Lily's role in the Worst Memory

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 115783


Snape's worst memory shows us James and Sirius having a go at Snape.
>From the description of it, it's pretty obvious that this wasn't their
first public fight, far from it.

What bothers me is Lily in this scene. The more I think of it, the
more I feel something is not quite right.

First, it seems to be the first time Lily ever intruded on a
James/Snape fight. She asks James what Snape has done to him. If she'd
ever intervened before, she would have learned a long time ago what's
behind all of this, and she wouldn't need to ask yet again. So my
first question is : if the public J/S fights were as common as the
Pensieve scene makes them look, how come Lily never intervened before ?

Second, there's the problem of the insult. Snape calls Lily a Mudblood
and Lily *reacts*. She seems surprised. It could just be that she
didn't expect to be insulted by the person she was rescuing, but that
would be quite naive IMO. It would be like Hermione being surprised to
be insulted by a Draco that she would just have defended from Harry.
Hermione would *not* be surprised, IMO. She would put it on the count
of humiliation, just like when Draco started insulting Mrs Weasley
after Slytherin's defeat against Gryffindor : it is to be *expected*,
as McGonagall clearly stated. But Lily *is* surprised. Worse, she then
leaves Snape to his own means. That clearly indicates to me that this
insult was a first-time :
- either it was the first time Snape insulted Lily at all
- or it was the first time Snape insulted Lily while she was defending
him.
Both cases are interesting, IMO.

So it seems quite obvious to me that it was the first time things went
that way : 
1.Snape and James fighting publicly, 
2.Lily showing up to save Snape's skin, 
3.Snape insulting her, 
4.and she leaving him to deal with James on his own.

We already know that 1. can't have been a first time.
Given Lily's character, if 2. were a first time, then I would dearly
like to know what kept her before.
If 3. is a first, then it's very surprising as well. Draco has been
insulting Hermione pretty much forever.
And if 4. was a first, then I'd like to know what was different this time.

Couple that with the fact that this scene is called Snape's Worst
Memory, and I can't help but think that there's indeed something about
Lily here. But I just can't figure out what ! A Snape/Lily SHIP seems
to obvious to me, I mean, it's an old trick, the enemy who was in love
with the hero's mother. So *what* was different this time ? And most
importantly : WHY ?? What pushed whoever (Snape, Lily, maybe James) to
act differently this time ?

Del