Snape and Lily as friends- How could Harry not know?

[fitzchivalryhk]

No: HPFGUIDX 172630

guzu:
> So, I wonder what Rowling was thinking? Was it that Snape's 
perspective led us (and Harry) 
> to believe that he and Lily were better friends than they were? 
Lily actually agrees that they 
> are "best friends", so that doesn't seem right. Maybe they were 
meant to be secret friends? 
> However it's really not presented that way in Snape's memories at 
all. I am truly inclined to 
> think it was that Rowling did not decide the exact nature of the 
Snape-Lily friendship 
> through until she was in the middle of writing DH, but I welcome 
any theories to explain 
> this. 

fitz: 
According to Harry Potter Lexicon, here's how JK Rowling answered a 
question about Penseives:

Q: Do the memories stored in a Pensieve reflect reality or the views 
of the person they belong to? 
A: It's reality. It's important that I have got that across, because 
Slughorn gave Dumbledore this pathetic cut-and-paste memory. He 
didn't want to give the real thing, and he very obviously patched it 
up and cobbled it together. So, what you remember is accurate in the 
Pensieve. 
(TLC) 

Since in Snape's memories, Lily directly confirm that she and Snape 
are best friends, I do not think that Snape's perspective is skewed 
such that we believe they were better friends than they really were.

I do not think it's a matter of JK Rowling deciding the relationship 
between Snape and Lily in the middle of writing DH, since there are 
a lot of hints in prior books that Snape and Lily may know each 
other. I believe it is a case of the Mauraders witholding 
information from Harry.

Sirius and Remus are both friends of James. As James' friends, they 
naturally would like to paint James in a positive light. That 
includes painting James and Lily's relationship in a positive light. 
So anything that might cause Harry to suspect his parents' 
relationship would be left out in their conversation, unless Harry 
happened to come across it and confront them directly. (Much like 
how they treated Snape's being bullied by James)

Although Snape and Lily never shared a romantic relationship (at 
least there's no evidence of that), given the mentality of high 
school students, a girl/boy relationship is often assumed to be 
romantic in nature. The mauraders might have suspected and hated 
Snape for that. In order to maintain Harry's impression that James 
and Lily are perfect for each other (and they probably are), Sirius 
and Remus conveniently omit to mention the friendship shared by 
James and Snape.

That's my theory anyway.

fitz