~ blame game ~

Severus Snape/Lily Evans. T. 2,354

(Not too long ago, just before the first instalment of the last HP movie came out and the 2011 new year was rang in, a friend of mine and I got into a conversation about (not too surprisingly) boys. More specifically, the type of boy that pursues you when you don't want to be pursued.

This friend of mine, we'll call her Ashley, had been having troubles with a semi-friend of ours (we'll call him David). These problems weren't anything serious—he wasn't stalking her or anything like that, but they were big enough that Ashley felt the need to bring it up.

David, Ashley, and I had all been friends for about a year before this took place, and David had a crush on Ashley since about a month after he met her. It wasn't anything surprising to me. Ashley is the type of girl who always has at least one male admirer—she's pretty, very intelligent, and overly kind.

The weekend before our conversation took place, Ashley invited (begged, actually) me to go swimming with her because David had invited her and she wanted someone to come along so that he "didn't get the wrong idea." When I told her I couldn't go—I'm terrified of water, and haven't owned a bathing suit in years!—I suggested that she simply tell David it wasn't a date.

I was shocked to hear that she already had. Multiple times. David had been asking her out since last year and just wouldn't back off.

With pencils in hand and books propped open in front of us in a desultory nod toward study in case our teachers happened to walk by, we got into a hushed conversation about David and his spurned attempts at romance. Not that Ashley had actually spurned him, I suppose. She was too nice to do such a thing. Whereas I would have just told David to fuck the hell off—I'm an unmannered beast who doesn't give a damn about what people think—Ashley had tried to go about things the nice way.

"I don't want to be a complete bitch about it," she argued when I told her to take my approach. "He's okay as a friend and, knowing what other girl's have done to him before me, I don't want to hurt his feelings even more than they've been hurt."

Understandable, I guess, although, as I've said, not the way I would have handled things. My mother always taught me that if someone is making you uncomfortable, in any way at all, to tell them straight up so they'll stop. Men aren't mind readers and if you don't tell them how you feel and just keep skirting the question by saying you have other plans that day or some such they're likely to actually take you at your word, surprisingly enough.

But Ashley had told David no. Maybe not as firmly as I would have liked, but firmly enough where the word "no" was used. No, she did not return his feelings. No, she would not go out with him. Yet he still put his hand on the small of her back, he still made lesbian jokes when she brought a girlfriend along so they wouldn't be alone together when they went swimming, and he still continued to add unwelcome sexual references in their texts.

Now, all of this got me thinking about the relationship between the Harry Potter characters Lily Evans and Severus Snape. A couple years ago, when I was about fifteen, a dear friend of mine (ShadedRouge) and I got into a conversation about these two characters. I root for Severus, she roots for Lily, and at the time we couldn't agree on what there was between these two: love, or obsession. Cassy (ShadedRouge) saw obsession where I saw love.

Two years later—as the much more educated woman that I now am, of course—I have to admit that Cassandra was right about Severus. He's still one of my favourite characters, and I still dislike Lily, but I've taken a few moments to pause and think about things and how they must have been from her perspective instead of Severus's.

Here she is with her dear friend, Severus Snape, who has a fancy on her. Did Lily know how he felt? Rowling didn't show us anything from Lily's point of view and I suppose it's up to the reader to decide if she did or not. But personally? I think that Lily knew exactly how Severus felt.

"BUT I THINK THE QUESTION OF DID SHE OR DIDN'T SHE KNOW IS MOOT WHEN IT COMES RIGHT DOWN TO IT. AGAIN, ROWLING DIDN'T SHOW US IF LILY KNEW, SHE ONLY SHOWED US HOW SEVERUS FELT TOWARDS LILY, BUT IT'S WHAT SHE DIDN'T SHOW US THAT MATTERS."

After being friends with someone for eight years you begin to know them, understand them. You fall into a rhythm. You ever have one of those moments with one of your friends where they don't have to finish the joke before you laugh or you finish a sentence for them or you say the exact same thing at theexact same time? Have you ever understood that your best friend was uncomfortable by the way they stood or how their voice sounded or even how their eyes looked? My best friend and I have been friends for eight years now, almost nine, and we've had a lot of these moments. Severus might not have ever told Lily with words how he felt but if they were as good of friends as Severus claimed they were I'm sure Lily knew. It's body language, it's the words we use, it's being in sync with someone.

But I think the question of did she or didn't she know is moot when it comes right down to it. Again, Rowling didn't show us if Lily knew, she only showed us how Severus felt towards Lily, but it's what she didn't show us that matters. Severus gave Harry his memories of Lily to explain his reasoning for protecting him. Now you'd think then that if Lily had returned his affections we'd have seen it, even if it was just to show us that she loved him and eventually left him for James and he never got over her. But Rowling didn't show us that, so I think it's safe to assume that Lily did not fancy Severus. My point is, regardless of whether or not Lily knew Severus fancied her, Lily did not return the feeling. If she had, we would have seen it.

