I'm obsessed with Draco and Astoria like. he reevaluated his entire beliefs system for her and defied his own family to marry her. He no longer cared about blood and heirs and all that bullshit he'd been taught since he was born as long as she was with him. He just wanted her. And he'd be willing to give up his very soul if it meant he could spend just one more minute with her after she passed.
On the contrary, I think there’s just about enough evidence in the books to make the case that, far from Lily’s family not accepting her magic, Petunia’s rant in Philosopher’s Stone about Lily being the favoured golden child was actually accurate and not just unhinged jealousy about not being as great as her prettier cleverer sister. Petunia smothers Dudley with oppressive love while mistreating Harry because she’s taken all the wrong lessons from her childhood and doesn’t want magic-less Dudley to feel unloved and ordinary. Lily, in the few glimpses we get of her, shows unmistakable signs of liking being seen as special and treated as the exception that can only have sprung from her upbringing. She ignores Snape’s radicalisation until he insults *her*. She’s absolutely fine being Slughorn’s favourite despite his insidious bigotry. She’s attracted to James well before he stops being very slightly less of a thug because he’s singled her out as the one for him.
It makes much more sense that Lily’s family accepts but doesn’t understand her magic and her world, because how can they? The Grangers couldn’t and they paid for it with their memories. It is one explanation for why her friendship with Snape lasts as long as it does even though it’s clear that even as very young children she’s never as attached to him as he is to her - he’s her touchstone to a world in which she does belong. It doesn’t mean that Lily feels any less isolated in Cokeworth, but it’s not because her parents don’t accept her.
I'm not sure if this is in response to me from my last post or to the people I was referring to in the post since I share your stance, but yes anon, full agree. The evidence for it is stark clear in my opinion, and I'm glad you pointed out how Petunia's treatment of Dudley v Harry reflects her and her sister's treatment from their parents because I don't think I've seen it spoken about before? Granted, I'm not browsing tumblr too often, so that's probably just me missing it, lol.
Waaait. I've seen two posts with it now, and... That side of the fandom is really trying to claim Lily wasn't accepted by her family for being a witch??
Hello! Slightly shorter, but slowly crawling forward. I'm writing a book of my own which requires quite a lot of time and creative inspiration, so that's taking priority... anyway, enjoy!
Featuring: our favourite grumpy bat-boy and Minerva's I'm too old for this attitude.
Tags are at the bottom - if I've missed anyone, I do apologise.
***
Minerva McGonagall rapped sharply on the Potions classroom door and entered without waiting for a reply. She half expected something short of a calamity - perhaps the desks all scorched into remains beyond recognition, an infestation of some sort, chaos in the form of the furniture being stuck to the ceiling or anything else which would claim “round-way-wrong” - and Severus’ face contorted and twitching as he muttered dark things under his breath, but no. She was most mistaken.
Snape stood in the middle of his classroom, his arms folded, one hand propped beneath his chin as he stared blankly at his chalkboard, his face quite placid, even serene, as he stood deep in thought.
Minerva paused, feeling an odd pang of unrest in her chest at this strange change, for he was hardly in such a state and something must have been certainly very wrong. She followed the line his eyes made to the blackboard, saw nothing which could be the subject of such intense evaluation, so she merely looked back and forth between him and the wall a few times before clearing her throat.
His eyes flicked towards her, but the rest of his position remained stagnant.
Minerva didn’t say anything; neither did he. After a few moments, she looked past him, walked a few steps into the room, then turned around to look at the walls for any sort of unobvious differences that could have brought on this change of facade. Snape let out a dry chuckle.
“Nothing has changed since you were last here, Minerva.”
She turned to look at him.
“Then I don’t understand.”
Snape nodded thoughtfully.
“Me neither,” was the reply, before he marched up to his blackboard, turned on his heel, stood still, then began to evaluate the desks in the same position as before. This was enough for her to become slightly unnerved and her eyebrows to climb up to the highest ring on her forehead as she watched him. Still, the silence dragged on long before she formulated a question of any sort and that was only after the Potions Master got down on his knees and began to look under the desks as though he had previously misplaced a cork of a bottle, looking rather silly.
“What are you doing?” she said flatly, tilting her head to peruse him.
“Investigating,” he replied calmly from under the desk, looking up at the underbelly of the furniture.
“Investigating.” Minerva nodded, though she was everything but enlightened. “And what on could you be investigating under the desks, on the floor?”
Snape banged the back of his head on the desk-edge as he emerged from beneath it, cursed viciously, then this alien demeanour he had borrowed for a moment shattered and dissolved into his standard one. The dark scowl looked so normal back on its master’s face that Minerva’s chest loosened a little.
