"That awful boy" (Was: Comparing Lupin and Harry )

[spotsgal]

No: HPFGUIDX 142881

> colebiancardi:
> I'm wondering how old Lily was when she brought home this "nasty
> boy"? Was she around 11 or 12? I cannot see her doing this at an
> older age, after the pensive memory in OotP.

Christina:

How come?  I ask because when I envision a Snape-as-the-awful-boy 
scenario, I've always seen it with the two of them well into their 
teenage years.  I actually never considered the thought of Lily 
having Snape over on long holidays either- I've always thought that 
Snape came to Lily's house in some kind of distress.

> colebiancardi:
> Also, if she brought
> Snape home over the holidays for a visit, don't you think that James
> or Sirius would have noticed that? Hogwarts isn't a small school,
> but James seems to have liked Lily for a while. In fact, if Lily,
> as a Griffidor, had a close, friendly relationship with Snape, a
> Slytherin, when they were first starting out at Hogwarts, wouldn't
> that have been noticed?

Christina:

Yes, I'm sure they would have, which is one of the reasons I like the 
idea so much.  I think it would actually explain a lot, particularly 
in the "Why do Snape and James hate each other so much?" arena.  I 
personally think that Lily and Snape were friends for a time, but I'd 
even accept a scenario where they were just civil Potions partners or 
something.  Wouldn't that make James just boiling with jealousy and 
irritation, even if there was absolutely nothing going on?  I know 
that some people find the reasons we've been given so far about the 
James/Snape feud satisfactory, but I refuse to believe that James 
loathed Snape just because he "hated the Dark Arts."  There must have 
been other Slytherins to pick on- why Snape?

A lot of the time I like to shy away from fantastical theories that 
attempt to "explain" what I think is pretty obvious.  The obvious 
answer here is that James is the "awful boy."  But JKR has said 
outright that there is more to the conversation that Petunia heard 
than we know.  She mentioned Lily, but didn't name the person she was 
talking to (and even passively phrased her answer so she wouldn't 
have to).  And while there could be more to the conversation in a few 
different ways, I think this is the one that makes the most sense 
considering that the text draws attention specifically to the fact 
that Petunia doesn't use names.  I think that Snape is the most 
likely choice for a lot of reasons (which I've hashed out completely 
in the past), but primarily because we've got a lot to learn about 
Lily and we've got a lot to learn about Snape, and if book seven 
isn't going to be 900 pages long (not like I would mind if it was), 
JKR has to find some ways to hit a *lot* of birds with relatively few 
stones.

Or we could all be wrong- maybe Lily had a little fling with Dedalus 
Diggle back in the day :)

Christina