.
So these memories were not selected by Snape to give a comprehensive portrait of Lily or of their friendship. They are not about what Lily’s like, or what it’s like to be her closest friend. They are about what it’s like to drive her away.
The miscommunications on both sides, and his missteps.
One recurrent theme is Lily’s lack of understanding of magic. We see three separate times when Lily responds negatively because she doesn’t understand Sev’s usage: when he first tells her she’s a witch, when he drops the branch on Tuney and she thinks he did it deliberately, and her strictures on Mulciber using Dark Magic. Similarly, we twice see Severus’s early disdain for Muggles (Petunia) and insensitivity to Lily’s closeness to people he doesn’t value. Then there’s the prejudice between their houses (though I think the train scene was also thrown in to show Harry that no, James really always WAS a total jerk). Later, he shows Lily’s disapproval of his friends and his own inability to see why she disapproved, the misunderstanding over the Marauder versus the Mulciber prank, and finally “the word” and Severus’s inarticulateness when he apologized, his inability to persuade Lily that the “way” he would choose was hers, if she would let him. But with that option completely lost to him, he makes other choices….
Reading smallpotato’s post on Lily as abusive, where she goes down the checklist: it’s a fairly compelling condemnation of Lily IF we take the memories Snape gave Harry to be representative of Severus and Lily’s usual interactions. However, if we re-read the Lily section of the Prince’s Tale NOT as a record of their normal relationship but as his record of how that relationship went sour, then what he’s pulling out for examination are exceptional incidents.
And we do in fact get three quite clear signs that their early friendship was a real one, and valued by both parties. Reread the scene that ends that ends with Lily accusing Severus of deliberately hurting Petunia. Before Petunia’s interruption, they are talking like friends, sharing confidences and hopes, and he uses his superior knowledge of the WW to impress her. But she doesn’t ONLY ask him about magic (as I have sometimes misremembered when casting her as a user).
“How are things at your house,” Lily asked.
“Fine,” he said.
“They’re not arguing anymore?”
“Oh yes, they’re arguing.” [tears leaves apart] “But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.”
“Doesn’t your dad like magic?”
“He doesn’t like anything much.”
Note: he gives her neutral/partially forthcoming responses, not a “F*** you for asking” snarl. And Lily perseveres until his third “Keep away” answer, then switches her questions back to magic, which he’s obviously happier talking about. And she hangs on his every word, until Petunia interrupts.
Which is exactly what a well-socialized (and mature for ten!) child would do with a friend she cares about who’s in a tough situation she can’t directly help with—ask enough to indicate she cares and is willing to listen, but respect the friend’s indication he’s not ready to talk. (And presumably Severus is sometimes able to talk about such matters with her, since Lily knows enough to ask in the first place.) Smallpotato asked: “Do we see Miss Lily ever, but I mean *ever*, understanding, valuing, supportive or respectful of Sev's feelings, friends, opinions or activities?”
Well, there we did. In fact, it was mostly that being missing in the Mulciber/Potter conversation that had so strongly persuaded me that Lily had already emotionally ditched Severus. Shouldn’t Lily, if still a friend, have responded even more strongly to her friend’s near-death than to his unhappy home life? But Sailorum reminded me that Lily didn’t know Sev had almost been murdered and that Lily probably assumed that he had snuck down that tunnel because he wanted a thrill. So, to her eyes, Sev got a bit more of a thrill than he had wanted, and was just sulking now over the ignominy of having been rescued by Potter. And with that bad attitude, no, Lily wouldn’t sympathize.
Two other scenes show that Lily at first valued her friendship with Sev.
On the Hogwarts Express, Lily blames Sev for her quarrel with Petunia—humanly, but most unjustly, since she violated Petunia’s privacy as much as Snape did, and it’s Evans, not Severus, who chose to rub her sister’s nose in it. Bad Lily! But it’s Snape who’s being insensitive—his “So what?” really takes the cake. Bad Sev! Nonetheless, Lily DOES allow Sev to talk with her and “brightens” in response to his excitement. Then when James takes issue with Severus’s favored house and the matter goes downhill, Lily doesn’t participate until the two strange boys descend to open insult of Severus, when she “sat up, rather flushed, and looked from Sirius to James in dislike. ‘Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.’ [she said in a] lofty voice.”
She gives up her anger AT Sev to get angry on Sev’s behalf. Moreover, she has no wish whatever to interact with the jerks; she wants only to remove herself and Severus from their attack. This contrasts painfully and pointedly with her behavior in SWM, of course, and I’m sure Severus was well aware of it.
Finally, there’s the reaction to her sorting. As soon as the hat cried, “Gryffindor,” Snape let out a tiny groan—and Lily looked back at him with a sad little smile. They both know that Lily’s sorting will separate them, and they both mourn it. (And for anyone who thinks either of them should have talked the Hat into mis-sorting, the Hat didn’t seem to hesitate in either case—as it had with Harry, Hermione, and Neville. So it doesn’t seem that either Sev or Lily had the opportunity to make a request to be sorted to hir friend’s house.)