Snape drew out his wand. After a moment, in which more investigation and observance occurred, his scowl deepened and suddenly lunged and struck the front desk with it.
“Revellio.”
Nothing happened. Minerva watched him, po-faced. Snape repeated the gesture.
“Revellio!”
Not a peep. He growled, then pointed his wand at the ceiling.
“Revellio!” The wand was pointed at his blackboard. “Revellio!” The tip was directed at his desk, at the floor, at the back of the classroom, at the door of his store cupboard.
“Revellio! Revellio! REVELLIO-!”
“Severus, please,” McGonagall said, approaching him as he scowled and his eyes darted around the classroom. “This verges on nonsensical. There is nothing here.”
“That’s the problem!” Severus snarled, his knuckles white on the black of his wand. “This makes no sense whatsoever! Confounded brats… This is idiocy!”
“What is?”
“This innocence… this consideration!”
The last word was spat out like something vile. Minerva’s eyebrows dropped down and she looked completely exasperated.
“Consideration? Severus, what precisely is going on?”
“I don’t know!”
Minerva’s hands stiffened as she grew impatient.
“Can you please calm yourself down and tell me what brought on this… this whole examination?” she said. “I would be very grateful. This hysteria is quite past what is expected of both of us. Put your wand away, Severus.”
Snape seemed to regain himself as she spoke. He straightened, breathed out a long sigh through his nostrils, arrested the fire snapping in his eyes, then slowly fed his wand back into his sleeve and drew his cloak tight about him.
“Your pupils, Minerva,” he began in his low voice, looking much displeased, “have been behaving in a very strange manner today.”
McGonagall watched him, remembering the giggling trio she had passed on the corridor and their strange mood.
“You mean Potter, Weasley, and Miss Granger?”
“Indeed,” he spat, then grimaced disdainfully at the front desk which had been occupied by the unwelcome trio a few moments before, before looking back up at her. “Well? Are you surprised?”
“No,” she replied immediately, glancing at the desk too, then paused. “Have they been causing trouble?”
Snape’s face stretched into a very dry smile.
“Trouble?” He scoffed, then grew solemn again. “Why, yes. Well, no. In fact… ah, confound and bebother those varmints-!”
Minerva had pursed her lips. “Severus-”
“Yes!” He clenched his fists and stormed towards his desk. “Yes, they have been causing trouble! They have undoubtedly been causing trouble, otherwise Potter wouldn’t have had an accursed aureole shining around his head for the entire lesson!”
At this, McGonagall frowned, but Snape wasn’t done.
“Weasley, too!” He fell into his chair then sat up, rigid with passion, his fingers digging into the wooden armrests. “Not a single word out of his mouth during the entire lesson! He usually doesn’t shut up, his mouth works like a watermill! And this time, silence!”
“One moment.” McGonagall was close to pinching the bridge of her nose. “You mean to say-”
“And Granger,” Snape cut her off, snapping, his fingernails making scratch-marks in the wooden armrests as his fists clenched. “I’ve never seen her so pleasant in the entire time she’s been here. Didn’t put her hand up once! Her head was down, she did the work without a word and not a bullet of the usual know-it-all piffle left her mouth!”
His form loosened and he fell backwards against the back-rest, his hand dangling over his face as he worked rest into his face muscles and the creases around his eyes with his fingers. McGonagall watched him with pursed lips, feeling it wouldn’t be wise to interject until he finished with his mental breakdown.
“And that’s not all,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “The homework they handed in today is twice the length I asked for. And I mean twice the length. The spaces between words and the size of their handwriting wasn’t different from their standard lettering.”
“I fail to understand why that calls to get so worked up,” Minerva said carefully. “Surely, you don’t find this irritating?”
“And it’s top standard,” the wrecked Potions Master continued, his voice almost breaking. “It was concise and intelligently written. Into the bargain, all three pieces of work were different. The pair of idiots clearly didn’t copy off Granger this time. It seems they have put effort into those rolls of parchment like never before. I dread to think what it is they have done to act in this manner.”
Minerva shook her head as she watched the black bat sprawled out on his wooden chair. He saw her scrutiny and growled.
“You weren’t here, Minerva - I have very good reason for suspecting nothing but trouble. Potter didn’t talk back to me once. He claimed blame, even if it was unjustified.”
At this, Minerva frowned. “Harry Potter?”
“What other Potter is there?”
Minerva, this time, did pinch the bridge of her nose and both adults stood there feeling quite shaken. The former regained herself first.
“Let me sum this up,” she said. “You are completely and utterly indisposed because Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger were well-behaved for the entirety of your lesson.”
“I am completely and utterly indisposed,” Snape repeated with disdain and through clenched teeth, “because they have clearly done something, or are about to do something, which must have stirred enough remorse within their hollow little souls to not place a toe out of line for the entirety of my lesson. Not to mention this.”
