Courtly love in Potterverse WAS: What triggered ancient magic

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187174

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> > Carol, who agrees that Snape's love didn't alter when it alteration found and appreciates the Shakespearean allusion but still thinks that the spiritual guardian is an idealized incarnation of the beloved person's essence as perceived by the caster
> >
> 
> Pippin:
> Okay, but how does that show that Snape loved the idealized incarnation and didn't love Lily as she was? 

Carol responds:

While she was alive, he loved her as she was--or as he understood her to be. (I don't think Teen!Severus accepted her attraction to James as real since she denied it herself, and he never saw her after they left Hogwarts, which left plenty of room for an imaginary Lily to fantasize about and idealize. We see him doing just that when he takes the signature of the letter and pretends that it was written to him.0

But I'm talking about the Patronus representing an idealized Lily--pure and bright and beautiful and flawless, just as Harry's Patronus represents the idealized James who died for Harry and would not have let his friends kill Wormtail. (Harry holds onto that James even after he witnesses SWM. No doubt the wand echo in the graveyard helped.)

Pippin:
> 
> Anyway, we were discussing how Snape could want to be a DE when he knew that Lily thought they were evil. But re-reading, he wasn't paying attention when Lily said that. They could have had a dialogue about it, but they didn't. 
> 
> It was instead the sort of conversation that Dumbledore speaks of where each person is more interested in proclaiming their own point of view than in understanding what the other has to say. The result was that Lily thought she'd already given him an ultimatum: "You've made your choice" while Snape expected that if he could only convince her his apology was sincere, they could go on as before. 
> 
> If Lily hadn't broken off their relationship, they might have come to a mutual understanding eventually, much as Ron and Hermione did about the House Elves. At this point of the story, though, they're both relying on received wisdom, just  as Ron and Hermione were in GoF.
> 
>  Neither had any  first hand knowledge of what it means to be a DE. Even if some of Snape's older friends had already joined up, they wouldn't have been at liberty to tell Snape what it was really like. 
> It's easy to take an extreme position when what you know has already been distilled to remove any possibility of nuance.

Carol:
Okay. That makes sense. I agree that neither of them really had any idea what DEs were like, Had Severus known, he might have listened to her and understood her objections--or not wanted to join up himself. (we see how deluded Draco is about the "glory" of receiving an assignment from Voldemort. Regulus was also deluded as to how admirable Voldemort was. Most likely, Severus and his friends were similarly deluded, sheltered as they were in the safe haven of Hogwarts.

As it was, the DE/Order conflict probably looked like nothing more than an extension of the antipathy between Slytherin and Gryffindor that we saw with little James and little Sev on the Hogwarts Express and in SWM and see again in Harry's time at Hogwarts.

If that's correct, it makes sense that he thought he might earn Lily's respect and admiration by becoming a DE and showing her how powerful and exciting they "really" were. She, OTOH, would have hated them even more had she known what they were really like.

If, however, he listened and understood that she hated the DEs (and both of them really knew what they were), it would be absurd to think that she'd admire him for becoming one.

Anyway, I don't see much connection between the very human and unforgiving Lily that we see after SWM and the Lily represented by Snape's Patronus. His view of her must have become less and less accurate as they grew further apart and completely idealized, all flaws removed and nothing but beauty and purity remaining, after her death (just as James, as I think you said yourself, became "good" after his death--or seconds before-- and that good, brave, loving James is the one we see in the stag Patronus).

Just the way I see it.

Carol, hoping we've moved closer to understanding each other's positions now