SWM, I think, Sailorum’s best efforts notwithstanding, still only makes sense if Lily, by then, had already distanced herself from Severus. Though she hadn’t yet admitted it to him, and perhaps not to herself.
But this re-interpretation is really a good thing for Snapefen. Being misled by the fact that all the Lily-memories were bad ones, we thought that the relationship—and she—were bad. But if she really had been worthy of his love, and if they were once truly friends, and if he might have had a chance for more—had his insecurities, misunderstandings on both sides, and their respective houses not gotten in the way—then Severus lost, or rather destroyed, something of real value. And then he’s not a sad little dweeb clinging to the memory of a friendship-that-never-was as his one light in this cruel world, but a figure in a tragedy.
And what’s especially poignant is, Severus first gained Lily’s attention and interest by knowing more than she; he was “oddly impressive” telling her about mysteries. Rowling said Snape joined the DE’s partly in hopes of impressing Lily. We interpreted this as Jo meaning that Snape thought Lily liked powerful bullies like James, and tried to make himself one. But if Severus also thought he was going to learn mysteries of life and death such as few knew, that finally makes a different kind of sense.
(*Wouldn’t it be nice to think that Snape left Harry a vial of memories left behind Dumbledore’s portrait? With his happier memories of Lily? This is what she was really like, this is why I valued her, this is what we were like together…. Sigh. Good thing I’m not a diabetic—I think I’d be in sugar shock from just the thought.)
You do make some good points about the earlier scenes with them as children. And why Severus would pick these particular memories as the ones to give Harry.
I still hit a major stumbling-block, however, with the Mulciber scene. And this also goes back to your post on Lily thinking Severus a thrill-seeker. I think she *had* emotionally ditched him at that point, because even taking everything else you say into account, I (personally) am still unable to wrap my head around the idea that anyone whose close friend *nearly died* would not *make sure they are ok* before starting in on berating them for their stupidity. Even if it was in a very angry, frightened manner *because* said friend almost died. But it doesn't seem to me here that Lily is upset mainly because Severus was an idiot *who nearly got himself killed and now is sulking about it,* it's that Lily is upset *that he's sulking about it.* Even if Lily doesn't sympathize with his attitude towards James' rescuing him, even if she assumes he was thrill-seeking...she still doesn't ever even check to make sure he was uninjured before berating him, or indicate that it *deeply matters* to her that he lived. At least, not from what I read in the text.
It's not a question of sympathizing, I'm trying to say. It's the need to see *for oneself* that one's friend still has their limbs attached. *Then* I could see her flipping out and being all "you bleeding IDIOT you could have been killed and now you're sulking over Potter SAVING you!* That is, no matter my attitude towards a friend's decision to do something life-threatening and stupid, I would still rush to the Infirmary the moment I heard *they had nearly died,* and *then* upon seeing them alive and well and sulking would I flip out.
And Lily apparently did *not* make any real attempt to confirm to herself that Severus was all right before she started in on him. Days have passed and this is the first time she has seen he is all right. But his survival is apparently not so big a deal to her as his sulking about James. It's the lack of the "you could have been KILLED you stupid idiot" aspect to her rant (for me) that skews the scene. If we knew she had already gone to see that Severus was ok, and NOW is past that moment of anxiety that *her friend nearly died please let the stupid thrill-seeking idiot be OK,* I would not have such a problem with this scene. As written, it appears to me that that moment of profound anxiety (which I imagine would happen regardless of *why* Severus' life was at risk) never happened for Lily. And that does a real mindf*ck on me. I can't wrap my head around it.
I feel like I'm not being clear but I don't quite know how to put it. It's not about sympathizing with him or the issue of knowing about the murder attempt, it's the visceral sense that Severus' death would be a great loss for Lily *whatever* happened and *however stupid or thrill-seeking* Severus had been. THAT'S what I'm not getting here. It's all about Severus' attitude towards James Potter and his stupidity, nothing about what value Severus' life has TO LILY. THAT'S what convinces me that she had already distanced herself from him emotionally to a great degree by this scene. There's no sense to me that Lily ever came face to face with that momentary vision of *loss,* the anxiety for her friend's life in itself, regardless of why it was in danger. It reads to me as Lily hearing that Severus nearly died but was saved, and must have gone on some level 'oh, well, that's what thrill-seeking gets you' and never went to see him. Never thought "WHAT? He nearly DIED? Where is he, I'm going to kill him for being such a bleeding idiot - as soon as I make sure whatever's under that tree didn't rip his arm off! Idiot!" I'm sure (I hope) you can see why that's a mindf*ck to me.
Oh, I hear you!
Let's try the speeding analogy. My idiot friend decides to see how fast he can get his souped-up car to go. He loses control of his car, and crashes it. He's knocked out but not otherwise seriously injured--but the car starts to burn. His worst enemy happens to be first on the scene and pulls him out before he's burned.
And I find out all of this BY ACCIDENT (or from said worst enemy) a couple of days later, after I've already seen the friend going around looking sullen and shaken but obviously physically uninjured. He didn't tell me about it; presumably he hoped I wouldn't find out.
