Lily and Tuney and Sev, Oh My

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 176416

> Ceridwen:
> We see Eileen once, "a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman"
> beside a "slightly hunched" Sev.  This sounds to me like neither 
> Snape wanted to be there.  Eileen almost sounds like she is
> standing on her dignity alone, and expecting someone to attack her 
> (verbally, of course).  Sev sounds embarrassed.
> 
> I think Eileen had no choice in how Sev was dressed.  They were 
> poor, this is what they had.
<Snip>
> I have a pic of my dad in a "smocklike shirt" at the age of five.  
> Bear in mind that would have been 1907.  The rest of his clothes 
> remind me of the clothes worn by Rip van Winkle the younger - his 
> father's old coat and trousers.  The van Winkle family was dirt> 
poor.

Jen:  My image of Eileen from the information surrounding her is the 
family did live in poverty, that she wasn't in a happy marriage - 
possibly an abusive one - and life was generally hard for her.  
(Poverty + abuse, wonder if her powers were sapped at all?).  There's 
not much information about her relationship with Severus; however, 
since mothers loving sons is a thread throughout the series, my guess 
is they did have a good relationship and she nurtured Snape's 
intelligence.  She was likely the one who equated Slytherin with 
brains, encouraging Snape to be in the same house.  Severus seemed to 
have a very positive impression of Slytherin on the train when he 
spoke to Lily about it.  

About the shirt, gosh, there's so much going on with that one article 
of clothing.  I suspect there's some shame for Snape, since he wears 
the coat until he gets to know Lily.  It *is* a marker for his 
poverty, as well as a class distinction in a mill town - the worker 
sons wore the smocklike shirts and the management sons likely wore 
something else, thus one reason Petunia with her class-consciousness  
fingered Severus so quickly as the boy who lived by the river (wrong 
side of the tracks as you said later, Ceridwen).

Then there's the connection to Harry as the kid who wore the 
oversized clothes and was laughed at or avoided by other kids; Harry 
didn't even attempt friendships.

> Ceridwen:
> I think he saw someone else like him, and was eager to become 
> friends with her.  Rowling uses the adjective "greedy", and a lot
> of people have commented about that, but the same adjective has
> been used by other writers to show profound desire for something a
> person doesn't have, like the child who looks "greedily" into a
> candy store window.
> 
> I don't think young Sev had many friends.  He might have driven
> them away with accidental magic, like the tree branch, or he may
> always have been an object of ridicule because of his clothes and
> his "stringy" appearance.  Class comes in because of what Petunia
> says.

Jen: My impression was Snape was friendless prior to Lily. It doesn't 
say whether he was home-schooled or went to school, but either way he 
knew he was a wizard and wasn't part of that world.  He already had a 
sense of being elite to Muggles as seen with Petunia, which I took to 
be made up of three elements: 1) Part of the WW culture passed down 
to him; 2) He was different from the other Muggle kids around him, 
which likely led to ridicule (although perhaps not his clothes if 
many of the boys in his neighborhood wore the same), but he also had 
an air of confidence about his intelligence that acted as a defense 
against this; and 3) Difficult relationship with his negative Muggle 
father. 

Like you, after my second read I didn't understand 'greedily' to be 
an obsession about Lily as a love interest so much as wanting a 
connection to another person his age, specifically a magical person, 
part of his world since he was surrounded by people he expected to 
leave behind in a short time.  

Mike: 
> Some of it might also be that Lily seems to have control of her
> magic at an early age, something Sev might not have mastered yet. 
> In fact, the only other wizard in canon this young, who we saw that
> could control his magic was... Tom. <insert theme music from the 
> Twilight Zone here>

Jen: Interesting observation, I didn't catch that. Severus was 
impressed with Lily's magical abilities, 'you've got loads of 
magic.'  Hmm, can't think of anything else to add. <g>


> Jen:
> Seriously, I don't think it was Lily. The broomstick had a hex or 
> jinx on it if it was bucking, right? Some random girl in flying 
> class is laughing because the Marauders jinxed Snape's broom -
> Florence, perhaps. <g>

> Mike:
> Agreed, it can't be Lily. Can't be Tuney, either. Could be Flo. How
> about Mary? Might justify Sev thinking Mulciber's hex was a hoot.<g>


Potioncat:
> I always thought it was a hexed broomstick too. But if first-year
> Marauders could hex a broomstick, then they came to Hogwarts knowing
> Dark Magic.

> Oh, wait. Dark Magic is only bad when Slytherins do it. Nevermind.

Jen: Doh, that's right, we found out in Book 1: "Can't nothing 
interfere with a broomstick except powerful Dark magic - no kid could 
do that to a Nimbus Two Thousand." (chap. 11, p. 190, Am. Ed.)

Huh.  I wonder if it was some kind of minor magic, something a kid 
could do if the broom wasn't flying. 

Since the other two memories read as negative ones to me, I imagined 
the laughing girl was a negative memory as well, someone laughing at 
Severus and not laughing with him.  I suppose Harry's memories were 
mixed up with good/bad though when Snape called them forth; perhaps 
the bucking broomstick was a a fond memory, the girl laughing 
appreciatively at his cleverness?  It does have the feel of a boy 
showing off a bit, pretending to ride the bucking broncho and all 
that. ;)  If the memories were meant as clues to the later Pensieve 
memories, then we saw something to represent three main parts of 
Sev's young life: His family discord, his lonliness and magical 
ability from a young age, and his friendship with Lily.  

I don't know, Potioncat, I may have to put aside my objections about 
Harry not recognizing Lily!

Jen