Meta: Harry’s relationship to the Prince as a blueprint for Lily’s friendship with Snape

#1 · July 18, 2023, 1:32 am

Quote from Naaga on July 18, 2023, 1:32 am
Source: Harry’s relationship to the Prince as a blueprint for Lily’s friendship with Snape

What kind of spirit do you think Snape and Lily shared, that made their friendship last 6-7 years?

This is a difficult question, in fact! I don’t think canon set it up very well. Lily herself is barely a character – not in terms of importance, but in development. Who is she? What’s she really like? Although, like James, we only know her through memories, she’s harder to get a handle on.

Part of this is because James is defined when Sirius and Remus talk about him; he hangs on in the Marauder’s Map and in Harry’s patronus; we know him through Harry, through James’ surviving friends, and through the inventions and heirlooms he left behind. But those same people hardly ever talk about Lily; her primary friend was (as we find out only at the end) Snape, who guarded that secret harder than a mama dragon. He only shows Harry those memories because it’s literally the end of the world.

(like, did lily have ANY girl friends, lol. she apparently hung out with crowds of them in her 5th year but her best friends were still all a pack of dudes. anyone remember those fics where harry’s “godmother” would materialize out of the ether? those made some sense.)

So, at the end of DH we finally get to know something about Lily through a friendship…. only it’s the deterioration of a friendship. It doesn’t do much to let us learn about her; like the OotP scene, she’s largely reacting. We know she was a gifted witch, but that tells us jack about her personality; Voldemort was also gifted. We can guess she was popular (cf. that crowd of girls in OotP). She was in love with James. She was friends with Snape. This is entirely defining Lily by her relationships to others or by her aptitude.

So, canon presents a clever, popular pretty girl and…..that’s it. Those things aren’t personality traits. Both Snape and Hermione are clever, but they almost couldn’t be more different. Cedric is popular, but so was Harry’s dad; waaay different. And so on. So those descriptors are useless.

The meat of her personality, therefore, has to be extrapolation. A lot of fanon portrayals of Lily are some of the least flattering portrayals of female characters I’ve ever seen. But at the same time, i have to admit that in canon, she is so hard to gel with these different personas – friends of a weirdo odd-ball like Snape, popular pretty girl who almost smiles when Snape gets hoisted in the air. How the hell do you get those two things to go together, one may wonder, (myself included)?

I think Harry is the key. In Snape’s memories, Dumbledore says Harry’s deeper nature is more like his mother’s. Now, we can quibble with that if we want, but his personality certainly isn’t like his dad’s. James was popular, confident, show-offy; he enjoyed being the center of attention so much that he created scenes to make himself the center of attention. He pranked people for fun, did dangerous things for the thrill of it – can you imagine Harry asking a girl out, in front of a crowd of people, while she’s telling him off? Harry beetled around for ages trying to get up the nerve to ask out Cho, and then wanted to die when she very kindly said she couldn’t.

James’ baseline personality and his presentation of himself are extremely unlike Harry’s. Harry is quiet, secretive, sarcastic; he doesn’t like attention unless he’s earned it (as for Quidditch) and he’s always befriending the kinda weird, down-and-out kids. Now, some of this can be argued as upbringing, but: Harry’s personality can work with someone like Snape, and with someone like any of the Marauders. And the most important clue I think canon gives us is the prince’s book in HBP.

Lily is not Hermione. I firmly believe that. Hermione would never have been friends with any of the Marauders except Remus; she definitely disdained the half-blood Prince. Hermione is a stickler for rules, believing they should only be broken when there’s a great need. if Lily was friends with Snape first and the Marauders later, she can’t be hung-up on rule-breaking; she only doesn’t want you to be a dick about it, hurting or humiliating people with stupid tricks. But she’s willing to stretch a point if it’s an enemy, probably, or if she thinks it’s harmless, which Hermione isn’t. If the Marauders are one extreme (constantly pranking and even attacking), and Hermione is the other (”none of this is funny and I’m going to report all of you”), Lily was probably on Harry and Ron’s level: depending on what it was and who it was aimed at, she’d think it was funny. Harry and Ron liked the Prince. That was teenage Snape as Lily knew him. And there’s a part in HBP where Harry thinks, “Despite the increasing nastiness of those scribbled spells, he’d refused to believe ill of the boy who’d been so clever, who had helped him so much.”