And when we get together to talk, he doesn't bring it up. At all. So he apparently didn't want me to know what a stupid jerk he was being. Obviously he's humiliated and embarassed about the whole thing. So I don't need to tell him what an idiot he was. And I can see with my own eyes that he's unhurt physically--ambulatory, no visible scars. So if he doesn't want to talk about what an idiot he was, I'm not going to mention it.
But then he starts in on a rant about the enemy who just saved him! Dragging him into the conversation for no good reason. Dissing the guy who'd just unselfishly risked his own life to save his enemy's! (But what my friend can't tell me is that the crash was actually due to said enemy's messing with his brakes.)
See, what Lily knows here:
1) Severus is physically unharmed--thanks to James. She can see that; she almost certainly saw that for herself before ever she heard the story. (I.e. the earliest likely opportunity for her to hear anything is during social hour in the Gryffindor common room after dinner the next night--and she's already seen Sev alive, if tired and upset-looking, in the Great Hall for meals.) AND she's also had enough time since she heard the story to get over the first "I'm going to wring his bloody neck for this!" impulse.
2) She doesn't know he's forbidden to talk about it--and actually I think his incoherence here is [Dumbledore] spell-induced--that DD didn't just trust a promise to be quiet. (As indeed he should not have--Sev does try to set the record straight with Lily, and apparently can't.) Had Sev been able to tell her, he'd assuredly have been at the portrait hole before breakfast to pour out the whole story to her. (And his version would have been that James Potter is a cold-blooded would-be murderer who got cold feet when he considered the consequences to himself.)
Not knowing that, Lily's assumption is that
3) Severus doesn't want her to know about it. Given that in the past he's been willing (if not eager) to talk even about his father, she pretty much has to infer that Sev's refusal to tell her about it is because it's so discreditable to him. So not bringing it up at first is respecting his obvious wishes.
4) Severus is trying to change the subject from what Mulciber tried to do--to general compliants about that toerag who, however arrogant a jerk he might be, just saved his life! And to his nasty speculations about that nice Remus. Now, we know they're connected in Sev's mind--that nice werewolf was just almost used as a murder weapon by said toerag, much worse than whatever Mulciber tried to do. But for Lily, there's no connection--this is out of the blue.
5) She had been planning to let the whole thing go without comment--tactfully--as Severus clearly wished her to do--but then Snape started dissing his own savior!
6) Her "dropping her voice" when she brings up the matter is in deference to SEVERUS--she "knows" that he doesn't want word of his stupid action and the humliation of being saved by Potter getting out. (When of course Severus would like nothing better than to scream the truth from the battlements!)
Re: Oh, I hear you!
Though I understand your speeding analogy, I am still stymied by a few things:
1. Lily's utter failure to defend Severus during SWM. As Jodel astutely pointed out years ago, all her attention here is on James. Severus might as well be a table or chair. When we thought they didn't know each other at all (which, honestly, is the way it comes across), it's possible to like and admire Lily and put all the blame for the "Mudblood" comment on Sev. Now that we know that they knew each other for years, and were supposedly best friends, her behavior looks inexcusable to me long before Sev snaps.
2. Her constant berating, and failure to listen to him.
3. The letter in which she mentions Petunia, and the way we see her treating Petunia as a child.
What I'm saying is that you can get a pretty consistent picture of Lily in SWM, and it fits what we hear from Slughorn and McGonagall. Lily is a queen bee. Not a monster by any means, but a rather shallow, popular girl. This is *not* to say that she's to blame for Sev's bad behavior. Clearly, she isn't.
I think the real mistake Rowling made with Lily was to base her so closely on Catherine Earnshaw. Cathy is - arguably, at least - a narcissist and a rather unpleasant character. I truly don't think Rowling meant us to see Lily as such - but, nevertheless, as Thirteen Ravens, Nemesister, and Rogueravenclaw all pointed out, Sev and Lily in many ways are Cathy and Heathcliff. And that's a bit of a problem, really.
Just my two cents!
(*Wouldn’t it be nice to think that Snape left Harry a vial of memories left behind Dumbledore’s portrait? With his happier memories of Lily? This is what she was really like, this is why I valued her, this is what we were like together…. Sigh. Good thing I’m not a diabetic—I think I’d be in sugar shock from just the thought.)
Heheh, I like that sort of thing. This is why nicer Sev/Lily fics can fit into the cracks in canon: we know he didn't show us everything (no time for the unabridged version) and it's reasonable to expect he got something positive out of their relationship at some points, even if it went sour (else why cling to it so hard, even if he is a bit of a kicked puppy?).
p.s. It's
Yes
I've not posted on Snapedom before, or at least not on its Insane Journal incarnation ... your post caught my attention not least because you once left a nice review on one of my fics on the Occlumency site, *blush*
It also caught my attention because I am a Snape fan who has always liked Lily.
So these memories were not selected by Snape to give a comprehensive portrait of Lily or of their friendship. They are not about what Lily’s like, or what it’s like to be her closest friend. They are about what it’s like to drive her away.
