The Character of Lily Evans
I've been sparing some thought here and there, and maybe I ought to be more charitable towards Lily but it just doesn't recommend itself to me, and I don't think it's just my personal biases getting in the way (though those are, admittedly, very much not her friends).
Regarding how representative or not the episodes in the Prince's Tale were of Lily and Severus's relationship, I lean heavily toward the affirmative. This sort of behaviour was normalized at Wyedean, where Rowling herself spent much of her "Hogwarts" years; and we see it in many other characters, most notably Hermione and Ginny. The whole series is riddled with teenage girls treating teenage boys as inferior, as less-than, that I for one never got from my girl peers when I was a teenage boy, even though I was if anything an even bigger awkward oddball than Severus ever managed, for all his crushing poverty and desperate bullying problem (edit: purely to clarify where I'm coming from, yes I was less well-off than most of my classmates and I was bullied, but in both cases my problems were tiny, even insignificant, next to what people like Severus go through).
Anyway, the fact that we have these scenes from Rowling's hand in particular suggests strongly to me that yes, these incidents were normal for their dynamic, or close to; not, until SWM at least, particularly negative incidents.
Too, Rowling adds fuel to the fire by making them residents of Cokeworth, a dingy little town choked in the smog and misery of Britain's withering old industries; and by separating them into a member of the barely-not-homeless underclass and one who has a clear and distinct class advantage over him.
Now, it's not at all fair to blame Lily for her seemingly unconscious classism against Severus... until she slams face first into the blood prejudice in the Wizarding World. Clever girl like her, it wouldn't take her long to put two and two together.
The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that Lily might have believed herself Severus's friend, with all sincerity, but she never was; and that he was a convenient whipping-boy for her various troubles... until he wasn't even that.
We all have different perspectives, which are of course influenced by individual biases and life experiences. Those are naturally reflected in how we perceive fictional characters, which is ultimately subjective.
In other words, it's perfectly valid for you to view Lily more harshly. To each their own/agree to disagree and all that. 🙂
I completely agree with you @motanulnegru.
Yeah, the whole HP series we saw girls mistreating boys being lesser most of the time, notable examples include Hermione, Lily, Ginny.
I hold Lily responsible for being a bad friend not being the self proclaimed best friend she called herself. I mean, joining the bullying crowd by calling Snape Snivellus and throwing his poverty in his face in the position of vulnerability was totally unfair.
Adding more salt to the wounds, she married the guy who made Snape's life hell, who relentlessly bullied him, who tried to get him killed and his only reason was him being bothered by Snape's existence. That was a total slap on face to the whole friendship.
There is a notable example being given in the meta of thread where we would've called Harry wrong for joining Draco in bullying Ron, why we make excuses for Lily and hold male-female example of platonic friendship lesser than men's loyality in friendship.
Do you think it would've right if Hermione married or dated Draco after all the bad wounds between trio and Draco, of course not, so how can we justify Lily's friendship for Snape.
My main criticism for Lily is actually that she took Snape for granted, cut him loose at her convenience and gave only superficial investment in the relationship of friendship. We saw that during her talk with Snape after SWM, she made mention that her friends don't know why she talked with him. Take note of term friends, not other friends or Gryffindor friends. She already had made her mind and only made official her long term thoughts in that conversation. Snape's friendship was as unrequited as his love.
One fic idea (amongst many...) I've had for a time is an OC Ravenclaw boy (gender is important!) in 6th year Marauder-era befriending Lily, platonically, at least at first. Eventually James catches on and begins harassing the OC, seeing him as competition for his designs on Lily -- because of course he does. OC asks Lily about this, since he doesn't know the circumstances around James and Lily. Her response is basically "you're lying, James would never do such a thing" without even considering what he said. His response boils down to "what the fuck?" and reconsiders whether Lily even respects their friendship if she blatantly dismissed the allegation straight-out without even asking for more info. Ultimately in the end, OC is able to engineer a situation where Lily catches James and the Marauders red-handed with their shenanigans. OC has a huge advantage as a Ravenclaw here because he's not subject to general Slytherin prejudices (so Marauder excuses of "he's a Slytherin, they're bad news" doesn't exactly work), and Lily is forced to re-evaluate the "innate goodness" of her own house.
Because that's what my personal viewpoint on the entire Snape-Lily debacle was -- it was less Lily being dismissive of Snape, and more that Lily, surrounded by nothing but Gryffindors, is being constantly poisoned by them in terms of her viewpoints. If everyone you're surrounded by keeps telling you X, over time you're liable to believe them, whether it's nonsense or not.
Quote from FIQ on May 29, 2023, 3:44 amOne fic idea (amongst many...) I've had for a time is an OC Ravenclaw boy (gender is important!) in 6th year Marauder-era befriending Lily, platonically, at least at first. Eventually James catches on and begins harassing the OC, seeing him as competition for his designs on Lily -- because of course he does. OC asks Lily about this, since he doesn't know the circumstances around James and Lily. Her response is basically "you're lying, James would never do such a thing" without even considering what he said. His response boils down to "what the fuck?" and reconsiders whether Lily even respects their friendship if she blatantly dismissed the allegation straight-out without even asking for more info. Ultimately in the end, OC is able to engineer a situation where Lily catches James and the Marauders red-handed with their shenanigans. OC has a huge advantage as a Ravenclaw here because he's not subject to general Slytherin prejudices (so Marauder excuses of "he's a Slytherin, they're bad news" doesn't exactly work), and Lily is forced to re-evaluate the "innate goodness" of her own house.