I think we can take that as a blueprint for Lily’s friendship with Snape. The real thing would have been magnified, of course, because she knew more dimensions to him. If Harry got attached to a little book-version of him, Lily would have had a heavier case, both of friendship and the breaking of it. Harry was distraught and felt worse than a fool at the end, as if he’d been a party to evil; Lily probably felt the same way after that day of OWLs.

Even her little smile in SWM maps to Harry in a similar situation. There are plenty of times where he’s hurt or ticked off at Ron and he gets kind of nasty. This is, in fact, one of the only actual personality traits of Lily’s that we see; when Petunia hurts her, she hurts back. Not physically, the way Snape does, but with words. We see that also in SWM when she tells “Snivellus” to wash his pants. Harry throws a badge at Ron’s head and tells him, “Maybe you’ll have a scar now; that’s what you want, isn’t it?”, laughs privately when Fred and George ask who in their right mind would make Ron a prefect, and considers letting Ron make an ass of himself over Romilda Vane after Ron clobbered him on the ear. He and Ron can be awful to Hermione, too. (Harry gets over this immaturity sooner than Ron does, but Ron has a worse problem with jealousy.) Ultimately, these moments of anger don’t define Harry; he has a temper and he can lash out, but he usually feels bad or thinks better of it.

tl;dr: I use HBP and Harry’s relationship to the Prince as a blueprint for Lily’s friendship with Snape. I do honestly believe that if Snape hadn’t been such a flaming dick, he and Harry could’ve gotten along. H e y that’s kinda what my fic is about! c:

Source: Harry’s relationship to the Prince as a blueprint for Lily’s friendship with Snape

What kind of spirit do you think Snape and Lily shared, that made their friendship last 6-7 years?

This is a difficult question, in fact! I don’t think canon set it up very well. Lily herself is barely a character – not in terms of importance, but in development. Who is she? What’s she really like? Although, like James, we only know her through memories, she’s harder to get a handle on.

Part of this is because James is defined when Sirius and Remus talk about him; he hangs on in the Marauder’s Map and in Harry’s patronus; we know him through Harry, through James’ surviving friends, and through the inventions and heirlooms he left behind. But those same people hardly ever talk about Lily; her primary friend was (as we find out only at the end) Snape, who guarded that secret harder than a mama dragon. He only shows Harry those memories because it’s literally the end of the world.

(like, did lily have ANY girl friends, lol. she apparently hung out with crowds of them in her 5th year but her best friends were still all a pack of dudes. anyone remember those fics where harry’s “godmother” would materialize out of the ether? those made some sense.)

So, at the end of DH we finally get to know something about Lily through a friendship…. only it’s the deterioration of a friendship. It doesn’t do much to let us learn about her; like the OotP scene, she’s largely reacting. We know she was a gifted witch, but that tells us jack about her personality; Voldemort was also gifted. We can guess she was popular (cf. that crowd of girls in OotP). She was in love with James. She was friends with Snape. This is entirely defining Lily by her relationships to others or by her aptitude.

So, canon presents a clever, popular pretty girl and…..that’s it. Those things aren’t personality traits. Both Snape and Hermione are clever, but they almost couldn’t be more different. Cedric is popular, but so was Harry’s dad; waaay different. And so on. So those descriptors are useless.