The miscommunications on both sides, and his missteps.
Exactly.
Thinking that these selective memories somehow represent the entirety of the Snape/Lily friendship is often used by the Snape-bashers as ammunition. As in: 'look at how dysfunctional and unhappy the friendship was!' (And let's not forget the 'Snape was a creepy stalker' line, *roll eyes* )
But I agree with you: the memories are more about Sev, and why he messed up, and why he needs Harry to know that.
But this re-interpretation is really a good thing for Snapefen. Being misled by the fact that all the Lily-memories were bad ones, we thought that the relationship—and she—were bad. But if she really had been worthy of his love, and if they were once truly friends, and if he might have had a chance for more—had his insecurities, misunderstandings on both sides, and their respective houses not gotten in the way—then Severus lost, or rather destroyed, something of real value. And then he’s not a sad little dweeb clinging to the memory of a friendship-that-never-was as his one light in this cruel world, but a figure in a tragedy.
This is exactly the way I have interpreted Severus and Lily since I first read DH. :)
I confess to being pretty shocked that anyone would interpret Lily as 'abusive'. It's Severus who can be the possessive and manipulative one in their relationship ... and that's totally (and tragically) understandable because of his emotional neglect and his massive insecurities, but it makes for some uncomfortable moments between them.
-- pearlette on Live Journal
A non-comprehensive portrait of Lily
For example, even Petunia's most ardent defenders, the ones who think she got a bum deal from both Dumbledore and JKR, don't try to argue that really she treated Harry better than canon showed, we just didn't see it when she was being nice to him....
But if one makes that "default setting" assumption regarding Lily's relationship with Sev, well, the result is clearly not what JKR intended.
And a lot of us snapefen have been doing that.
Realizing consciously that there's a REASON not to make that assumption WRT Snape's memories does change my interpretation of Lily.
A lot of it is... if one's willing to accept authorial direction for how to read a character, one would never have a problem with Lily. JKR clearly expects us to think well of her, so why wouldn't we?
But, by definition, Snapefen value her Severus more highly than the author does, so we're inclined to get ornery when we notice that what JKR tells us to think about a character isn't matched by what she actually shows that character doing.
Really, all JKR had to do was insert one memory of Lily turning snippily away from a Gryffindor girlfriend who'd just teased Sev about his greasy hair, "Come on, Severus, let's find a better seat," or one heartfelt expression of horror at the danger he'd been in during the Mulciber/Potter debate, and there'd have been no questions in anyone's mind that Lily was a good friend to Sev until he went and wrecked it.
It's the whole show and tell thing again--we have to WORK to get what Jo TELLS us to think about Lily out of what Jo SHOWS us, and other work, equally valid, gives different readings.
Are you Pearl Took on Occlumency? That was a good story, if so--and what you showed of Lily was credibly lovable.
Re: A non-comprehensive portrait of Lily
Well, yes. And this tends to happen with a few characters in the Potterverse, really. (Oddly enough perhaps, I like Lily but am not keen on Ginny, despite the superficial similarities between them.) I've always been prepared to give Lily the benefit of the doubt and accepted the premise set out in The Prince's Tale at face value.
But, by definition, Snapefen value her Severus more highly than the author does, so we're inclined to get ornery when we notice that what JKR tells us to think about a character isn't matched by what she actually shows that character doing.
Rowling's attitude to Snape is certainly ... frustrating. If a character like Snape had walked into MY head, I'd have a somewhat different attitude towards him ... Not that I don't love her canon Severus. But. Yes.
It's the whole show and tell thing again--we have to WORK to get what Jo TELLS us to think about Lily out of what Jo SHOWS us, and other work, equally valid, gives different readings.
I can see how that's the case. I guess I get twitchy when Lily alone is blamed for the breakup, as if Sev's own attitudes (towards Muggleborns, for starters) don't need examining. (Young Sev, unlike his mature self, isn't exactly big on self-reflection.)
Really, all JKR had to do was insert one memory of Lily turning snippily away from a Gryffindor girlfriend who'd just teased Sev about his greasy hair, "Come on, Severus, let's find a better seat," or one heartfelt expression of horror at the danger he'd been in during the Mulciber/Potter debate, and there'd have been no questions in anyone's mind that Lily was a good friend to Sev until he went and wrecked it.
I do get what you're saying here. And adding scenes like that would have made a difference, I agree.
Are you Pearl Took on Occlumency? That was a good story, if so--and what you showed of Lily was credibly lovable.
Yes, that's me! And thank you very much. :)
-- pearlette aka Pearl T.
The story of Snape and Lily is nothing short of a tragedy--that is what, for me, gives it its power.
Snape is flawed--impressively flawed. That makes his early downfall and later heroism, which leads to his redemption, a riveting tale.
Tragedy
And as I think I commented, I think your take on Snape's return is more powerful (certainly more multi-dimensional) than Jo's.
How is "Into the Fold" coming, btw? I'd love to see another update!
Re: Tragedy
How is "Into the Fold" coming, btw?