Because that's what my personal viewpoint on the entire Snape-Lily debacle was -- it was less Lily being dismissive of Snape, and more that Lily, surrounded by nothing but Gryffindors, is being constantly poisoned by them in terms of her viewpoints. If everyone you're surrounded by keeps telling you X, over time you're liable to believe them, whether it's nonsense or not.
I love this. Please write it. 💚💚💚💚💚
Quote from FIQ on May 29, 2023, 3:44 amOne fic idea (amongst many...) I've had for a time is an OC Ravenclaw boy (gender is important!) in 6th year Marauder-era befriending Lily, platonically, at least at first. Eventually James catches on and begins harassing the OC, seeing him as competition for his designs on Lily -- because of course he does. OC asks Lily about this, since he doesn't know the circumstances around James and Lily. Her response is basically "you're lying, James would never do such a thing" without even considering what he said. His response boils down to "what the fuck?" and reconsiders whether Lily even respects their friendship if she blatantly dismissed the allegation straight-out without even asking for more info. Ultimately in the end, OC is able to engineer a situation where Lily catches James and the Marauders red-handed with their shenanigans. OC has a huge advantage as a Ravenclaw here because he's not subject to general Slytherin prejudices (so Marauder excuses of "he's a Slytherin, they're bad news" doesn't exactly work), and Lily is forced to re-evaluate the "innate goodness" of her own house.
Because that's what my personal viewpoint on the entire Snape-Lily debacle was -- it was less Lily being dismissive of Snape, and more that Lily, surrounded by nothing but Gryffindors, is being constantly poisoned by them in terms of her viewpoints. If everyone you're surrounded by keeps telling you X, over time you're liable to believe them, whether it's nonsense or not.
Very good. So what will the endpoint will be? Lily reconciling with Snape, or with the OC, or both? I assume the shenanigans will be something extremely serious. Will it be a canon event or one that you've created? It could be something intended to hurt someone like Snape, but it backfires and hurts Lily instead in some way. But it depends on your timeline.
Lily is blind to the flaws of people she admires/loves unless it explodes in her face.
The letter Lily writes to Sirius contains a very odd detail on rereads. Near the end, Lily writes this:
Bathilda drops in most days, she's a fascinating old thing with the most amazing stories about Dumbledore, I'm not sure he'd be pleased if he knew! I don't know how much to believe, actually, because it seems incredible that Dumbledore could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind's going personally!
Now, the first time reading this nothing seems odd. But once one reads The Prince's Tale in Deathly Hallows it jumps off the page. Why would Lily, of all people, be surprised that Dumbledore was once friends with someone who went Dark? If it were James then sure, I'd get it. But Lily? Who was friends for 7 years with Snape, and explicitly broke their friendship because he was heading down a Dark path? Something doesn't add up. This is an indication to me of one the few character flaws that Lily consistently demonstrates. She is blind to the flaws of people she admires/loves unless it explodes in her face. We see this with Snape, in which she could ignore him calling other people mudbloods until he said it to her, were she "can't pretend anymore". We see this with James, where she can ignore him continuing to bully Snape as long as he hides it. And we see this with Dumbledore, refusing to believe that he could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. She never really grows out of this. That would have come with maturity I think, which she tragically never got. She died too early.
To be fair, we don't know for certain if she knew about the bullying; it would suck if she did, but that's a bit ambiguous when Sirius and Remus mention it.
Yeah, I doubt she knew about the bullying, but other than that, the post is spot on. I especially like the last two sentences… overall, a very fair take on her character.
She started going out with him in seventh year,’ said Lupin.
‘Once James had deflated his head a bit,’ said Sirius.
‘And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,’ said Lupin.
‘Even Snape?’ said Harry.
‘Well,’ said Lupin slowly, ‘Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?’
‘And my mum was OK with that?’
‘She didn’t know too much about it, to tell you the truth,’ said Sirius. ‘I mean, James didn’t take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her, did he?’
I re-read this and I'll say that Lily knew what was going on somewhat, she knew James was still hexing Snape and content to ignore it if James didn't hex Snape in front of her.
I disagree with the idea that Lily was duped into a relationship with a manipulator James. The above dialogue confirms that James didn't change much, he only stopped hexing random students and stopped being over obnoxious, she accepted James for all his faults.
I'll conclude that she had shiitty taste in guys, perhaps she liked rich, arrogant boys. James wasn't super handsome the way most of fics describe him, he looked like Harry who was average in looks. Sirius was the handsome guy as described in every description of him. JKR did say that Daniel and Emma looked very handsome compared to book Harry and Hermione who were average in looks.
