LOLLIPOPS

[elfundeb at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 37878

I've been stopped by customs on the gangplank to the Good Ship LOLLIPOPS, as 
Captain Tabouli has questioned the genuineness of my credentials.  On 
reflection, I'm not sure I have sufficient credentials, but I'll respond to 
her questions and let her be the judge.  

I said:

Though I hold to the idea that it was general disillusionment 
> with the 'good' side's apparent failure to adhere to principles that pushed 
> him in the direction his Slytherin gang was heading (still confused as to 
> the 
> name of this theory), it must have taken an enormous amount of 
> disillusionment - way more than the Prank could offer, or 
> L.O.L.L.I.P.O.P.S., 
> or both. <
> 
To which Tabouli responded, in part:
> 
> What's more surprising is that he appeared to devote a lot of his life 
> snooping about trying to smear the Marauders (James, Remus, Sirius, Peter), 
> to the extent that Sirius is so irritated that he snaps and tells him to 
> check out the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack.  Why?? [snip]..I'd say there's 
> a good chance that the thing James had which Snape envied, and for which 
> Snape plunged himself into a shame so intense he spent the rest of his 
> schooldays trying to avenge it, was Lily.
> 
Since I see Snape is an extraordinarily complicated person, placing love of 
Lily above other factors for sneaking after James and Sirius, and for joining 
up with the DEs because he cannot persuade her they are unworthy, seems too 
simple and too melodramatic for my taste.  Getting the Marauders in trouble 
is not going to endear him to Lily; James has gotten into lots of trouble 
before (at the Three Broomsticks Hagrid compares James & Sirius to the 
Weasley twins) and Lily doesn't seem to mind.  But Snape may have thought 
getting his chief rivals for the Head Boy position expelled, or at least 
getting them enough black marks in their books while his rulebreaking record 
remained spotless, might make his candidacy look better.  It's a very 
Slytherin-ish thing to do.

I like LOLLIPOPS better as a motivating factor (though not the primary one) 
for Snape's departure from the DEs.  IMO, he realizes not long after joining 
the DEs just how sick and meaningless the the Dark side's agenda is, and how 
demeaning it is to be there, and he wants out.  But it takes real courage to 
escape, because he knows that once he leaves there will be a price on his 
head.  The extra push to summon the courage to go back to Dumbledore could 
have come from learning that the Potters had been targeted.  Not only would 
it have given him specific information to approach Dumbledore with, but two 
complementary factors could also come into play:  remembrance of his feelings 
for kind Lily (even if she is not targeted, she is at risk) and his life-debt 
to James.

> James becomes a Quidditch star, but unless there's a lot more to it this is 
> hardly a personal affront to Severus.  Lots of people from enemy houses get 
> onto Quidditch teams... why pick out James for particular resentment?  

Reading "Snape's Grudge" from PoA suggests to me that the Quidditch issue was 
related to Snape's resentment that James' rulebreaking appeared to have been 
largely condoned ("Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch-cup 
winners.") 
 
>  not to mention Snape's immediate, unaccountable hatred for Harry before he 
> even   
   opens his mouth, 

I don't get the sense that Lily has anything to do with this.  Rather, I 
account for Snape's immediate targeting of Harry as related to a conviction 
that James' arrogance and overconfidence in himself and his rulebreaking 
friends ("too arrogant to think he might have been mistaken in Sirius") was a 
fatal character flaw that led directly to James' and Lily's death.  Snape 
wants Harry to know from the get-go that he's not better than everyone else, 
even if he is The Boy Who Lived.  Snape may know that Harry was raised by 
Muggle relatives, but is unlikely to have known just what kind of upbringing 
the Dursleys provided for Harry or that he grew up unaware of his wizarding 
past; as Lily was a witch he would have at least surmised that they were 
familiar with the wizarding world.  So Snape probably assumes Harry arrived 
at Hogwarts with an enormous head and he wants to cut it down to size.  Then, 
the very first week of school the rules are bent to allow first-year Harry to 
play Quidditch, reinforcing Snape's conviction that Harry needs to be put in 
his place.

Why does Snape care so much?  I believe it's not just because he enjoys 
tormenting James' son from the side of authority, as he probably longed to do 
to James (though I bet he does enjoy it).  I think it's because he knows that 
in all likelihood Harry will become deeply involved in any struggle against 
Voldemort, and Harry's success may determine Snape's own survival.  Snape 
surely knows that Voldemort has targeted him for death as a traitor.  So when 
he sees Harry at Hogwarts he determines to do everything he can to make sure 
that Harry doesn't develop the same sort of fatal arrogance he perceives 
James to have had.  Lacking better methods, he does it through threats and 
intimidation.  It doesn't matter that Snape probably doesn't have the power 
to expel Harry, as long as Harry believes the threat of expulsion is real.