I'm in a mad rush to the end, which is very close, so I've suspended posting till I've finished. Thanks for asking!
Re: Oh, I hear you!
I...really want to just give in and agree with this. Except that somehow, something is still missing just a little bit for me. And maybe it's not anything that speculation and meta and discussion will completely cure. I think that, for me, there is not a visceral sense in the text that Lily *really did* care deeply about Severus for years even after their arrival at Hogwarts, and that Severus wrecked a still-viable friendship. Even with my rose-colored Lily-reading glasses on, she comes across a bit too cold at certain points, to me, and certain things are just missing, in that way you can't quite put into words.
That is, your explanation is coherent and rational and well-presented and very convincing for the most part...but when I read the text, I still have to force it just a little bit on certain points, like this one. And I guess I feel that if JKR truly intended us to *have* that real, unambiguous sense that this was how it was...I think she failed to communicate as well as she could have. The very fact that we need to spend how many hours and virtual pages hammering it out indicates to me that it is still far too ambiguously written for many people to see that something like your and sailorlum's readings was intended. Even if it is Severus trying to show Harry how he wrecked the friendship (I can buy that, yes), JKR has failed to completely convince me of the long-term viability of that friendship otherwise. The very beginning, foundational piece of that arc "friendship - miscommunication - further miscommunication - fuckup - end" is not quite solidly their for me, I guess. It's like the trick step on the staircase that only looks real (is how it feels to me - I'm just trying to give a sense of what's missing for me personally).
Up to a point, yes, I read Lily as caring about him, but I think that it didn't get beyond that childish friendship of early on, and Lily would have started to grow distant from him no matter what Severus realistically did - that is, short of totally altering his personality and magically - hah - making up for his lack of social skills and all, to suddenly understand Lily's issues and be able to respond appropriately.
I suppose I can't quite see it entirely as 'the tragedy of Severus wrecking this wonderful friendship' alone. Elements of that, yes, I don't think he was the creepy pathetic loser he can be painted as, and I certainly think that that is *his* view of the situation (i.e. 'it's all my fault, if only I hadn't been stupid everything would have worked out fine'). But I think the friendship was always a bit more important to him than it was to her, and what happened was he threw a giant monkey wrench into the works of a machine that was already starting to slow down and malfunction. Tragic to a degree still, yes, but I don't see the friendship lasting much longer even if he hadn't fucked up. (At least this way, horrible as it is, enabled Severus eventually to really grow morally and do some truly selfless things - if it had ended differently, with Severus bitter at Lily, who's to say what would have happened?)
Re: Oh, I hear you!
This isn't to say Lily was a horrible person. Friendships do dissolve, it happens, and they certainly were getting wires crossed and having communication problems and everything you and others have been saying. But somehow I just can't quite buy the 'if only Severus had realized such-and-such, and hadn't said that stupid word, everything would have been ok' view. At least as many of the realizations that needed to be made were, IMHO, Lily's to make, especially since she seems better-adjusted and more realistically able to make them, to me. But also, the passion, the need for the friendship, the life of it....seems to me still to be coming a little more from Severus than from Lily. At best, it would have been a fading-out with probably less harshness and anger, but I just am lacking that spark that says to me Lily still had a lot invested in the friendship beyond their first couple years at Hogwarts. It's something visceral, not intellectual, that just isn't there for me in the text solidly enough to hang all of this on. And I need that hook, with Lily I really just need that one solid textual hook to hang this all on.
Whereas, somehow, certain things that others find hard to see regarding Severus *are* there viscerally in the text for me. *shrug* Partly it just may be that everyone approaches a text with their own associations and experiences, and so it's a bit different for everyone.
But thanks very much for sharing your views and enabling all this constructive discussion. You and sailorlum have changed my mind on some things RE Lily (I never hated her, but she looks a little bit better now with a bit of polish).
I don't disagree with anything you're saying
Visceral lack... Yeah. For me, I guess it was made up, once I'd made the comparison, by my own experience of driving someone away once I'd decided "He doesn't really care, and sooner or later he's going to realize that he doesn't. How long will it take him?"
And of course, from the point of view of Severus's pain, it's the same whether or not he's right in thinking he could really have made a go of it with her.
You're absolutely right about the passion coming (more) from him. But so it was with James, too.
I think, actually, that Jo intended a bit of a Pride and Prejudice comparison--though I choke at seeing James as Mr. Darcy! But I think Jo intended it: "By you, I was properly humbled.... You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased."
(The Mr. Darcy comparison is intensified by the fact that Lily, Severus, and Harry, when criticizing James, keep harping on his "arrogance". Whereas my biggest problem with James is that he finds hurting or endangering others to be entertaining. NOT Mr. Darcy's flaw, which WAS "improper pride".)
But Lizzie's response was: "But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good-will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude.--Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him.... Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed."
And Austen comments, "If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty."
I don't, myself, credit James with changing as much as Lily thought he did. But what matters is what Lily thought. If she thought that James had given up his arrogance and bullying, and thought (for example, because James told her so) that it was for the sake of "My reproofs at Hunsford" even after "the petulance and acrimony" of her absolute rejection, and if that WAS the initial basis of her "gratitude and esteem"....