Like Ashley, Lily was friends with the boy who pursued her and didn't share his affections. If she knew, maybe Lily was too nice to tell him to back the fuck off, and if she didn't know maybe it was because she didn't want to know. A lot of people (especially the fan girls of Severus Snape) seem to have a hate on for Lily Evans and, now that I think of it, it seems slightly absurd. I can't speak for everyone but at best guess I would say that a decent majority of theHarry Potter fans, certainly the female ones at least, have been pursued at one time or another by a person that they just didn't feel attracted to. And yet again, the majority of them don't like Lily. They blame her for the deterioration of their friendship. Odd.

Is my friend Ashley to blame then if the friendship between herself and David fails?

"I just can't go out with him. He asked, and I said that I wouldn't go out with him because I didn't feel anything for him besides friendship, and that to date him in hopes that I might start to feel something would be a lie." Ashley flicks her eyes to the side of the room where our English teacher is standing and flips a page in her textbook, eyes on the words, still talking. "I don't know what to do."

I think that Lily and Severus both share equally in the blame when it comes to the decay of their friendship. Severus for never having voiced his feelings and Lily for never having addressed them if she knew about them, as I suspect she did. While Severus was pining away/obsessing over Lily she herself must have been lost and confused, scared of ruining her friendship with a boy she loved very much but not wanting to hurt him, not sure of how to say no without being, as Ashley said, a "complete bitch."

I think all of Snape's fan girls should stop for a moment and think about Lily as more than just a name to be weaved with Severus's own, a head of red hair, and the eventual bitch incarnate who broke Sev's heart by marrying James. Lily may not have taken the greatest approach to her friend's feelings, maybe she didn't even approach them at all, but she was a human being, not just some lust doll, and she shouldn't be blamed for not returning whatever the hell it was that Severus felt for her. Everyone is always saying that we can't change the way we feel and since Lily didn't love him (not that way, at least) she shouldn't be blamed for what happened.

With all the confusion that Lily must have been going through I can't really say that I blame her too much for completely severing the ties between her and Severus after the Mudblood incident. Some people have said that she overreacted and that she should have given him another chance—haven't we all been called a horrible name by our best friends at least once?—and I get that. I even agree with it.

Nothing can be said to excuse him of calling his supposed best friend a mudblood because Ron informs us later on that it is considered one of the most vile of insults amongst magical folk, but I don't think Severus should have been completely ousted from Lily's life for saying it. People say stupid things when they're under pressure. People say stupid things in general, actually. And sure, we get royally pissed off at each other and we fight a bit, maybe a lot, but eventually good friends—especially the close knit type of friends that Severus and Lily were purported to be—get tired of the fighting and try to work things out. Hurt as they may be, they do their best to set things aside because they realize that they love each other deeply and that forgiveness is part of the process of friendship.

"I THINK THAT LILY AND SEVERUS BOTH SHARE EQUALLY IN THE BLAME WHEN IT COMES TO THE DECAY OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP.SEVERUS FOR NEVER HAVING VOICED HIS FEELINGS, AND LILY FOR NEVER HAVING ADDRESSED THEM."

In my opinion, however, by the time "Snape"s Worst Memory" took place the real issue wasn't Severus's filthy language but rather the build up of all the unspoken things between them that needed to be said. Neither one of them was willing to put their thoughts and feelings out in the open, and a friendship based on lies or even just the omission of truth, which is in itself a kind of lie, is no friendship at all. It's just a lie, and lies are easily broken.

Lily must have been so relieved when she finally had her excuse to get rid of Severus for good. Not on a conscious level, perhaps, but deep down. Here was a way to get rid of all the confusion that had grown between her and Severus for the last couple years, and it was his fault for saying the word so she could break off the friendship without feeling too guilty. The death of their friendship wasn't some instantaneous, unexpected event that happened because of James Potter and his band of merry followers (no matter how much Severus might have liked to believe so). Their friendship died a slow, agonizing death brought on by the two of them because neither of them ever talked about anything meaningful.

I think it's fairly accurate to presume that Lily must have gotten flak from her fellow witches and wizards for being a Muggle-born due to the prejudices of the times that raged so strong, and I also think it's fairly accurate to say that Lily never would have confided her fear, frustration, anger, confusion, or sadness over this to Severus because she already knew what his reaction to her Muggle roots would be regardless of if he would admit it to her or not or if he somehow saw her as the exception to the rule. That last doesn't matter to Lily. Clearly, she doesn't think being the exception is good enough because she states "...you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"

I wonder why this question wasn't asked earlier on?

I wonder why a lot of things weren't asked on either side of this friendship. Why didn't Severus ask her if she liked him? Why didn't Lily ask about the Death Eaters? Why couldn't Severus have simply asked her about James, and explained his feelings about him? Why didn't Lily ever explain to him her thoughts on his little gang calmly, without ripping them to shreds, and ask him what he thought of Lord Voldemort? If a boy never confesses his love, and you don't return the feeling, can you be blamed for falling in love with someone else?

It's so foolish and childish to play the blame game when there are so many questions to be asked on each side. Clearly a lot of things needed to be said between these two that never were said, a lot of questions never were asked and never were answered. But I'm rambling, and I'd like to conclude that pointing a finger at either of these characters is pointless and that, even more so, it's ridiculous to hold Lily at fault for everything that happened. Either blame no one or blame them both.

First draft: 01-06-12

Revisions: 9-23-12