[HPforGrownups] Digest Number 4658

[LadySawall at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 99992

In a message dated 06/03/2004 10:14:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Maddy writes:
Before OotP came out I might have believed it possible for Snape to
have loved Lily, but the pensieve scene in OotP, I think, dispelled
that possibility. Snape clearly hated Lily (at that point in time at
least) almost as much as he hated James and Sirius. Perhaps his
prejudice against Mudbloods and Gryffindors were the main cause, but
he obviously didn't like her.
---

Jo Ann:

Heh.  I spend entirely too much time thinking about these things...  :)

There was a crowd watching.  Some of them were probably Slytherins, and even 
if they weren't, word would have gotten around.

Now consider for a moment what kind of grief any fifteen-year-old male, in 
any school, would get from the other boys if he were publicly "rescued" by a 
girl.

Add the extra resentment James and the Marauders would feel, and the extra 
punishments they'd devise for Snape, if they thought for one minute that the 
Greasy Git was soft on the girl James fancied, or vice versa.

Compound that by the sort of punishment a Slytherin could expect from his own 
Housemates if he were helped by a Gryffindor.

Multiply *that* by the punishment a Pureblood (and conceivably, his family) 
could expect after being saved by a Mudblood when there's a big anti-Muggle 
movement on the rise.

I think Severus would have been decidedly nasty to Lily under those 
circumstances, whether he liked her, hated her, or was completely indifferent to 
her--out of sheer self-preservation.  Acting grateful, or even just accepting her 
help without a word one way or the other, would have been akin to diving into 
shark-infested waters drenched in seal's blood.

Note that he didn't come up with the "Mudblood" remark the minute Lily 
stepped in--he said nothing until James stated that he was lucky Lily had been 
there.  Which suggests to me that it wasn't an off-the-cuff insult; he'd had a 
moment to think the situation through and realize what a precarious position he 
was in.

And not just him, but Lily too.  She surely would have gotten a share of the 
unfriendly Sytherin/Pureblood attention as well.

I reiterate that I don't really think it's a theory that will turn out to be 
true...JKR likes to throw us red herrings too much...but I do think it's 
fairly defensible, as of the end of OotP.

Jo Ann


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