The meat of her personality, therefore, has to be extrapolation. A lot of fanon portrayals of Lily are some of the least flattering portrayals of female characters I’ve ever seen. But at the same time, i have to admit that in canon, she is so hard to gel with these different personas – friends of a weirdo odd-ball like Snape, popular pretty girl who almost smiles when Snape gets hoisted in the air. How the hell do you get those two things to go together, one may wonder, (myself included)?

I think Harry is the key. In Snape’s memories, Dumbledore says Harry’s deeper nature is more like his mother’s. Now, we can quibble with that if we want, but his personality certainly isn’t like his dad’s. James was popular, confident, show-offy; he enjoyed being the center of attention so much that he created scenes to make himself the center of attention. He pranked people for fun, did dangerous things for the thrill of it – can you imagine Harry asking a girl out, in front of a crowd of people, while she’s telling him off? Harry beetled around for ages trying to get up the nerve to ask out Cho, and then wanted to die when she very kindly said she couldn’t.

James’ baseline personality and his presentation of himself are extremely unlike Harry’s. Harry is quiet, secretive, sarcastic; he doesn’t like attention unless he’s earned it (as for Quidditch) and he’s always befriending the kinda weird, down-and-out kids. Now, some of this can be argued as upbringing, but: Harry’s personality can work with someone like Snape, and with someone like any of the Marauders. And the most important clue I think canon gives us is the prince’s book in HBP.

Lily is not Hermione. I firmly believe that. Hermione would never have been friends with any of the Marauders except Remus; she definitely disdained the half-blood Prince. Hermione is a stickler for rules, believing they should only be broken when there’s a great need. if Lily was friends with Snape first and the Marauders later, she can’t be hung-up on rule-breaking; she only doesn’t want you to be a dick about it, hurting or humiliating people with stupid tricks. But she’s willing to stretch a point if it’s an enemy, probably, or if she thinks it’s harmless, which Hermione isn’t. If the Marauders are one extreme (constantly pranking and even attacking), and Hermione is the other (”none of this is funny and I’m going to report all of you”), Lily was probably on Harry and Ron’s level: depending on what it was and who it was aimed at, she’d think it was funny. Harry and Ron liked the Prince. That was teenage Snape as Lily knew him. And there’s a part in HBP where Harry thinks, “Despite the increasing nastiness of those scribbled spells, he’d refused to believe ill of the boy who’d been so clever, who had helped him so much.”

I think we can take that as a blueprint for Lily’s friendship with Snape. The real thing would have been magnified, of course, because she knew more dimensions to him. If Harry got attached to a little book-version of him, Lily would have had a heavier case, both of friendship and the breaking of it. Harry was distraught and felt worse than a fool at the end, as if he’d been a party to evil; Lily probably felt the same way after that day of OWLs.

Even her little smile in SWM maps to Harry in a similar situation. There are plenty of times where he’s hurt or ticked off at Ron and he gets kind of nasty. This is, in fact, one of the only actual personality traits of Lily’s that we see; when Petunia hurts her, she hurts back. Not physically, the way Snape does, but with words. We see that also in SWM when she tells “Snivellus” to wash his pants. Harry throws a badge at Ron’s head and tells him, “Maybe you’ll have a scar now; that’s what you want, isn’t it?”, laughs privately when Fred and George ask who in their right mind would make Ron a prefect, and considers letting Ron make an ass of himself over Romilda Vane after Ron clobbered him on the ear. He and Ron can be awful to Hermione, too. (Harry gets over this immaturity sooner than Ron does, but Ron has a worse problem with jealousy.) Ultimately, these moments of anger don’t define Harry; he has a temper and he can lash out, but he usually feels bad or thinks better of it.

tl;dr: I use HBP and Harry’s relationship to the Prince as a blueprint for Lily’s friendship with Snape. I do honestly believe that if Snape hadn’t been such a flaming dick, he and Harry could’ve gotten along. H e y that’s kinda what my fic is about! c:

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#2 · July 18, 2023, 5:33 am

This is a great post - thank you for sharing!

