“Snape was just a fuckboy who was bitter he got friendzoned,” says the fan who romanticizes the Marauders and conveniently forgets that the only character to ever act entitled to Lily’s romantic attention was James Potter, who bullied Snape from the start simply because Snape was Lily’s friend and male. Like, if anyone was a fuckboy…
Except that Snape is the one who felt entitled to Lily’s attention. Did James pursue her a little too aggressively? Yes, but he behaved like a pretty typical teenage boy with a crush. When Lily rejects him James brushes it off and keeps trying to get him to liker her, Snape’s the one who gets upset and lashes out at her. Also, by literally everyone else Snape and James are described as having the same sort of relationship as Harry and Malfoy but we only ever see the relationship from Snape’s point of view because James is dead. Do you think Harry is a bully too?
So here’s the thing. Literally nothing you just said is supported in canon.
James was more than “a little too aggressive” in his pursuit of Lily. He relentlessly bullied her best friend, and at one point even tried to use this as leverage to get Lily to date him (he’d stop the torment, if Lily would agree to a date). Lily herself calls him out on how he is a bully, saying he walks down corridors, hexing anyone who annoys him just because he can. When they get together in 7th year, it’s because he supposedly has stopped his bullying ways, but continues to bully Severus in secret behind her back. That is canon. That is said by Sirius and Remus, after Harry saw “Snape’s worst memory” and was appalled at how fucking horrid his father was.
And, why is it that James constantly bullies Severus?
JK herself said: “James always suspected Snape harboured deeper feelings for Lily, which was a factor in James’ behaviour towards Snape.“
So. Because Severus Snape was Lily Evans’ best friend, and a guy, James worried that he was a rival for her affections, and from day one targeted him for bullying. Because how dare Severus even think he has the right to talk to her, when obviously James is the one she should pay attention to.
The only character we see not respect Lily’s rejection is James Potter. This is canon. He doesn’t ever take “no” for an answer. He refuses to. He resorts to lying to her in order to finally get her to date him.
Severus Snape, for one, never tried to be anything more to Lily than her friend. We are given no evidence to the contrary. And when she breaks off their friendship, he leaves her alone. We see him bargain for her life, we see him mourn her, but we see nothing to suggest he ever talked to her again after she ended their friendship. He respected her decision, and backed off.
You also seem to misunderstand the comparison between Harry and Draco. Harry is Severus and Draco is James. It’s another case of a rich, self-entitled jerk bullying someone from an abusive home, just because he feels slighted.
I almost scrolled past this, but I won’t because it’s exactly the kind of Snape apologia and vilification of James that really bothers me in the HP fandom.
1- There is absolutely no evidence in canon that James ‘relentlessly’ pursued Lily. That is fanon. Sure fanon has that trope about James repetitively asking Lily out and almost stalking her. In canon we only see James ever ask Lily out ONCE. In Snape’s worst memory. The rest of the time we see Snape having to tell Lily that James fancies her and there is no evidence she even knew about it before that, then we have Lily actively defend the maradaurs to Snape asking him why he was so obessed with them :
(DH, The Prince’s tale, p540 bloomsburry edition )
“… thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was saying. “Best friends?” “We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging around with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him Sev? He’s creepy! D'you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?” Lily ha reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. “That was nothing” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all -” “It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny -” “What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?” demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed to hold in his resentment. “What’s Potter to do with anything?” said Lily. “They sneak out at night. There’s something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?” “He’s ill,” said Lily. “They say he’s ill -” “Every month at the full moon?” said Snape. “I know your theory,” said Lily, and she sounded cold “Why are you so obsessed with them, anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing at night?” “I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.” The intensity of his gaze made her blush; “They don’t use Dark Magic, though”.
Now, what does this scene tells you. First for someone who supposedly didn’t give as good as he got and was only the helpless victim of James, we learn that : 1- Lily doesn’t understand why he is so obsessed with them and can’t see the resemblance between the marauders and the very real, blood supremacist, dark magic using bullies that Snape was hanging out with and found funny. 2- Snape was very clearly trying to out Remus and actively trying to prove his case; so please do tell me, if this isn’t reason enough for James to hate Snape then what is? Not only did Snape actively try back when he was 15, but he DID out Remus years later because he couldn’t let go of the past when Remus was being nothing but cordial with him.
