WINDOW SILLS

[junediamanti]

No: HPFGUIDX 80742

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Deirdre F Woodward" 
<dwoodward at t...> wrote:
> WINDOW SILLS:  Why I Never Doubted Our Wiley Snape is Loving Lily 
> Still
> 
> BINBIITFP:  Because I Never Believed It In The First Place
> 
>> On to serious BUSINESS (Better Unveil Significance Immediately. 
Elfs 
> Smite Sarcasm).
> 
> For those who don't know, many TBAY theories revolve around Snape 
> being in love with Lily, either now or when they attended Hogwarts 
> together.  
> 
> Canon shows us that Snapes *hates* Harry and has hated him since 
> Snape!he laid eyes on Harry!him.
> 
> The two don't add up.  Why would Snape hate the child of the woman 
he 
> loves/-ed?  Can any of us imagine hating -- despising with the 
> blackest of hatred -- the child of the person we love?  Without 
> provocation?
> 
> Snape's feelings for Harry are predicated upon Snape's feelings 
> towards Harry's father -- total hatred because Snape totally hates 
> James.  
> 
> If Snape's transferring one of the two strongest of human 
emotions, 
> hatred, from father to son, it stands to reason that he'd transfer 
> the other of the two strongest of human emotions, love, from 
mother 
> to son.
> 
> If the Snape!Theories are to hold, since the child of his most 
hated 
> enemy and the child of his most treasured love are one and the 
same, 
> Snape should have two very conflicting emotions towards Harry.  I 
> haven't yet seen, in any of the books, a conflict of feelings from 
> Snape to Harry.
> 
> Even if Snape loved Lily once but no longer does, you'd think 
there'd 
> be at least a *nod* of recognition that Harry is the son of Lily.
> 
> And there isn't. There's been no hint at all that Snape sees Harry 
as 
> anyone other than James's son.  No hint, other than the OoP 
Pensive 
> scene, that Snape even knows Lily.  
> 
> If the Snape!Theories are, in fact, correct, and based on the 
Pensive 
> scene, some of you might be hitting home runs with your 
speculation, 
> I for one will be very disappointed.  I won't believe the 
character 
> of Snape any more.
> 
> I guess THAT'S ALL.  (There. Hope All's Truly Seen As Lighthearted 
> Laughs.)
> 
> Deirdre

June (sharpens quill and dips it into ink bottle)...

OK, here's where I nail my (grey) colours firmly to the mast of the 
Good Ship LOLLIPOPS.

I'm not going to re-hash the excellent inaugural arguments.  
However, the theory could do with a bit of dusting down in the light 
of OoP relevations and certain counter arguments that I have picked 
up since joining the board in June.

The counter arguments against Snape Loved Lily tend to be as follows:

1. What normal guy is going to carry a torch for 18 years or so, 
based on very little real action?

My point is that Snape cannot by any stretch of the imagination be 
considered "normal" - whatever that means.  We now know from OoP 
that he is no way "normal" and probably a profoundly damaged person -
 due to the fact of his upbringing which looks, to say the least, 
dysfunctional.  Lonely teenage boys who don't have many real friends 
and who feel worthless are going to elevate the crush into something 
major in their minds.

Want an example of a guy who really did create an epic love story on 
virtually no contact?  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one Dante 
Alighieri, the author of the Divine Comedy.  Dante met Beatrice 
Portinari when he was nine and she was eight.  He could probably 
count on his fingers the number of times he had actual speaking 
contact with Beatrice in real life. Nevertheless his feelings for 
her inspired some of the greatest poetry in the history of 
literature.  Oh, and incidentally, she married someone else, died 
young shortly after her husband died... Given the right amount of 
brooding emotion, anyone can build a fairly big romance thing on 
very slender foundations.  Why not Snape?

2.   Snape couldn't have loved Lily in the light of what he called 
her in the pensieve scene. 

Well actually he could.  Two possibilities spring to mind here.  
Firstly - he loved her already at that point.  He was also well 
aware that James fancied her too.  Now I can't speak from the 
viewpoint of a messed up and decidedly introvert adolescent, but I 
doubt if having your decidedly unlovely pants exposed to your 
inamorata is ever going to be a memory you would cherish.  Lily was 
the very last person Snape wanted to see when he was being picked on 
by James and Sirius.  If you are that age, you want the girl you 
love to see you either hexing your rival into facial boils, 
successfully, or standing around making moody but trenchant remarks 
about his ancestry.  Remember this kid seems to have been major 
messed up - so I'm not in the least surprised that he shot his mouth 
off in the worst possible way.  How many of us have mouthed off in a 
way we bitterly regretted later?

The second possibility is that Snape had barely given Lily a thought 
until the pensieve incident and fell for her after the event.  Later 
on, he goes off to wherever kids like him go, and casts her in his 
mind as a kind of avenging angel. 

Remember, this event took place towards the end of their fifth year, 
James didn't start seeing Lily until year seven - that's plenty of 
time to develop a hopeless crush - where he no doubt played witty 
chat up lines in his head but never got anywhere.

