What triggered ancient magic? WAS: Re: James and Intent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187057

Alla wrote:
> I mean, one thing I am sure of is that I definitely see strong obsessive undertones to it, but as I also said I see undertones of courtly love - his love for Lily guided him to do better things, etc, etc.
> 
> To be honest with you it is the hardest for me to see that his love was only the love of the old friend, although sure I can see that it could be true under certain circumstances.

Carol responds:

It's hard to know for sure since we don't see Snape in his DE years or even Severus in his last two years at school, after Lily has rejected him, but as far as I can tell, the obsessive element comes after he finds out that Voldemort is targeting the Potters. At that point, it seems to me, he becomes obsessed with keeping Lily alive. He states outright that he'll do "anything" if Dumbledore will protect Lily, and he keeps his word, spying for Dumbledore "at great personal risk." When his efforts (and Dumbledore's) fail and Lily is killed, he wants to die. Dumbledore persuades him to live and to protect Harry so that Lily's death won't have been in vain. He remains obsessive, loving a dead woman "always" and protecting Harry not for his own sake but for Lily (the idealized pure and beautiful Lily of his Patronus, who is, I think, rather different from the cheeky Gryffindor girl he actually knew and very different from the woman who fell in love with James, a real person who probably doesn't even exist in his mind. After all, the last time he spoke with Lily, not counting her fierce refusal to hear his apology, she had called James a "toerag"). His obsession is driven in part by never-to-be-requited love and in part by guilt and remorse. But desire, as far as I can see, plays no part in int.
> 
> 
> Potioncat:
> > I also don't think he "wanted" her all those years after. But, once he killed DD and severed his ties to the Order and now had no source of strength for his mission, he went to 12GP for a token of Lily, as a source of strength. Which explains too why he tore off James and Harry. And he wouldn't be the first person to remove someone from a photo.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> But it is not his! This episode is what tells me that Snape has obsession with Lily still, you know, not just thinks of her fondly and keeps in his  heart as talisman as Doe would suggest IMO.
> 
> That's all wonderfully sweet to go and search for token of affection, strength from old friend to remember her by. Except Snape went to the house which belongs to her child now and **stole** the part of the letter which contained her love. Her love was addressed to a dear friend, but not to Snape. This piece of memory now belongs to Harry, to her orphan child and I still see Snape being unable to deal with the fact that his friend did not leave HIM any pieces of affection (that we know of, maybe he had something that we never read about) and went to steal from others.

Carol responds:
I think we need to consider the circumstances. It's not as if, like Mundungus, he had immediately gone to Order Headquarters to steal what had been Sirius's property and sell it for personal profit. He only comes there (apparently after the Seven Potters incident though it would make more sense to me if it were just after the death of Dumbledore), he's in desperate straits. He's just taken part in the Seven Potters chase on Dumbledore's orders and has accidentally Sectumsempra'd George Weasley's ear in saving Lupin. Dumbledore expects him to protect the students of Hogwarts and maintain seeming loyalty to LV while the rest of the WW hates him as the supposed murderer of Dumbledore. 

Unlike Harry, he has no one to confide in, no one to whom he can confess his true loyalties. He knows he can never enter 12 GP again--he's probably just had to face and deal with "Old Dusty," the fake ghost of Dumbledore that Moody set up before he died. Finding that bit of Lily--that photo and her signature--brings him to tears. He has, at that point, nothing except his status with Voldemort to keep him alive, no support from Dumbledore (unless we count DD's portrait) or anyone else to keep him motivated. The Order members and his former colleagues see him as a murderer and a traitor. If he's going to continue opposing Voldemort and protecting Harry in these excruciatingly difficult circumstances (there's no guarantee that he'll become Hogwarts headmaster, much less deliver the crucial message to Harry that will enable him to vanquish Voldemort), he needs moral support from someone. If Snape were the medieval Catholic that he in some ways resembles (IMO), he could go into a church, fall on his knees, and beseech God to help him. But he has no one.

And so he takes what isn't his, her signature on a letter and her photograph, to give him what hope is possible in those circumstances, not thinking that it belongs to Harry, not thinking logically at all, as I think Harry understands when he witnesses the memory and does not begrudge the loss of those bits of his mother to the man who loved her. Harry has the rest of the photo and the letter, the part that tells him what was happening in those last months of his parents' life (I'll ignore the annoying problems with chronology here), and possibly that's enough for him. But Harry also has his friends, Ron and Hermione. He has the goodwill of the Wizarding World (all but the few who are affiliated with Voldemort). Snape has no real friends, only the burdens he has always carried along with the new ones created by the "murder" of Dumbledore and the demands that Portrait!DD is still placing upon him. If any man ever needed courage to do what he had to do in the face of the opprobrium of the whole WW, it was Severus Snape at that moment. I don't think we can judge him by ordinary standards of behavior in such circumstances. I suspect that he's still burning in the private hell that Harry saw burning in his face when he mentally compared Snape's pain to that of Fang in the burning house (though he didn't understand it then). Snape could have taken the whole letter, but he left most of it for Harry, taking only that little token of Lily's love and the part of the photo that showed her picture, to have a bit of her with him during this terribly difficult time. He may even have sensed that time was growing short for him, that he would need to do what he had to do for Harry and the WW very soon. I think that, for him, Lily's photo and signature perform much the same service that Lily, James, Lupin, and Black perform for Harry as he walks toward seemingly certain death. They give him the courage to do what he must do. When we next see him, his very last appearance in the book though not his last scene in terms of his life, he's himself, perfectly in control, ready to carry out a plan he's already made to deliver the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry under conditions of need and valor. He's doing it partly for DD, partly because it's necessary (though he doesn't know how) to enable Harry to defeat LV, but mostly, as always, for Lily, to protect and help her son as long as he still can.

Alla:
> 
> You are absolutely right, Snape will not be the first person to tear somebody from the picture, somebody whom he does not want in the picture, except again, the picture is not his and it is quite creepy to me that not only he stole the sentimental things that belong to Harry, but he now damaged it irrevocably.

Carol responds:
I understand how you feel, but my own reaction is very different. I think his pain and his emotional need are very great, and I think that Harry understands this need perfectly. Possibly, for him, that scene confirms Snape's love for Lily, proving that the Patronus really represents her and that he did indeed protect Harry and undermine Voldemort and risk his life repeatedly for her.

Carol, pretty sure that if there were any element of perversion or salacious desire in Snape's love, Harry would not have called it love or publicly defended Snape to Voldemort in the hearing of hundreds of people