LilyAnimagus/SnapePatronus/UpsideDownMotif/DEs/ImpulseControl/Desert Island

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187196

Carol earlier:
> 
> << that Lily's Animagus form would have been a doe >>
> 
> Feisty Lily? Surely her self-image would have been more that she was the noble fighter for justice than that she was the passive beauty who inspired the noble fighter. Surely her Animagus would have been something with a bit more of an aggressive (protectively aggressive) than a doe. Maybe a mother bear, except that I fantasize that slender and red-haired were also part of her self-image. Maybe a red-brown greyhound? Aghan hound? A kestrel?

Carol responds:

I wouldn't call lily aggressive. At most, she's cheeky to slughorn and, I suppose, assertive with regard to James. In the face of voldemort, however, she's terrified and begging abjectly--granted, she's begging him to spare Harry and not herself, but she's not attacking him with fists and nails since she doesn't have her wand. and, of course, there's one famous doe, the mate of a stag, who died and left a baby son--Bambi's mother.

Anyway, I' still sure that she would have been a doe if she had been an Animagus simply because JKR wanted Harry's parents to be a matched pair. Doe or deer symbolism may well play a part. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with it.

Now Narcissa, a mother who hexes her own sister and says she'll do anything to save her son--she wouldn't be a mother bear (insufficiently graceful and beautiful), but maybe a tigress.

Narcissa and Lily? Both flowers but with differing symbolism--a matched yet contrasting pair.

Carol, wondering how Snape felt when he learned that Harry's Patronus was a stag, almost certainly the mate of his beautiful doe