3. Counter argument - come on this is an adult now.

Well actually, no.  James and Lily died when they were roughly 21 - 
22 max using the timeline in the Lexicon as a guide.  

They got engaged shortly after school - I'm repeatedly struck by how 
young everything happens in Canon.  Snape's pretty cut up about this 
but there's not a lot he can do, and anyway he's started on his new 
career as a Death Eater and that occupies his mind considerably.  

He has some two years in the DE when Voldemort sends him off to hang 
around the Hogs Head, or he is hanging around the Hogs Head anyway, 
when he strikes gold.  Yes - just to mess your mind up even more, I 
believe that Snape was the eavesdropper when Trelawney spoke the 
prophecy.  He only hears the first part which says 

"Tne one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born 
to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month 
dies.."

It is at this point that he gets the bum's rush from the Hogs Head.  
He has no way of knowing who the prophecy refers to and high tails 
it back to his boss.  Where he realises from LV's maniacal laughter 
just who the prophecy refers to.  He'd be perfectly OK about a plot 
to murder James - and in fact might volunteer for the job, but not 
Lily.  

This is the revelation point and it all fits Canon so far - this is 
when he switches sides.  He's not going to connive at the murder of 
the girl he loves and this is how Dumbledore knew that the Potters 
were a target, because Snape went to Dumbledore and confessed 
everything - except perhaps his feelings for Lily (which doesn't 
matter because Dumbledore would guess that anyway).

IMHO, it has to be Snape who overheard the prophecy and also who 
tipped off Dumbledore about the murder plans - this is indicated by 
Dumbledore's ongoing reticence to name names when he tells Harry 
about these matters. Why not just say, "Oh it was Bill Smith who 
tipped us off about your parents/who fingered your parents to 
Voldemort"?  Because it was someone Harry knows.  There's only one 
person Harry knows who could fit this - and Harry can't stand that 
person.  Harry and Snape's mutual dislike has already caused major 
problems.  I don't think Harry is going to be able to see Snape's 
role as excusable at all - so best not to say too much about this. 
The alternative is to say to an angry adolescent "Oh it was Snape 
who told Voldemort about the prophecy, but that's all right because 
shortly after he came to me and warned me that Voldemort was 
targeting your parents"  and Harry says "Oh, right."

3.  Snape hates Harry.

Once again, applying logic to Snape's emotional action is a 
fruitless exercise.  Here's why Snape hates Harry, despite his being 
the son of the only woman he ever loved:

Harry shows up at Hogwarts aged 11 and all the staff have heard he 
is coming and are quite excited about clapping eyes on "The Boy Who 
Lived" for the first time.  Even Snape, though he wonders how he'll 
be able to cope with a living reminder of Lily.  He's spent 10 years 
getting over her death.  

Incidentally, can you imagine how Snape reacted to Lily's death?  He 
would have been about 22 at the time - which is very young 
emotionally, even for a well-adjusted person. I personally think he 
might have had a major breakdown after this - the guilt must have 
been unendurable.  

So, Snape looks at Harry and what he sees brings him up short - no 
resemblance to Lily at all (he's not going to see the green eyes 
across the room and behind glasses) - no this is James 
reincarnated.  Later he might tell himself that he's being 
overhasty - but his later dealings with Harry indicate that he 
(Harry) is James all over again - sporting, reckless, rule 
breaking.  Snape knows that Lily sacrificed herself for Harry and as 
he sees it, Harry's recklessness makes a mockery of that sacrifice, 
and he may even blame Harry for his mother's death.  Snape's never 
going to be looking deeply into Harry's eyes after that.

The first time we see Snape really emotional in Canon is after the 
escape of Sirius when he goes completely off it.  At that point, 
Snape would have been of the opinion that Sirius betrayed Lily.  How 
would you have felt in that situation? I sure wouldn't be listening 
to Lupin's explanation of how it was all a case of mistaken 
identity - and that's why Snape attempts to set up what seems to us 
an utterly unspeakable action - the dementor's kiss for Sirius.  Nor 
is Snape going to stop and explain his viewpoint in the 
confrontation in the Shrieking Shack, along the lines of "But this 
bastard betrayed the woman I loved!"  

I suspect that Snape had hoped to punch Sirius Black's ticket from 
the moment he heard that Sirius had "betrayed" the Potters.  To some 
extent the belief that Sirius had done this must have soothed 
Snape's own conscience - he might have pointed Voldemort's murderous 
impulse at the Potters, but there's a worse traitor than him out 
there - Sirius.

Even when Dumbledore explains the full story about Sirius and 
Pettigrew, Snape is not particularly mollified.  He may well take 
the view that by refusing to be the Fidelius Secret Keeper, Black 
played the Potters straight into Voldemort's hands.  In his view, 
Black was guilty through inaction - which adds a certain resonance 
to his jibes at Sirius in OoP  - he's only too happy to point out 
that Sirius never takes risks, and he is implying that if Sirius had 
taken on the role of secret keeper, things might have turned out 
differently.

So there.

June