But DID James listen? (was LID!Snape rides again )

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 150009

Many posters:

[Discussing what Snape may have said to James when the Potters were
preparing to be fideliused, whether or not James would have regarded
it as a trick, what Lily would have thought, whether or not Lily was
informed of the attempted warning, etc.]

houyhnhnm:

"Like father, like son, Potter! I have just saved your neck; you
should be thanking me on bended knee!  You would have been well served
if he'd killed you!  You'd have died like your father too arrogant to
believe you might be mistaken in Black--"

This is an interesting statement.  Taken one sentence at a time, it says:
1.  I am taking credit for saving your life.
2.  I assert that you owe me gratitude.
3.  You don't deserve being saved.
4.  You're just like your father. (Snape's unending refrain.)
5.  Your father died too arrogant to believe he was mistaken in Black.

This is very typical, in my opinion, of the way Snape's mind works,
linking injustice to injustice as he works himself up into a rage
against the way the world has treated him.  I have tended to see it as
symptomatic of Snape's disease, not as a literal claim to have warned
James shortly before the Potters went into hiding.  I mean, he might
have done so.  I'm not arguing that it didn't happen that way.

But I also think it can be taken merely as an example of the way
Snape's brain short-circuits every time Harry and the memory of
Harry's father are brought too close together. Something causes a leap
from "you don't deserve being saved" and "You're just like your
father".  That something may or may not contain objective logic.

Obviously many people think the link is that Snape attempted to save
James life and James was too arrogant to listen. He could have.  Or it
could be that, way back when they were students at Hogwarts, Snape
tried to convince anyone who would listen that Sirius was a bad egg
and no one (especially Dumbledore.  There is a hidden apostrophe to
Dumbledore in this speech, it seems to me) would listen.  Or even--I
think Snape is enough of a solipsist, at least when he's caught up in
the DD-Marauder-Harry knot--that he *knew* Sirius was no good when
everyone else was too blind to see it. And now he's been proven right.