Well, then, Severus did always have it in his power to generate the exact same "gratitude and esteem," had he likewise "attended to her reproofs" and given up his "little Death Eater friends" and the Dark Arts as proof of his continued ardent love even after her rejection.
If that was the script Lily was running (and not the marrying-up script of her sister), he did have a chance. And in that case, the worse his suffering at his fellow-Slyth's hands, the greater the proof of his devotion.
Re: Oh, I hear you!
Re: Oh, I hear you!
It is not just that she doesn't express relief that Sev is okay - but that she was apparently even giving him the silent treatment before this conversation. The conversation starts with Sev asking if they are even still friends because she is apparently acting in a way that he believes indicates that they are not.
This means it is not just that Lily just hasn't had a free moment to come check that he is okay (in what must be at least one full day - based on the use of 'the other night'), which I would find odd enough - but that she is somehow acting in a manner that Sev believes might indicate they are no longer even friends. And it seems that HE is the one doing the seeking out.
Whatever she is doing that leads him to believe this is apparently because she is angry that someone he hangs out with attempted to curse a girl when he was not around. She is giving Sev the 'anger' treatment without even first finding out if he even knew about the incident. This sounds to me as if she is much more angry at Sev for hanging out with Mulciber than concerned that he almost died.
And I'm still not sure what to make of this 'hanging out'. This is the second time Mulciber comes up (I think) yet in neither case is he actually called a friend. (I think Lily DOES finally refer to him as a friend when Sev is attempting to apologize) He's part of a 'gang' of Slytherins Sev hung out with (as per Sirius - never mind that Bella was also part of that crowd - so that MIGHT have been post-Hogwarts) and here in this memory, Lily accuses Sev with hanging around him.
Yet in SWM, he's no where to be seen...
And where in any of the books have we seen hardly anyone avoiding their own house? The only real example I can think of is Luna.
But who else is Sev supposed to hang around - he must take classes with his house, so moving from class to class is almost certainly going to involve walking with his classmates - at least up until NEWT years - even if he has an elective class, whomever else who is taking that class would be walking the same direction
Outside of classes there are meals, spent at one's house table - don't hear much about non-slytheriens sitting at their table and I cannot quite see Sev sitting down safely at the same table as the Marauders. All we really have as an opportunity for hanging with anyone who isn't in your house seems to be in the evenings before curfew. But it isn't as if we hear about kids hanging out in the Great Hall playing chess and gobstones every night - no - they are in their common rooms.
IF Sev was part of the Slug Club then that would be his only chance to make other 'acquaintances' with whom he could 'hang out'.
Anyways - I'm still struck by the fact that Sev does NOT go to Mulciber and Avery to 'hang out' after his DADA OWL. Either they are 1) not really his friends 2) not in his year or 3) he DID give them up only to result in SWM, when James saw he was alone. -- Hwyla
Re: Oh, I hear you!
I think that, for me, there is not a visceral sense in the text that Lily *really did* care deeply about Severus for years even after their arrival at Hogwarts, and that Severus wrecked a still-viable friendship. Even with my rose-colored Lily-reading glasses on, she comes across a bit too cold at certain points, to me, and certain things are just missing, in that way you can't quite put into words.
I agree. It's not that Lily owes Snape her love or friendship. If she's gone off him for whatever reason, and I think she had even before SWM, she's not obligated to stick around just because she's desperately important to him. To put it crassly, that's his problem, not hers. In fact I suspect a psychologist would advise her to disengage from this needy, clingy, issue-laden boy after pointing him to a good therapist.
However, I can't give Lily credit for loving Snape when what I see in the text is at best a lukewarm friendship. A thought experiment: Would Snape take a potentially lethal curse for Lily? In a heartbeat. Would she do the same for him? Because she's a brave Gryffindor, maybe, but certainly not because her life would be a desert without him. We're shown how Lily acts when she really cares about someone: her sister. She's keeps saying she's sorry Petunia can't go to Hogwarts, and endearingly offers to make Dumbledore accept her. When Petunia rejects her and calls her a freak she's in tears. There's no doubt this girl loves her sister. But there's nothing like that between her and Snape. For instance, if she's deeply hurt that her best friend called her a racist name she hides it extremely well. All we get to see is icy disdain.
I don't know if JKR feels it would dim Lily's pure shining light if she showed any strong affection for such a sinful/tainted person as young Snape, or what. But there may be a distant parallel in OotP with Ron and Percy. When Percy takes off Ron is demonstratively, righteously angry. Not upset or torn because a brother who loves him deeply has left the fold. It seems the idea of Ron as a loving brother who was conflicted as well as furious would somehow dilute his righteousness in JKR's eyes. Percy did a bad thing, and good people like Ron -- or Lily -- can't love people who do bad things. Something like that.
-L
One note on SWM: Since this was presented to us in the books before TPT, JKR needed to have some red herrings in there regarding Severus and Lily's friendship. To make it obvious that Severus and Lily were friends in that scene, would have given away things that JKR didn't want to give away yet.
