Lily and Snape

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187192

 
> > Alla:
> > 
> > Eh, I guess we just have to agree to disagree on that. Again, call it personal projection if you wish, but in my life long experience, person who calls you the vile name based on your belonging to social group or race, or whatever usually cannot stand this group.

Pippin:
But the whole point here is that the usual assumption was wrong. Harry thought, because of that word, that Snape hated his mother and all Muggleborns, and so Dumbledore was fooled, Snape was never sorry that Lily was dead, and Snape didn't give a damn about her.  

I really do not think Snape was considering the overall political implications of calling someone a mudblood while he was being tortured.

Probably he did see Muggleborns in general as inferior, as much of the WW did, but that doesn't mean he was emotionally invested in hating them. If not, it would make it relatively easy for him to drop the idea once something he *was* emotionally invested in was threatened. 

I think you have to have a violent hatred of *something* to willingly become involved with violence against the innocent, but it's possible Snape never took the DE anti-mudblood philosophy seriously. 

Look at Barty Crouch Jr. For him, being a DE was all about getting back at his father.  Muggle torture was a waste of time that should have been spent trying to bring Voldemort back to power, so he could deal with the people that Crouch *really* hated.  

Julie:
 But Lily didn't intervene because she was enraged on Snape's behalf, as she was initially amused until she apparently realized that she *should* be angry. 

Pippin:
Where do you get that she was initially amused? Some of the students were amused, but others were apprehensive. The girls by the lake are behind James as he advances on Snape. James looks over his shoulder at them. They're not looking at him initially, they're dangling their toes in the water. So we can't blame Lily if she didn't see what was going on immediately. 

The almost smile (it wasn't a laugh) makes her look bad. But many others were cheering -- Snape must have looked awfully silly. If she knew it was his own curse that had caught him, well, that makes it funny too. But she goes right back to being furious. 

I love the way, "What's he done to you" changes meaning. We don't know whether she said it the way I initially read it, as trying to shame James, or as I re-read it when I knew she was upset about what had happened to Mary. But if she said it the second way, it certainly makes Snape's reaction more understandable. 

I don't see a lot of argue-flirting. I do see that James had a gift for getting Lily's attention which would make Snape extremely jealous. We see, in her last words, that she has had her eye on James, despite her disgust with him, and Snape must have noticed that. 

But where she really went wrong, IMO,  was that she  threatened to hex James herself while Snape was wandless unless they left him alone. What she should've done was try to get Snape's wand and give it back to him. It's not so much that she wasn't treating Snape like a friend as  that she wasn't treating him like an equal. 

She was being patronizing. She was treating Snape as her inferior, though I don't think she meant to, and he retaliated in kind. 

Julie:
 but as saintly as he viewed and remembered her, no.

Pippin:
The patronus is Lily as Snape's heart's desire, as she would have appeared had he seen her in the Mirror of Erised. And that, as Dumbledore warned Harry, will  give us neither knowledge nor truth. 

Pippin