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#3 · July 18, 2023, 7:46 am

Quote from Dark Angel on July 18, 2023, 7:46 am
I do think that Harry has traits of both his parents but at the same time I hate the idea of a child being the carbon copy of their parents inside and out. Harry didn't even grow up with his parents and your personality results more from nurture not nature.

Harry was raised in an entirely different environment than his parents; James was rich and spoiled rotten and Lily, despite having an annoying sister, seems to have come from a functional family. Harry grew up poor and hated by his guardians and the only people who showed him affection were members of the magical world, of course he craves their attention and wants to be the hero. At that point being celebrated and loved would be addicting. He is eager to please and show that he is of value of this world that actually seems to want him, and if they need a hero, they will get one! Harry is shy and secretive because he was abused, obviously he would lack the confidence James has.

In Lily's case, the problem really is that we don't see much of her to really form an opinion based on canon. Almost everything is left to our imagination. As stated, she doesn't seem to have any girlfriends, especially none who are alive in the future and could tell Harry about her. Her lack of close female friends could be because she may have been something akin to a tomboy? Maybe she simply vibes more with guys than girls? That's why her bestie was a boy. Hermione isn't much different. She does not seem to have a close relationship to any of the Gryffindor girls and only starts spending time with Ginny and Luna later on in the series.

There's one time Harry did resemble his dad and that's at the beginning of fifth year when he feels embarrassed to be sharing a compartment with Neville and the others when Cho appears. With Snape he is cheeky and rude because, in all fairness, Snape started it. The kid was well behaved and attentively listened to every word the man said in class until he decided to humiliate him.

But with Lily, yes he is a little bit moody but again that could be a trauma response and with Ron, the redhead usually starts it with his envious behavior. When Ron refuses to believe that Harry hasn't entered his name into the Goblet, Harry actually reminds me Snape trying to convince Lily that Lupin is a werewolf. Both have a best friend who refuses to believe them. Harry may have participated in a laugh or two at his friend's expense and it is innocent when the teasing comes from friends and family but let's turn this a little around: how would you all react if Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle cornered Hermione and tried to forcefully undress her and then Harry tries to suppress a smile at the scene? You can't really compare that lashing out at Ron because he's been a jerk or laughing at him when his brothers are teasing him. Besides, we all were surprised that Ron was made a prefect, the position really doesn't suit him.

Lily is supposedly praised as a saint because she befriended Severus but to me that makes it sound like her friendship with Snape was charity, a burden she had taken on willingly and out of the goodness of her heart and that doesn't sound like genuine friendship at all.

I do think that Harry has traits of both his parents but at the same time I hate the idea of a child being the carbon copy of their parents inside and out. Harry didn't even grow up with his parents and your personality results more from nurture not nature.

Harry was raised in an entirely different environment than his parents; James was rich and spoiled rotten and Lily, despite having an annoying sister, seems to have come from a functional family. Harry grew up poor and hated by his guardians and the only people who showed him affection were members of the magical world, of course he craves their attention and wants to be the hero. At that point being celebrated and loved would be addicting. He is eager to please and show that he is of value of this world that actually seems to want him, and if they need a hero, they will get one! Harry is shy and secretive because he was abused, obviously he would lack the confidence James has.

In Lily's case, the problem really is that we don't see much of her to really form an opinion based on canon. Almost everything is left to our imagination. As stated, she doesn't seem to have any girlfriends, especially none who are alive in the future and could tell Harry about her. Her lack of close female friends could be because she may have been something akin to a tomboy? Maybe she simply vibes more with guys than girls? That's why her bestie was a boy. Hermione isn't much different. She does not seem to have a close relationship to any of the Gryffindor girls and only starts spending time with Ginny and Luna later on in the series.