(*Wouldn’t it be nice to think that Snape left Harry a vial of memories left behind Dumbledore’s portrait? With his happier memories of Lily? This is what she was really like, this is why I valued her, this is what we were like together…. Sigh. Good thing I’m not a diabetic—I think I’d be in sugar shock from just the thought.)
That would be a cute fanfic, I bet! :3
And, with keeping things like that secret: it's really, really hard to do well. Because on the one hand you want to keep it a a surprise, so you don't indicate it. On the other hand, you have to make sure to lay *enough* groundwork and enough subtle indications that this is the case throughout the work. Or else your assertion, when it comes, falls flat because it is unsupported. It's very delicate. And I think JKR didn't quite succeed here. She could, for example, have made it clear Lily was a prefect, and have her acting (apparently) out of prefectorial responsibility, finite the spells and send Severus on his way. That would have concretely helped Snape without revealing that they were supposedly best friends, and without painting Lily as cold and uncaring.
But then, that's just my two cents. :)
though I think the train scene was also thrown in to show Harry that no, James really always WAS a total jerk
Lol, Snape.
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that Snape left Harry a vial of memories left behind Dumbledore’s portrait? With his happier memories of Lily? This is what she was really like, this is why I valued her, this is what we were like together…. Sigh. Good thing I’m not a diabetic—I think I’d be in sugar shock from just the thought.
Yeah, writing the missing memories is what keeps us Lily/Severus shippers going.
Regarding SMW
I poked around in canon, and found this on Finite Incantatem...
Text bit from DH Ch.12 (emphasis mine) [the bit where Ron wants to stop the raining in Yaxley's office]:
"Try Finite Incantatem," said Hermione at once, "that should stop the rain if it's a hex or curse; ..."
Finite Incantatem (and most likely also Finite, by the same token) only works on hexes and curses! It wouldn't work on Scourgify! Scourgify is a charm! Lily *couldn't* end Severus's suffering from that!
Just wanted to add that here, as it has definitely added to my understanding of the scene, and I thought you might find it interesting.
Re: Regarding SMW
I guess I just find it difficult to believe that Lily, supposedly so good at charms, could have done nothing whatsoever to *aid* her friend from the effects of two ordinary spells, given that absolutely nothing in the text clearly indicates that she just *couldn't* with these particular spells. I mean, for example: Draco could have ambushed Ron with similar spells, and Hermione could have dragged him back to the common room explaining that they would have to wear off because of the type of spells they were. Cut to SWM: we go into the scene knowing that Lily can't do a damned thing, and so we *don't* perceive her lack of action as coldly ignoring a friend in distress.
For me, that's an indication you clearly need when you are writing a scene as possibly ambiguous as the one in question (where our perception of what Lily could have done in the situation radically affects our perception of how she treats someone we are supposed to think is her best friend, in a scene crucial for the entire story). Without it it is far too easy for Lily to come across badly there. At the very least JKR could have had Lily mutter a word to Severus saying 'sorry, I can't do anything about the spells,' or have given some other indication that *Severus' suffering was on her radar* beyond the fact that it gave her an excuse to interact with James.
Don't get me wrong, I see what you are saying, but...I just think considering how crucial to our understanding of Lily, of Severus and of the entire nasty incident with all its consequences a good understanding of the dynamic between these characters is, leaving key information like that up to speculation, but insisting after publication that no, the people who read her this way are just wrong (JKR comes across that way to me sometimes) and they need to accept authorial dictat over the evidence of their own reading of the text, just strikes me as disrespectful of her readers and indicative of lazy writing, as well as an inability or unwillingness to understand that she communicated her intentions badly. (Run-on sentence, I can haz.)
I'm not saying you come across this way - not at all. I'm just frustrated because, while I think your general reading is something like what we are "supposed" to take away from the text, it requires far too much speculation to be a reading clearly supported by the text above other readings. /rant
Re: Regarding SMW
It's used for cleaning. If there isn't a way to stop it then it must keeping cleaning until whatever was dirty became clean - in which case it would work on a mouth to the point of sterilizing? Because that's what's in there - germs. At the very least, young Sev's teeth should be so strikingly white that he could blind James when he speaks.
That then leaves us with a spell for cleaning that only works partially and one must keep applying it until the pots and pans are clean.
Does anyone have bk5 nearby? Tonks used a Scourgify on the bird cage. IF I recall correctly - it sparkled after. I don't believe she had to use something to end it - so perhaps Scourgify works until it's clean. That leads back then to why does it stop working on Sev?
Lastly, how does a hex or curse work differently from a charm? They are all 'spells' or 'incantations' hence Finite 'Incantatem' should work on them all UNLESS the spell was specifically designed to NOT end with Finite (which makes much more sense for hexes and curses since they are used in dueling)
Alternatively, Hermione might not mention it as a 'charm' or 'spell' specifically because making it rain inside seems unlikely to be a charm - the other alternative to a hex/curse would be someone making a mistake when trying a variation of the Sky in the Great Hall or somehow turning around the Ministry windows (that show weather despite being underground) -- Hwyla
Re: Regarding SMW
Nice idea, but we have a counterexample, so your theory can't be correct. In the duelling scene in CoS Ch. 11:
...Harry had hit him with a Tickling Charm, and [Malfoy] could barely move for laughing. [...] Gasping for breath, Malfoy pointed his wand at Harry’s knees, choked, ‘Tarantallegra!’
