Snape and Lily - school connections?

[davewitley]

Catlady wrote:

> But at Sluggy's Christmas party, when he is telling Snape how good
> Harry is at Potions, he says something about: "You should have seen
> that Draught of Living Death he made for me. I've never seen a student
> do it better, not even you, Severus." I don't think that was mere
> baseless flattery of his conversation partner; I think it relates to
> Snape having been a brilliant Potions student and a member of the Slug
> Club.

Yes, I felt this passage seemed quite significant, and it's clear he
neither flatters nor snubs Snape in this scene - he hauls Snape into
the conversation and then gives him second place to Lily in supposed
influence on Harry's skills.

What JKR seems to be conveying is that Harry's potions expertise
reminds him of Lily, and that he is better than Snape.  Given that he
is actually using the Half-Blood Prince's recipes, this creates
something of a puzzle.

I think the possibilities are:

1) Snape was the pioneer, but passed his knowledge on to Lily.  The
problem here is that they were in the same year ("Snape's Worst
Memory" in OOP established that Lily, the Marauders and Snape all took
OWLs at the same time) so they were presumably doing the same lessons
at the same time, and it's hard to see how Snape could have seemed
inferior to her yet be teaching her.

2) Lily was the pioneer, and passed her knowledge on to Snape.  Either
Snape wrote it down, or she did but he subsequently claimed the book
as his own.  I think this is an interesting possibility as it implies
Lily was dabbling in, if not the Dark Arts, at least some rather
unpleasant magic.  In the worst memory scene Snape would have a
possible motive for her not to intervene as there might be a danger
she would reveal knowledge of spells he was claiming to Slytherin
friends were his alone.

I think the main difficulty with this theory is that Snape's anger at
Harry over 'his' spells seems genuine enough: if he knew that they
came from Lily, would he react that way?

3) They were independently good at Potions, but Snape's knowledge was
passed to Harry.  The weakness is that Harry clearly reminds Slughorn
of Lily, even in a context where Snape's ability is being considered.
 Seems a bit much.

My worry is that the "real" explanation is that, in the context of HBP
only, JKR was trying to misdirect us into thinking Lily was the HBP
(hence Hermione's statements that the HBP could be a woman), and that
despite its weakness, 3) is her resolution and there was no special
connection between Snape and Lily in the context of Potions.

David