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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.)
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!
Also, my recall of canon is not perfect and I don't have the books to hand, bit isn't it here that Lily has her line about "my friends don't know why I even talk to you"? I seem to recall that it was here...and that it was not phrased as "my OTHER friends" but "my friends." Is that correct or am I misremembering? Because that says a lot about how Severus was sub/consciously categorized in her mind at this point.
"My friends"
Re: "My friends"
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
Re: Oh, I hear you!
I'm definitely not arguing that Lily had some obligation to Severus due to *his* feelings for *her;* I just am arguing that what I see depicted in the text is either a current friend who is failing in her obligations *as a friend* - which is not a pretty picture, nor a sympathetic reading of Lily - OR someone who once was friends with another but isn't really any longer, and is just looking for the least messy way out, in typical awkward teenaged fashion. I think, really, that whatever friendship they had before on her part had started to wane after a year or so at Hogwarts, and now Lily really isn't emotionally engaged with Severus anymore. As sometimes happens.
And Severus, who was both under-socialized (and so less able to pick up subtle clues) and still deeply emotionally engaged in the friendship with Lily couldn't/didn't want to see what was happening, and held on to preserving it the best he could. Until the reality slapped him in the face in SWM, in a way that made it look to him like a sudden betrayal, and so he lashed out in rage and hurt. And destroyed the remnants of the friendship, which he immediately regretted but could not take back.
Good people CAN'T love Bad people
He's bad--you can't possibly care for him and be good!
Re: Good people CAN'T love Bad people
As to Lily and Ron, someone they might reasonably be expected to care very much about -- Lily's presumed BFF, Ron's big brother who's always looked out for him -- does a bad thing. Here, there's no question of giving the offender their moral support. They immediately end the relationship, with the author's full approval. But however justified their anger and contempt, most people who've been ill-treated by someone they love can't help but feel some grief and pain mixed with the anger. Lily cried after her fight with Petunia. With Snape she's coldly angry and affronted, not hurt. She could be hiding it, but JKR's good characters are often disturbingly good at withdrawing affection from people they've decided no longer deserve it. In Ron's case it appears to be because he never did care all that much about Percy, and I'd say Lily was pretty much done with Snape even before SWM.
-L
Downplaying Mulciber's actions
OR what Mulciber diid THEN (as opposed, presumably, to what Mulciber--if this is the same Mulciber who is Karkaroff's DE Imperius-specialist--which IF SO at the WORST indicates that Mulciber specialized in the one U.C. which didn't physically hurt people) did FIVE YEARS LATER in 1981,
really WASN'T that bad.
Which JKR refused to give us Canon to judge on.
I do think JKR expected us to accept it as "a bad sign" that Snape laughed off what Mulciber "tried" to do. Not what "Mulciber did." (You're falling, here, into vulgar error--Mulciber in fact, or more accurately, 'in Canon', didn't DO anything to Macdonald. Nothing at all.)
Now, I do agree that you're probably reading this as JKR wants/expects.
But JKR also wants/expect us to read Dumbledore as the Epitome of Good, Harry's casting a Cruciatus on a clearly rather, um, --I think the current Politically Correct jargon is, um, "Intellectually Challenged," rather than "retard", protagonist as Gallant, and Snape as "not a hero".
Sorry, but once I've resigned myself to reading/judging independently of authorial dictate...
Well, if you want to persuade me that Sev's "moral sense needs work," you need to show me that THE TEXT shows that what Mulciber did was unequivocably bad, and that Sev knew this when he excused it.
You know, like the text showed, unequivocably, that Remus Lupin knew that James and Sirius's torment of teen!Severus was absolutely unjustified and inexcusable, and that he stood passively back and allowed it. Even AFTER Remus had let Sirius almost manipulate him into killing Sev.
JKR is clearly capable of portraying this, when that's what's really going on.
So show me JKR's text.
Re: Downplaying Mulciber's actions
Besides, Lily specifically says there was Dark magic involved. For me, and I may be in the minority here, the assumption that Dark magic is always more or less bad is the simplest and most logically consistent. So whatever Mulciber was trying to do = bad. Equally, of course, Harry's evil for casting Cruciatus and James is a huge hypocrite for using potentially Dark spells out of Snape's book. This isn't how the author wants me to read, but it's consistent with the text and their characters as written -- that is, nothing about Harry says he's too good of a person to use an Unforgivable, imo.
-L
Re: Downplaying Mulciber's actions
-L
Re: Downplaying Mulciber's actions
Re: Downplaying Mulciber's actions
Re: Downplaying Mulciber's actions
I personally think that what Mulciber 'tried' was actually one of Sev's spells. I read Sev's claim that 'it was for a laugh' as a bit defensive - tho' that might just be because he can sense Lily's disapproval.
But we KNOW his LeviCorpus made it into general public use without anyone apparently knowing he invented it. Not only that, but the incantation and counter were both known, even though he designed it to be non-verbal. To me, this implies someone other than Sev used it - either in front of witnesses or on someone who remembered the curse and used it themselves afterwards on someone else.
In fact, 'I' actually tend to believe that Lily's half-smile in SWM comes from the irony of LeviCorpus being used on Sev when he claimed Mulciber only tried it 'for a laugh'. But then - I like irony. And I CAN see how another girl would see LeviCorpus as 'evil' if she thought of it as more of a sexual attack.
Boys at 15-16 tend to see underwear pranks as funny. There are 'wedgies' and 'de-pantsing' on boys. And then in college there are 'panty-raids' - tho' that has more of the 'sex' tinge to it. It's a double standard, but I CAN see the resemblance of LeviCorpus to a de-pantsing. Both result in underwear on display. But usually teenage boys do these things to other teenage boys. You really almost never hear of a boy doing this to a girls - at least not without heavy consequences.
So, I can well imagine that IF Mulciber tried LeviCorpus on Mary, there would be a much different reaction (at least among other girls, minimally) than when it was used on boys. Suddenly it seems more of a sexual attack, than just a prank. And I can easily see Lily finding that 'evil' or 'dark'. -- Hwyla
I see London...
was the rhyme used at my school.
Re: Downplaying Mulciber's actions
Levicorpus
I wrote a fiction {"LIberacorpus," on my lj
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/75
And in it I had Lily snicker at the poetic justice of Sev being publicly humiliated by the spell he insisted couldn't really hurt anyone, when she'd argued it was hurtful to the victim.
And you're right, of course, by age 15/16 the issue of public exposure is going to look different if a boy does it to a girl.
If done to a victim whom one expects to expose, it is an overt sexual assault. (If I'm in jeans and a t-shirt, the reversal does nothing; if I'm in jeans and a loose smock, my bra will be exposed; if I'm in a dress or robes, all my underwear; if I'm commando, my genitals. So how bad it is to use it depends in part on the expectations of what the other person is wearing.)
If done by a boy against a girl, it's much more obviously an assualt--at least, as you so justly point out, among other girls.
Re: Downplaying Mulciber's actions
In the 7P battle, after Moody's death Voldemort concentrates on Kingsley and hermione. Meanwhile Harry instead of using Stupefy and Expeliarmus on DEs decides to use Sectumsempra (up to the anyone to decide where he aims it, how much damage he causes etc). So the DEs do not identify him as 'the real one'. Voldemort kills Hermione, thinking she is Harry. In the aftermath when it turns out Harry knew Sectumsempra Severus is in trouble with Voldemort. So now Harry has to complete his quest without Hermione, and Severus has to get himself out of a tight spot for the sake of the students and Harry's mission.