Snape/Lily love or obsession

[Dana]

No: HPFGUIDX 173376

colebiancardi:

> Don't forget that Harry's filter has been lifted before - in another
> one of Snape's memories, back in OotP.  Harry, up to that time,
> thought his father was the best, greatest, wonderful,
> could-never-be-a-git;  yet after he saw those memories, he was torn,
> conflicted; felt empathy with Teen!Snape.  He even asked Lupin and
> Sirius about it and questioned why did his mother even marry James. 
> They confirmed that James was a bit of a-hole. 
<snip> 

Dana:
Well I wasn't really arguing I just could not resist the urge. The 
problem is actually that we know that even though the pensieve 
memories are objective in their own right. The conclusions Harry 
extracts from them are not by definition so. 
In OotP we see that Harry concludes by his mother's reaction that she 
really hated his father but if you played close attention then you 
saw that Lily was observing James as much as he was Lily. James had 
not played with the snitch before as Sirius asks him where he got it 
and then Lily makes a comment about it later. Harry did not pick up 
on it and just can't fathom his mother ever loving his dad. 

So essentially yes Harry did get that Snape loved his mother for 
pretty much his entire life but he actually never comments about what 
he thought about the love in itself. Just that it had motivated Snape 
to work against LV by serving DD. So to say that Snape's love was not 
of the obsessive kind because Harry did not mention it as such is not 
really supporting evidence. The objectivity in view of the memory 
does not change the concept of how Harry understood the complexity of 
the love Snape had for his mother. The only thing that mattered to 
Harry is that Snape was loyal to his mother and therefore had helped 
him in his fight against LV. 

JMHO

Dana