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.
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