more Snape/Lily thoughts

[judyserenity]

No: HPFGUIDX 33191

Eric Oppen <oppen at c...> wrote: 
> > ...A lot of people on here think that Snape was in love with
> > Lily and resented James (and by extension Harry) because of
> > that, but what if it was just the opposite? .... For all we
> > know, Lily might have been extremely cruel to Young Severus, and
> > deliberately humiliated him in front of his peers once, or more 
> > than once....

Well, it could be that Snape was in love with Lily *and* she was 
deliberately cruel to him.  Unfortunately, being in love (or at least 
infatuated) and having your love object be cruel to you are not 
mutually exclusive. However, I don't see Snape as the sort of person 
who gets picked on, even in his younger days.  Afterall, Sirius said 
that Snape "knew more curses when he arrived than half the kids in 
seventh year" [GOF, "Padfoot Returns"].  Not the sort of person you 
want to pick a fight with.  

pigwidgeonthirtyseven added:
>...In fact, we don't even know for sure that Snape *was* an outsider. 
> It only serves the purpose of explaining how he could have become
> the person he is now and it certainly seems very logical. But 
> what does "Hanging out with a gang of Slytherins", as Sirius puts 
> it, really mean? From the Gryffindor and especially from Sirius's 
> POV, even an innocent group of friends would immediately be 
> categorized as "gang", due to the attitude towards the other house. 
> But it's not clear whether they *were* friends, or a group simply 
> sharing certain interests, whether Snape was a part of the group or 
> just tolerated- it's all very vague.

Actually, what Sirius says is that Snape "was part of a gang of 
Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters."  [GOF, 
"Padfoot Returns" again.] So, yes, Snape was *part* of the "gang", not 
just tolerated by them. I suspect that if the other Slytherins 
disliked Snape, Sirius would have been sure to pick up on it. It's not 
like he's going to cut Snape any slack.

I could see a teenage Snape as being fairly popular among the evil, 
ambitious Slytherins.  They would like him for his abilities, and not 
care about his nasty personality. 

While we're on the topic of this quote by Sirius, there's a couple of 
other interesting conclusions I've drawn from it.  First, people have 
asked what proof we have that Snape was in Slytherin as a student.  
I'd say this quote is proof -- Sirius says the gang was made up of 
(only) Slytherins; Snape was part of the gang; ergo, Snape is a 
Slytherin.  Second, Sirius is unsure whether *all* of Snape's friends 
were Death Eaters.  In fact, it turns out that they all were -- Avery 
was the only one Sirius was unsure about, but in the "Death Eaters" 
chapter of GoF, Avery shows up -- he's the Death Eater who begs for 
forgiveness and is tortured.  Third, Snape's friends seem 
*exceptionally* committed to Voldy -- Avery in the only one of the 
five friends who renounces the Dark Side (he pretends he acted under 
the Imperiatus Curse); the other four all die fighting, or end up in 
Azkaban because they continued to work for Voldy after he lost power.

By the way, I think this is the reason why Snape seems like such an 
outsider.  All his friends are dead or in Azkaban, or at the very 
least can't show their faces at Hogwarts.  Surprisingly, he and Lupin 
have this in common (not like that makes Snape like Lupin any better.) 
 

pigwidgeonthirtyseven also said:
> Anyway, I've always had the feeling (and it's no more than just some 
> gut-feeling) that Lily was *not* a nice person, at least not in her 
> school days and maybe not even afterwards. Being capable of dying 
> for your own child doesn't automatically make you a nice person. 

Well, I've never gotten the feeling that Lily was mean.  But, we 
really know very little about her.  I agree, the fact that she gave 
her life for Harry tells us nothing about how she treated other 
people; I know women who are devoted to their children but quite cruel 
to others.  (I imagine Narcissa Malfoy as being this way, and Petunia 
Dursley appears to be, too.)