Courtly love in Potterverse WAS: What triggered ancient magic?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187134

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> Pippin:
> <SNIP>
> In any case, Snape did not know that Dumbledore was going to ask him to be a
> spy. He would have expected to die or be sent to prison after he had delivered
> his warning to Dumbledore, so he was not going to be in any condition to take
> Lily for himself. But he was at that point still in general sympathy with the DE
> cause. <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Okay, yes the case of bad copying and pasting again, but maybe it is good that this one going in the separate post.
> 
> Sure, this one I think is the strongest argument that I had seen so far that Snape did not think of taking Lily for himself. I still would not say that it is conclusive, because we are not in Snape's head.
> 
> Maybe he expected to fool Dumbledore and run away after he delivered his warning, after all he did leave after he eavesdropped the Prophecy, maybe he thought that he will get Lily later after he is out of prison, since she would have chance to get over her family deaths, even better for him.
> 
> But still I like it.
>
Carol responds:

It's obvious from "The Prince's Tale" that young Snape (who, BTW, would be twenty at that point if it's soon after Harry's birth) is concerned only about one thing--Lily's life. It's not just that he wants her alive, it's that he doesn't want to be responsible for her death. He's feeling anguished love, fear, and remorse. And though he's afraid that DD will kill him, I think he's mostly afraid of dying before he delivers his message (a fear we see again just before LV pulls him into Nagini's bubble).

I'm not so sure that he's still a loyal DE, though. He quickly agrees to DD's protecting the whole family, and just by going to Dumbledore, he has betrayed Voldemort. More important, he's willing to do "anything" to save Lily. Harry says later that from the moment Voldemort targeted Lily, Snape was Dumbledore's man. I don't think it happened quite that quickly. It's more that from the moment Voldemort targeted Lily, he ceased to be a loyal DE. And from the time Dumbledore promised to protect them, he became Dumbledore's man. And he remains Dumbledore's man after Lily's death even though he would prefer to die himself because DD persuades him that they can work together to protect Harry so that Lily's death won't be in vain.

I agree that he isn't thinking about Lily's feelings in the matter. I don't think it's comprehensible to him that she could love James or that he thinks about that at all. He simply wants Lily--his beautiful, idealized Lily whom he's loved since childhood--to be alive, especially if her death would be partly his own fault. He tries to prevent it and fails and then he devotes his life to her memory--or to her service, continuing to serve the cause she died for, protecting the life of her son and to undermine the cause of her murderer.

I do see elements of courtly love--I can't help thinking of the Man of La Mancha ("to love pure and chaste from afar; to fight the unbeatable foe") when I see his doe Patronus--but I don't think that his love for Lily is a parody of courtly love, however far he may be from the ideal knight (or she from the ideal lady he thinks she is). It's more of a tragedy, IMO. His remorse redeems him because it leads him to atone for his sins, to save people when he can instead of watching them die (even Montague probably counts as someone that he has saved), but he still dies because of that fatal flaw, reporting the partial Prophecy to Voldemort, the sin that caused his whole plot and character arc--and, for that matter, the whole story of Harry Potter, Chosen One.

Anyway, I don't see how he can be expected to understand her. She's marrying someone he knows to be an arrogant bully. He hasn't seen her for two years. He has no idea of their home life. All he cares about is saving the life of his beloved Lily--and undoing the wrong of reporting the Prophecy, which he never would have done if he'd had any idea that it would involve Lily.

Carol, who thinks that Snape must have empathized very strongly with Narcissa when she came to him with the plea to protect her beloved son as he had come to DD to beg him to protect Lily