Tabouli's response to Catlady's point (with which I agree) that Snape mainly 
resented James and Sirius because of their grades:

> In an interview with JKR, I'm pretty sure she said that there are no wizard 
> primary schools, and that purebloods are home-schooled.  Of course, we 
> don't know whether Severus was a pureblood, but I'd say the chances are if 
> he turned up at 11 knowing more curses than half the seventh years, he has 
> to have grown up knowing he was a wizard and therefore must be at least 
> half blood.  If he was homeschooled, I seriously doubt that he'd turn up at 
> Hogwarts expecting to get top marks: if this was his first experience of 
> school, presumably he wouldn't know what to expect.  If he did go to some 
> form of primary school, it sounds to me like his first priority was not to 
> excel at his schoolwork and beat his classmates, but to get revenge on 
> whoever has mistreated him enough to warrant learning that many curses.
> 
I disagree with the premise that Snape would not have come to Hogwarts 
expecting top grades.  Whether or not wizards had any formal schooling prior 
to Hogwarts, I think they understood that grades are important.  For example, 
Lucius berates Draco about his first-year grades at Mr. Borgin's shop in CoS, 
and Ron worries about keeping up with the high expectations set by his 
brothers on the train to Hogwarts in first year.  Though I certainly agree 
that Snape's lack of social skills must have set him apart from, and perhaps 
caused his rejection by, any other wizarding children in his hometown (I 
started writing a Snape backstory some time ago that starts from this 
premise), I think that proving that he's a lot smarter than they are and 
therefore he doesn't need their friendship  is an equal or better revenge. (I 
envision a childhood spent in the home library giving himself tutorials on 
curses and maybe potions too, which helped convince him he was superior to 
the kids who rejected him.)

More from Tabouli's response to Catlady:

However, mysteriously enough, Sirius makes no mention of Snape cursing them 
in high school.  Instead, he describes Snape as acting entirely within the 
rules and snooping around trying to get them expelled.  Perhaps Snape's 
scared of getting caught and punished, but I somehow suspect Snape would be 
pretty good at being cunning and underhand and evading punishment.  I think 
it's more likely there was something else in the equation.  Someone else.  
Someone who believed in principles and treating people fairly and kindly.

Me:

Well, it could have been Lily.  Or it could have been Dumbledore.  I would 
argue that Snape followed the rules in order to distinguish himself from 
James and Sirius, and because of a supposition that only the popular, 
Quidditch-playing crowd can get away with rulebreaking.  I think it's a 
reasonable possibility that Snape's childhood may have included an absent or 
emotionally distant father such that he saw Dumbledore as a father-figure or 
mentor that he had a need to impress.  The Head Boy position would therefore 
have represented not only success but also the approval of Dumbledore.  This 
would have added to his resentment of Dumbledore's apparent favoritism toward 
the rulebreaking Marauders.

Finally, a comment from ilovbrian_99 (Melanie):


> Actually I think since we know so little about Lily I think it's almost as 
> if she is a Mary Sue, which is a sad realization but it's true.  I think 
> Lily was probably somewhat nice to Severus, I can't see her really be cruel 
> 

This raises an interesting question.  Is there any solid canon support for 
the proposition that Lily was invariably kind to Severus?  Or has this idea 
developed from the opposite direction, i.e., Snape obviously had difficulties 
in romance (Tabouli presented the canon evidence in #28850), Lily is the most 
likely, or at least the most obvious candidate, and therefore she must have 
been nice to him?  I don't think we can simply point to Lily's undeniably 
deep love for Harry to support this; that doesn't mean she was nice to 
everyone, including a greasy-haired socially inept Slytherin who was out to 
get James.  Moreover, what we know of Lily is very sketchy and filtered 
through Harry, whose information is far from complete and presents a very 
idealistic view of her.  So I ask, is Lily's kindness an essential component 
of LOLLIPOPS?  Personally, I can't see Snape carrying the torch for someone 
who treated him badly, but I have always assumed that as a Muggle-born 
without any preconceived antipathy toward Slytherin, Lily was in fact nice to 
him. 

Bottom line, while I see enough circumstantial evidence to support the idea 
that Snape loved Lily, and it adds poignancy to Snape's story, on reflection 
I find it hard to ascribe the theory more than secondary status in assessing 
Snape's motivations for his antipathy toward James and Sirius, his joining 
the DEs, and for leaving them.

Debbie, suspecting that she will not be fully welcome on the good ship 
LOLLIPOPS, clings to her precarious perch on the FLIRTIAC dinghy where she 
will sip her margarita and wave to Captain Tabouli



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