2- Which brings me to my next point, the idea that Snape was an innocent victim and not a bully himself is utter bullshit.
Let’s look at another excerpt from the books shall we:
(DH, The Prince’s tale, p542, Blommsburry edition)
“I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just -” “Slipped out?” There was no pity in Lily’s voice. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?” He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. “I can’t pretend any more. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.” “No – listen, I didn’t mean -” “- to call me a Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?”
Now what does this tells us? This tells us that unlike what the Snape apologists often love to pretend, Snape wasn’t an inactive by stander in the wannabe-death eaters sessions of muggleborns bullying. He actively took part in it, he actively threw slurs at them. Lily herself mention that and Snape doesn’t deny any of it.
Not only that but we also know that Snape invented Levicorpus, which we later see James use, how do you think James learned it if not because he had it used against him? We even see Snape use Sectusempra on James; Sectusempra, aka the spell capable of cutting someone open and leave them to bleed to death. This is the kind of experimentation Snape did with Dark Magic, so spare me if I don’t buy the “poor innocent Snape” narrative. He was a bully at school, going after muggleborn with his band of magical equivalent to the Hitler youth. But aside from that, please do tell me more about how Snape was innocent and never gave as much as he got when even LILY calls him out on his bullying of Muggleborns and admitted herself that she couldn’t excuse him anymore.
“Severus Snape, for one, never tried to be anything more to Lily than her friend. We are given no evidence to the contrary. And when she breaks off their friendship, he leaves her alone. We see him bargain for her life, we see him mourn her, but we see nothing to suggest he ever talked to her again after she ended their friendship. He respected her decision, and backed off.”
Excuse me? We should admire him because he backed off after HE threw a slur at her and still tried to talk to her when she didn’t want to, even saying he would sleep in front of the common room if she refused to have that talk?
And above all, we should think Snape is such a great guy because he bargained for her life? WHAT? Snape - may I remind you - was the reason why her life was even in danger to start with! Snape is the one who sold a BABY’S LIFE to Voldemort without second thoughts and only backed off when he realized that the baby in question was Lily’s. And not only that but he only partly backed off because he didn’t give a shit about what would happen to Harry and James, AKA the man she loved and HER SON. Dumbledore himself called him out on it:
“You disgust me,” said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little. “You do not care, then about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?”
I genuinely cannot believe my eyes that some people are trying to paint this as a selfless act on Snape’s part. If it had been Neville he would have let him die without blinking, just like he was ready to let Harry die, a ONE YEAR OLD BOY and the son of the woman he claimed to love. I do not doubt that he loved her, but his love was entirely and completely selfish and none of what he did was for her. He did what he did for himself and to feel better about what he had caused. Snape was not a good person. Snape was bad guy who did the right thing for the wrong reasons. All his life he remained the same bitter bullying douchebag, he bullied kids as a gorwn ass man, he never got over it unlike James.
The point of Snape isn’t “good is not nice”, the point of Snape is “you don’t have to be a good person to do the right thing”. “Good is not nice” is in fact the point of James. Was James an immature “toerag” (as Lily colourfully put it) when he was 15? Sure he was, but his heart was always at the right place which is something we cannot say of Snape. And he grew out of it, which is another thing we cannot say of Snape.
The fact that James bullied Snape isn’t the only thing we know of him. We also know that James welcomed Sirius in his home when the later had nowhere to go, we know that James accepted Remus for who he was and became an Animagus to help him, we know that James befriended three outcasts without caring about how uncool they were, from what family they came from or what disease they had to deal with, we know that James was ALWAYS disgusted with pure blood supremacy as evidenced by his reaction when Snape calls Lily the m-blood in front of him. We know that when Snape was busy joining the Death Eaters fresh out of school, James was joining the Order and fighting against Voldemort from the start (a war that as a pure blood he could have stayed entirely out of). We know he defied Voldemort three times and lived to tell the tale, we know that he died throwing himself between Voldemort and his wife and child without even a wand to try to give them time to escape. James was a good person who wasn’t always nice and grew out of his bullying way.
Every characters aside from Snape always describe the Marauders as this generation Fred and George (who by the way also did a number of questionable things, such as shoving Montague in the vanishing cabinet, feeding Dudley their toffees or turning Neville into a bird). Were they always nice? No. Did they bully Snape? Yes. Where they still good people? Yes. James included.
