Quote from Naaga on March 9, 2023, 2:40 am

Source: The extremely dsyfunctional friendship of Snape and Lily by straysayake

I wanted to read some of the later scenes of teenage Snape and Lily, using this quote to color my observations:

Melissa Anelli: How did they get together? She hated James, from what we have seen.

Rowling: Did she really? You are a woman, you know what I am talking about.

And in using this quote to color my reading, I found more dsyfunction in this friendship than I already did. By the time we reach teenage Snape and Lily before SWM, their friendship is pretty much already fraying. Neither of them are really listening to each other.

The scene begins with Lily talking about the company Snape is keeping - the ones Lily will later refer to as "you and your precious Death Eater friends". Snape dismisses her concerns about his friends as "it was just laugh" and when she begins to talk about if he finds Dark Magic funny, effectively turning up the heat on her criticism, Snape deflects the conversation to the Marauders. Specifically, James Potter.

With JKR's quote in mind, this deflection is interesting. Why does Snape need to have an assurance of her opinion of his primary antagonists? Lily apparently has the same idea: "What has Potter got to do with anything?"

Snape goes on his Lupin theory, which she has apparently heard many times before. She shuts it down and sounds "cold". And she says: "Why are you so obssessed with them anyway? Why do you care what they are doing at night?" ( My personal head canon is that she secretly knows Snape is right about Lupin being a werewolf, especially if Snape has explained it to her logically before. She is just trying to shut down that avenue of conversation to protect Lupin).

And his reasoning is: "I am trying to show you they're not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are". Again, why would he feel the need to demonstrate this? Unless he suspects that she is attracted to James?

This is further emphasized by when Lily brings up James saving him, Snape's tail end sentence that nearly renders him incoherent is this: "You are not going to - I won't let you" and when Lily fires: "Let me? Let me?" and Snape brings up James' feelings for her and how he is not as a great as everyone thinks he is. In this specific context, he sees James as a threat. Lily cuts across, insults James and Snape is momentarily elated. And she begins, once again, about her concerns about his friends. He isn't listening.

Both of them in this scene aren't really listening to each other - he doesn't register what her objections to the crowd he is hanging around with, and she doesn't really ask him about his version of events in the Prank, a very traumatic event for him, instead going with the story that she heard. It shows that there is no trust between them already. I imagine seeing him getting involved with people whose politics and ambition threaten her existence, as a marginalised person, makes her wary and distrustful of him, but a childhood connection with him makes her want to believe that their friendship can be salvaged. But it's really tragic how bad their communication is at this point.

And then there is the SWM. Both Sirius and James are bullying Snape, but Lily's entire attention is on James. ("What's he done to you?" ). In fact, the only time Sirius factors in this conversation is when he is drawing James' attention back to Snape. Even the stuff she says to him when she leaves: "Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you've just gotten off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can - ". Out of this, only the third sentence is a common knowledge observation. The first two observations are of someone who has watched him closely. It's safe to say that at this point, Lily was both attracted to and repulsed by James.

However, this is an entirely humiliating experience for Snape and in his eyes, his best friend, who may be attracted to his bully, who he is in love with saw him as vulnerable, weak. Snape is a child from a violent home background where he already feels powerless - I imagine he detests feeling weak. Considering the dialogue of adult Snape, it's a fair assumption. ( "Fools who wear their heart proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked so easily - weak people, in other words - they stand no chance against his powers!"). This piece of dialogue tells you how much disassociation is Snape's crutch to deal with his stuff and why he is so good at Occlumency, but it also demonstrates Snape's abusive home life. Showing your emotions is weak. Showing you are vulnerable, to him, is a thing weak people do.

As we know from Rowling, Snape wanted to be a "powerful", impressive figure for Lily (and also in general, in response to his home life). It was one of his motivations to join a facisist cult group. And this scene in SWM strips away any of that, emasculates him. And in that rage and humiliation, in a way to regain any sort of power he lost in the situation, he lashes out and hurts her in a way that reminds her of her place in the wizarding society: "I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!".

This is a huge betrayal for Lily, who has been "making excuses for him for years". Especially since he is the one who told her that it didn't matter that she was a Muggleborn. He was apparently calling other Muggleborns "Mudbloods" before her and she let it go then. And now it's her turn to be called that and the last of the thread of their already fraying friendship was hanging on breaks.

She removes herself from the situation, but not without lashing out herself. "I'd wash my pants if I were you, Snivellus" - not only reminding him of his humiliation of being strung upside down and having his greying underpants - an indication of his poverty - on display, but also calling him the name Marauders call him. Snape and Lily threw their otherness in society in each other's faces.

The Marauders generation of characters are super messy, flawed and complicated and they are all the more interesting to me for it.