My Take on the Whole Snape/Draco/Dumbledore/Secret Keeper Thing

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 161108

> Marion:
> 
> Where do people get this strange idea that Snape and Evans were 
friends? Or that Snape was secretly in love with her?

Magpie:
It's hard to say exactly where, but it was definitely the feeling I 
got after HBP.

Marion:
> Does it look to you or anybody on this list that Lily Evans even 
*knew* who Snape was in that Pensieve scene? 

Magpie:
Sure.

Marion:
> Reread the scene.> First we see James showing off his skills with 
the snitch, all the while casting looks at some girls further on. Is 
Lily one of them? Probably, because not a minute later she storms 
into the scene. James has not been the only one casting looks it 
seems. Lily *knows* his performance is for her and she is casting 
looks *his* way, all the time complaining, no doubt, to her girl 
friends about that awful Potter Boy showing off again.
> Then James and Sirius do their tag-team attack from the rear 
bullying thing with Snape and Lily Evans storms into the scene. And 
what does she do? Does she ask, "Oh dear, are you allright Snape"? 
Does she even *look* at Severus Snape? Is this about James and 
Sirius tormenting a friend or even a class mate?
> No.
> Lily rages on and on about *James*. About how AWFUL he is. 

Magpie:
Yes, she's all about James in the scene--but that doesn't mean she 
doesn't know who Snape is.  In fact, she says they're as bad as each 
other, iirc.  The first time I read the scene I thought it was just 
Lily putting on a show of being feisty for James' attention and 
Snape could be anyone.  Since HBP the scene seems like Snape and 
Lily could very well have their own relationship, albeit one that 
has been disintegrating and this is the final straw. I still think 
Lily's flirting with James in the scene, but it wouldn't surprise me 
to learn there's something going on between Snape and Lily as well.

None of this means Snape can't also be seeing himself as a prop in 
James and Lily's mating game and be all the more angry because of 
it. And possibly call Lily a Mudblood because of it. She may not 
know why she angered him so much in the scene.

Marion:
> So what does he do? He flings the foulest insult he can think of 
in her face. And it works. She snaps out of the flirting game, 
realises that this is a real human being that is being tormented 
just so James and she could have their little flirt and she is 
mortified! So what does *she* do? After she quickly slaps down Snape 
of course. She blows up at *James*. Because James is the culprit who 
lured her into the game and made her an accomplice.

Magpie:
Smacks down Snape, or does more than that without us realizing it 
because we don't know the background?  

James offers to not touch "Snivelly" any more if Lily will go out 
with him. When Snape says he doesn't need the help of a Mudblood 
like her Lily does not just smack him down. She blinks. And then she 
says, cooly, "Fine. I won't bother in future. And I'd wash your 
pants if I were you, Snivellus."

Lily's blink could be a beat of real surprise that Snape would cross 
that line. She needs that moment to react to it. Then she responds 
cooly (their relationship has just changed on her end) and by 
throwing back the name that will hurt him. A change can occur in 
that moment--it's possibly the moment with the most weight in the 
scene.  Everything else is as usual with flirting and yelling, but 
that moment between Lily and Snape feels far more personal and 
weighty.

Marion:> 
> Snape a racist who hates Muggleborns? I doubt it. I don't get that 
message from this scene. 

Magpie:
Snape uses the word Mudblood in the scene. He reaches for a racist 
(or bigoted if one doesn't think of Muggleborns as a race) epithet 
to insult her. Whether he actually feels much hate for Muggleborns 
as a group and not just Lily is a different subject, but he's done 
something racist in the scene. Since he later joins the DEs I think 
his reaching for that is part of a larger development for him.

Marion:
Snape in love with Lily? Why?! She hardly knows who he is. He 
doesn't even register on her radar unless Snape insults her with the 
worst insult he knows he could fling at her. She isn't there to 
rescue him. This isn't about him at all, this is about James and 
Lily. 

Magpie:
As I said, that's how I first read it too.  But after HBP I think 
there's a Snape/Lily (interaction, not ship necessarily) going on 
before our eyes as well. The Lily/James interaction is the dominant 
one, and that's the one that was always more important in Lily's 
life, but there could be the end of something Snape/Lily (again, 
maybe not a romantic thing) there too.

Marion:
> So why, why, why are people so convinced that this scene is about 
Lily 'rescueing her best buddy Snape'? There is *nothing* in the 
scene that suggests that she even knows him.


Magpie:
I think it's too much to say the scene is about her rescuing her 
best buddy.  If they had a relationship I think it's already going 
sour in this scene, and it's already being dominated by James/Lily. 
But there's nothing to suggest Lily can't know who Snape is. It's 
written so that she could just be helping some anonymous peon, but I 
think it works just as well with her knowing Snape. I think it may 
have been intentionally hidden in the scene.

Marion:
> Why, why, why are people so convinced that Snape Loved Lily? *I* 
wouldn't love a self-centered little bint who used me in a flirting 
game with my worst enemy. And even if Snape *did* fancy Lily once, 
this little scene must've killed that off quickly.

Magpie:
And it well might have!

Marion:> 
> Harry thinks Snape was 'evil from the start' because 'he called my 
mum a Mudblood'. Harry missed the whole flirting thing. Of course 
Harry missed the whole flirting thing. Harry, at fifteen, doesn't 
even know how to ask a girl to a frigging dance, doesn't know a 
thing about flirting, is as dim as a five watt lightbulb and gets 
totally the wrong things from the scene. As per usual.> But if it is 
one thing we readers must've learned by now, it is that what we are 
being *told* is totally different from what we are shown.

Magpie:
Absolutely. Harry seems unable to read most of the major dynamics in 
the scene! But post-HBP I think there's more in the scene that I 
didn't see the first time.

-m