[...] Snape took charge.
‘Finite Incantatem!’ he shouted; Harry’s feet stopped dancing, Malfoy stopped laughing and they were able to look up.
Note that Snape's spell stops both the Tarantallegra (which we don't know what class of spell it is, but given its effect, I'd say it's a jinx, comparable to Impedimenta), and the Tickling Charm. So we know that it can work on charms.
The other uses of Finite in canon (you're right that they're very few):
In OotP Ch. 36, Lupin does similar, and stops the Tarantallegra spell affecting Neville by just saying "Finite" (not the full "Finite Incantatem" -- I think that must just be a plural form because Snape was stopping two spells at once, not needed if you're only breaking one spell).
In DH Ch. 31, Harry uses it to stop Crabbe's Descendo:
...Crabbe pointed his wand at the fifty-foot mountain of old furniture, of broken trunks, of old books and robes and unidentifiable junk and shouted, ‘Descendo!’
The wall began to totter, then [US version inserts ‘the top third’] crumbled into the aisle next door where Ron stood.
‘Ron!’ Harry bellowed, as somewhere out of sight Hermione screamed, and Harry heard innumerable objects crashing to the floor on the other side of the destabilised wall: he pointed his wand at the rampart, cried, ‘Finite!’ and it steadied.
And that's it, aside from Hermione's suggestion to Ron in the case of the raining office (which we don't actually see in action).
I think what Hermione meant is not that Finite only works on hexes and curses (as the duelling example disproves), but that if someone had cast a (separate, second) spell to make it rain, that Finite should take care of it, whereas if it doesn't then there's no extra spellwork in place but just something wrong with the existing Charm. (Why the Finite wouldn't break it as well, I'm not sure.)
Two quibbles
I began to dislike her in OotP, when we finally got to see something of her, but I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. Uninfluenced by author interviews, which I was not then aware of and which I anyway do not regard as canon, I yet interpreted her intervention as flirtation with James, using Snape as a prop, but I was willing to assume that she was also motivated by compassion for the victim - or, at any rate, that she thought she was. But that was only possible when we supposed Snape had no special connection to her, that he was just some random loser-kid.
I have two quibbles with your reframe being an exoneration:
1) The losing begins with their first meeting: the miscommunication and misunderstandings and just general mismatch are there from the start. Lily is unforgiving and critical, and capable of looking at him "with deep dislike" (not anger or hurt or dismay, but *dislike*), even at the height of their friendship.
What I see in their relationship, right from the get-go, is that he worships and she accepts; he is by default always wrong, always catching himself so as not offend. For example, she blames him about reading Tuney's letter: "I don't want to talk to you," she says on the train as soon as he appears.
2) IMO, all that your reframe achieves is to leave a gap in which the reader can insert pleasant qualities that aren't there in the text. I contend we still have no textual evidence of Lily being loyal, forgiving, compassionate or charitable.
Canon, largely by way of Slughorn, gives Lily many positive qualities. She was bright, accomplished, charming, vivacious, popular, powerful, brave, sassy. A leader.
My argument is that, all these, except brave, are qualities of *personability* rather than of moral/ethical character. Even Hagrid doesn't say she was *nice*; "as good a witch ... as I ever knew" is about *power*, not character. (Thus, after a mention that she was Head girl in her day, he continues with "the myst'ry is why YKW never tried to get 'em on his side before ... probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin' ter do with the Dark Side.")
I think Lily appears nicest in her letter to Padfoot (DH, ch 10), but even there she calls Petunia's vase "horrible". And I am disturbed alike by her mothering - it's hard enough to keep a *walking* toddler safe, let alone a flying one - and by her apparent awareness of the Marauders' Animagus secret, which seems not to have caused her to rethink the past. But she has pleasant words to say about Bathilda, expresses sympathy for Wormy and the McKinnons, loving tolerance for James's childishness, and gratitude and friendship to Sirius. It is a chatty, friendly letter; she has all the social graces. But that's all surface, isn't it?
I never saw Snape's fondness as dweeby. She was probably as good a friend as he ever had - even the *best* friend he ever had. But given the rest of his friends, that isn't saying much.
duj
Re: Two quibbles
And--to develop your argument further--even bravery isn't actually a MORAL quality. Bellatrix is brave, after all, arguably the bravest of the DE's. Like intelligence (c.f. Cordwainer Smith), bravery is something that can be used well or ill....
Certainly I agree totally that their relationship was always lopsided, and that most of Lily's demonstrated attractive characteristics are rather surface. Such as, for example, her attractiveness.
I'd adore your comments on my Lily/Sev/James triangle WIP, if you'd deign to read it:
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/29