Snape/Lily (was: in love (and Imperio curse)

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 3523

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, mmarth at p... wrote:
> 
> I still don't like the Snape/Lily thought. 
(snip)
> Or after all this time still mad because Lily dumped him or 
> something of the sort. 

I don't like the Snape/Lily thought because it is too conventional 
(as Diogo said). 

However, it can be expanded to explain not only why Snape hates 
Harry, but why Snape turned against the Death Eaters. The following 
expansion is all speculation except what is labelled otherwise.

I think it is generally assumed that young Severus never made any 
time with Lily, except that she may have smiled and been polite to 
him because she smiled and was polite to everyone. 

(Altho' the angst would be that much more intense if Severus and Lily 
had been happily engaged to be married when Lily broke off their  
engagement and married James, who had also broken off a happy 
engagement for the purpose, not because they were in love, but
because they knew from prophecy or genetic analysis that they were 
THE two people who could make a baby that would grow up to defeat 
Voldemort. THAT would be ASTONISHING, all right!)

Instead, the idea is that Severus already hated James for having 
everything that Severus wanted and didn't have (popularity, Quidditch 
stardom, the best grades in their year, Head Boy, loving parents, 
praise from Dumbledore, etc) (and hated James' friends for being 
friends with James), and the Whomping Willow prank was just the icing 
on the cake, 

And then, on top of all else, James also got the one thing that 
Severus had come to want the most of anything in his life: Lily.

Snape didn't expect Lily to leave James and come to him, but still he 
didn't want Lily to be killed, so when he learned of Voldemort's plan 
to kill the Potter family because of some prophecy that a Potter man 
would be his downfall, Snape demanded that Voldemort spare her. 

Snape was a sufficiently valuable servant that V humored him by 
promising not to kill Lily if she didn't get in the way: "instead
I'll give her to you to do with as you will". That is why Lily was 
the *only* one of V's victims who was offered the chance not to die. 

But Snape knew that Lily would never accept her life at the price of 
her baby's life, so his next attempt to save her was that he warned 
Our Side of Their Side's plot against the Potters. Remember, a spy 
among the Dark Siders was how the Potters knew to go into hiding, and 
protect their hiding place with the Fidelius Charm. 

Despite all, V found and killed the Potters. S, now craving nothing 
but vengeance for Lily, walked out on V and over to D, who completely 
trusts S because D knows how implacably S holds grudges. Therefore, V 
knows that S has left him forever and S can no longer act as a double 
agent.

The grudges that S holds include not only old schoolboy grudges, but 
also an additional grudge against James and a personal (rather than 
inherited) grudge against Harry, because it was Their Fault that Lily 
died, and an additional grudge against Sirius, because he believed it 
was Sirius who had betrayed Lily to her death. It has been pointed 
out that he shows signs of hating Sirius much more than he hates 
James' other friend, Remus. 

Unfortunately, it has also been pointed out that it is difficult to 
reconcile the ideas that S thinks Sirius was the traitor, that S 
didn't walk out until after L was killed, and V's Death Eaters (both 
S and Peter were marked) knew each other: surely S would have seen 
Peter and not Sirius at DE meetings.