First lesson WAS: Re: Marietta, was Slytherin's Reputation

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 185694

> Carol responds:
> Actually, the prejudice against Muggleborns comes from their having
> Muggle *blood*, not from their being Muggles, which they are clearly
> not. 

Magpie:
Right, but it's the MUGGLEborn of the name that is the problem. 
They're not wizards by blood, they're artificial wizards or 
something. Hermione gets called a Muggle twice that I can remember, 
both times with the person of course knowing that she's a witch by 
calling her a Muggle because that's what her blood is as inherited 
from her parents.

Carol:
Severus distinguishes between Lily and Petunia perhaps partly on
> unstated factors like looks, behavior, and age, but primarily and
> overtly because Petunia is "only a Muggle." She can't do magic, 
which
> distinguishes her from Severus and Lily. 

Magpie:
Yes, I was just saying that Snape has already attached "only a" to 
the idea of Muggle--it doesn't matter what Petunia thinks, her 
relationship with Lily doesn't matter even though she's her sisterand 
I don't think that means that he can't already also have been taught 
some ideas about Muggleborns vs. Wizards as well, which he is 
disregarding for his friendship with Lily that he wants so badly. At 
that age Lily doesn't see Muggles as an inferior species.

At this point Severus is, I agree, seeing Muggles as "the other" 
while he and Lily are the same. Later he calls out Lily as being 
different as a Muggleborn. I don't think he *must* have considered 
that distinction only after he got into Slytherin. He could have 
already heard it and just dealt with it whichever way he did while he 
was friends with Lily.

Carol:
The fact that Lily is
> Muggleborn, having two Muggleborn parents rather than one like 
himself
> is, IMO, irrelavant to his feelings toward her. It's Us (Sev and 
Lily
> and Eileen) vs. Them (Tobias and Petunia).

Magpie:
We don't know if they're irrelevent since we're not in his head. I'm 
just disagreeing that it's canon that Severus had never considered 
the Muggleborn distinction until later. I find it just as easy to 
believe he heard it at home first and simply thought his friendship 
with Lily was more important. All we know for sure is that he never 
said to her that Muggleborns were inferior until his fifth year. Did 
he first hear that idea in Slytherin or before then? We don't know. I 
just don't take it as a given that it was the former. I thought his 
hesitation about whether or not Lily could be a Slytherin was a small 
boy knowing it was a problem but hoping it didn't apply to Lily.

His mother was, I assume, a Slytherin, knew what Slytherin stood for 
and held some Slytherin values, whoever she married. After the bloom 
had worn off her marriage or even before she could have spoken of her 
blood as being superior for being Pure. 

Carol: 
> I do wonder, however, what would have happened if Petunia were the
> Witch and Lily the Muggle. Would he still have watched them in the
> playground and wanted to make friends with just the Witch? Or would
> the pretty little Muggle have changed his mind about the superiority
> of magical people over nonmagical people?

Magpie:
Or would he have not thought about it enough except to assume Lily 
was an exception until she chose somebody he hated over him, at which 
point he'd say she was only a Muggle all along and beneath him?

-m