Snape wasn’t a good person, he never was, he never grew out of his petty high school quarrels, James did. Both were assholes when they were teenagers. One grew out of it, the other didn’t. It’s as simple as that.
This entire post is perfect. Especially this:
“…the point of Snape is “you don’t have to be a good person to do the right thing”.
yes, i do believe the proper phrase to describe this post is::: g o o f f q u e e n
I just want to add a little quote against the claim that “James continued to bully Snape behind Lily’s back”
“ “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?“ ” - OOTP
So, you see: the reason Jamed continued to hex Snape after bettering himself was that Snape tried to curse him whenever he could. Let’s not forget that he probably didn’t use the jellylegs jinx or something similar. Snape used dark and experimental curses at that time, so it’s not impossible to think that he used them on James. No wonder he defendes himself.
“This tells us that unlike what the Snape apologists often love to pretend, Snape wasn’t an inactive by stander in the wannabe-death eaters sessions of muggleborns bullying. He actively took part in it, he actively threw slurs at them. Lily herself mention that and Snape doesn’t deny any of it.”
GO OFF MY GUY
I gotta add that he was Neville’s Worst Fear. Not Bellatrix, who tortured his parents to the point they no longer knew him, but his actual fucking teacher. He threatened to poison Neville’s pet because of his less than proficient potions skills that were likely caused by how fucking terrified the Literal Child was of his Teacher. How was he supposed to learn anything if he was scared out of his mind at the guy??
Not to mention how fucking terrible he treated Harry, the kid that lost both his parents and was living in an abusive home, and who he knew was going to be practically sacrificed for the greater good.
Or that time Hermione was cursed by other students and he sat back and made fucking fun of her instead of getting her to the hospital wing or I don’t know, reprimanding the students who were bullying others and physically harming them???
Remember that time that he let everyone know Lupin was a werewolf despite the prejudices against them that caused most of them to live in poverty and forced them out of society because he was being a giant pissbaby who didn’t get his fucking medal?
OR the time he found out Sirius was fucking innocent and he still wanted to give him to the dementors??
Perhaps it is becoming clearer why I felt no romance when you told me that you carried my last letter with you, everywhere you went, for months on end, unopened. This may have served some purpose for you, but whatever it was, surely it bore little resemblance to mine. I never aimed to give you a talisman, an empty vessel to flood with whatever longing, dread, or sorrow happened to be the day’s mood. I wrote it because I had something to say to you.
Honestly, my favorite thing at the moment is all the marvel headcanons where Hela wasn’t cray-cray homicidal, and she’s an overprotective bitchy sister.
How the fuck did adult Ron fail his driving exam when he fucking drove a car from London to Hogwarts when he was 12????
J.K Rowling: Bold of you to assume that I’d remember that.
So I actually have an answer to this question.
Ron didn’t fail the driving test because he drove poorly. He tells us why: he failed to check the wing mirrors at the expected time. And furthermore, he tells us why that detail wasn’t important enough to remember: in practice, he isn’t going to use the wing mirrors to know what’s behind him, he’s going to use magic instead, magic which sounds like it’s more efficient for the task.
“Making the car go” isn’t the main thing the driving test is testing for (though it is a prerequisite). It’s looking for observing the rules of the road, and observing safety precautions in the prescribed way. Rules of the road don’t matter much if you do a lot of your driving with flying cars, and wizards have a lot of alternative safety precautions available.
So he didn’t fail the driving test because he didn’t know how to drive, he failed because he forgot one of the steps necessary to pass as a muggle.
It was a joke at Ron’s expense, but the joke was, “Ron still forgets how to muggle,” not, “Ron is bad at stuff.”
Shoutout to the writers at every single theatre news site for making A Very Potter Musical puns off of Darren Criss’ Golden Globe win. Sure, the Assassination of Gianni Versace was good, but the pinnacle of Darren’s career was playing a 12 year old wizard with a chopstick wand and a sharpie lightning bolt scar, and no one is ever going to let him forget it.
It’s my grandpa’s birthday next week and he said “I don’t want to be 85” and my grandmother, his wife of 59 and a half years, said “well your only alternative is to die”, I can’t believe how affectionate they are
I was having lunch with them today and my grandpa started throwing napkins at my grandmother, and she balled it up and looked all set to throw it back but then she put it down and said “I will not throw it because I was brought up properly, you were dragged” she has spent ¾ of her life with this man