There's one time Harry did resemble his dad and that's at the beginning of fifth year when he feels embarrassed to be sharing a compartment with Neville and the others when Cho appears. With Snape he is cheeky and rude because, in all fairness, Snape started it. The kid was well behaved and attentively listened to every word the man said in class until he decided to humiliate him.

But with Lily, yes he is a little bit moody but again that could be a trauma response and with Ron, the redhead usually starts it with his envious behavior. When Ron refuses to believe that Harry hasn't entered his name into the Goblet, Harry actually reminds me Snape trying to convince Lily that Lupin is a werewolf. Both have a best friend who refuses to believe them. Harry may have participated in a laugh or two at his friend's expense and it is innocent when the teasing comes from friends and family but let's turn this a little around: how would you all react if Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle cornered Hermione and tried to forcefully undress her and then Harry tries to suppress a smile at the scene? You can't really compare that lashing out at Ron because he's been a jerk or laughing at him when his brothers are teasing him. Besides, we all were surprised that Ron was made a prefect, the position really doesn't suit him.

Lily is supposedly praised as a saint because she befriended Severus but to me that makes it sound like her friendship with Snape was charity, a burden she had taken on willingly and out of the goodness of her heart and that doesn't sound like genuine friendship at all.

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#4 · July 18, 2023, 7:56 am

@darkangel, frankly I am of mixed opinion about Lily. I don't like her and find many things wrong in their friendship. That being said, I don't think Snape's dedication was owed to an aweful person so she must've some redeemable qualities otherwise I don't want to believe and frankly it's quite painful realisation that Snape's devotion was given to a shallow and vain girl.

About Harry's nature, I suppose Dumbledore meant kind and compassionate nature which he felt was similar to Lily. Personality wise, Harry is a lot similar to Snape than most of the people, being a neglected abused kid himself.

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#5 · July 18, 2023, 8:07 am

That's the problem. Because Snape was such an awkward and lonely kid and he came from a dysfunctional family, he wouldn't even know that Lily may not have been a very good friend to him because she would still be the best thing that has so far happened to him and that's the saddest part. Imagine a poor kid that never had any toys and then they find a teddy bear with a missing eye, with ripped seams and dirty but they're so happy it's as if someone got them a brand new life-sized plushie. If she really was more "good friends for now" with Severus rather than "best friends forever," he misunderstood their friendship. And frankly, it is normal for friendships to dissolve over time but the problem with Snapenis that he doesn't have anyone to replace her with. At least, there are no good options.

We only see Lily's supposed kindness in relation to Severus and her sacrifice for Harry and being kind to your loved ones should be a given.

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#6 · July 18, 2023, 8:13 am

Yeah, agreed that Lily's supposed kindness wasn't anything extraordinary. Her greatest act, sacrificing herself for her son was great but it isn't anything special, replace her with Molly or Narcissa in a similar situation and they will also make that sacrificial play.

Same case with James, his bravery to protect is family is good but it is expected of a father, replace him with Vernon Dursley and he will do the same (he would be smart enough to keep a shotgun unlike "I didn't pick my wand James").

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#7 · July 18, 2023, 8:21 am

Quote from Naaga on July 18, 2023, 8:13 am

Yeah, agreed that Lily's supposed kindness wasn't anything extraordinary. Her greatest act, sacrificing herself for her son was great but it isn't anything special, replace her with Molly or Narcissa in a similar situation and they will also make that sacrificial play.

Same case with James, his bravery to protect is family is good but it is expected of a father, replace him with Vernon Dursley and he will do the same (he would be smart enough to keep a shotgun unlike "I didn't pick my wand James").

This!!!

Any decent parent would sacrifice their own life for their child. Obviously, there those who would say "We can always make more." But someone with that mentality should not procreate in the first place.

I had to laugh at the Vernon part, I almost feel sorry for James, imagine even Vernon being smarter than you 😰

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#8 · July 18, 2023, 8:25 am

I almost felt sorry for James, but then I remembered it's James, screw him. 😹😹

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