Snape and Lily - school connections?

[corinthum]

Dave wrote, re Snape's and Lily's potions abilities:

> 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.

It's possible that Snape chose not to excel in that class (or possibly
any other), in the stereotypical
misfit-genious-who-doesn't-give-a-damn sort of way.  The scribblings
in the book struck me as personal, on his own time type research, not
regular class notes.  After all, I doubt Snape just happened to
stumble upon all the shortcuts and improvements written in the margins
during class.  I think it much more likely that he bought the book for
himself when he was younger, and spent his free time experimenting
freely with the potions in it, noting anything that worked in the
margins.  By the time he got to his sixth year, he had already
perfected the potions in the textbook, was already more than prepared
for his NEWTs, and therefore saw no reason to exert any effort in
Potions class.  Slughorn, as his head of house and potions teacher,
may have been the only teacher to notice his talent, but not truly
understand how brilliant he was.

I still don't like the idea that Snape _loved_ Lily, but I could buy
the idea that he liked her and so began helping her in Potions.  The
tutoring could easily have taken place in previous years, prior to the
Snape's Worst Memory incident.  Lily was intelligent, and a year or
two of Snape's tutoring may have been all she needed to excel, even if
they had a falling out later.

-Kelly