He leaned forward and grasped something, then offered it to Minerva. She stepped forward and squinted at the object; it was an empty glass vial, with a square label which read: headache draught.
She glanced up at him as she took it in her fingers. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“This appeared upon my desk when my back was turned.”
“And you think they placed this on your desk?”
“No,” Snape said after some thought. “This is something far darker than both of us think.”
Minerva looked at him over the rim of her spectacles.
“This empty vial?” she said flatly.
“It was full when I first beheld it.”
“And what happened to its contents?”
“I poured it down the sink.”
Minerva paused.
“Why?”
Snape rubbed his face and stood up, looking fixated. “It was very cleverly disguised. It smelled exactly like what it claims to be.”
He began to pace. Minerva placed the sinister, empty vial back on his desk and folded her arms, looking down her nose at him as though he was an adolescent hissing about overblown drama which had happened upon the corridors and had tarnished his reputation into disrepair. Not that she hadn’t seen that before.
“There can only be one explanation for this,” he finished, standing still. “It has to be.”
“Which is?”
He turned and met her eyes with his obstinate, dark gaze.
“Someone is trying to exact their vengeance upon me.”
Minerva said nothing, her face betrayed nothing.
“It wouldn’t be the first time it happened,” he muttered. “I’m not taking any risk. I don’t have a very tolerant stomach…”
Minerva began to shake her head. “Severus.”
“...headache draught indeed.” He scoffed. “The only question is: who? And why? I am beginning to doubt that Potter wasn’t involved in it, though perhaps he wasn’t acting of his own accord. Our favourite trio wouldn’t even know that they were under the Imperius curse-”
“Severus.”
He turned to her impatiently, then shut his mouth under the impact of her gaze.
“Has it not occurred to you,” Minerva began patiently, “that instead of poisoning or attempting to murder you, someone could be simply trying to help you out?”
Snape looked at her incredulously, then burst out laughing. It was his usual harsh, grating laugh, which was emitted more to mock than to express amusement. It bounced off the classroom walls like hailstone.
“Of course,” he chortled. “That would make sense. Let’s be nice to the irritable wretch of a teacher who resides solely in the dungeons of the castle.”
“I’m sorry you struggle to understand the concept of compassion,” Minerva said, rolling her eyes and moving towards the exit. “Perhaps you ought to take this as a sign, Severus, and with it this concept into consideration.”
“Nonsense,” he replied, then placed the base of his palms to his temples and moved to sit in his chair as he grimaced. “There is no such thing as compassion. If there is, it is very hard to find, and simply non-existent in these particular corridors, between these particular individuals.”
Minerva didn’t see the sense in trying to convince him otherwise. Instead, she simply looked at him pointedly as he grasped his head and shut his eyes to try and contain his headache.
“Stop spearing me,” he muttered, sighing. “I’ve not forgotten what brats are capable of. I was one too. It’s certainly nothing but chaos and infidelity. I’m not stupid.”
“No. You are stubborn,” she replied, shaking her head, “and prone to jumping to very unfavourable conclusions. Now that you poured that draught down the drain, why don’t you make yourself another? Lessons resume in fifteen minutes.”
Snape groaned and muttered some dark words, followed by a very low: “I will manage.”
“As you like,” McGonagall replied in a tone which seemed to highlight her claim about how stubborn Snape was. “I will see you at lunch, Severus. Don’t get yourself too worked up, now.”
He didn’t answer; Minerva shut the door behind her, taking the rest of the noise and warmth of presence with her.
Five minutes of silence and dwelling later, Severus Snape rubbed his eyes, opened them, then fixed them onto the glass vial with the ‘headache draught’ lettering arranged upon the label, apparently nothing but innocent.
“Help me,” he repeated absentmindedly, then snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Of course the intention was to help me. Because that is what we do when we have a spare moment. We all come together, sit down at a round table and discuss how to make somebody’s life less of a damned hellscape over a light cup of coffee.”
Snape’s rigid posture broke as the sneer ebbed off his face. His eyes flicked around at the walls of his empty classroom, then to the pale skin of his hands which hadn’t held another for over two decades. He thought of the bleak and empty days the future promised him, feeling something horrible, hard and gooey congealing in his chest. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.
“Silence!” Snape commanded nobody in particular, feeling his voice begin to crack as it echoed around the classroom.
He put his face in his hands, pressing them to his facial features to keep them in stone, but they creased into something embarrassing and despairing anyway.
“Silence…” he repeated, but with his voice hoarse and thick. “Very well. Fine. Let it be so.”
He regained himself, then fixed his face into the window, making a sharp move to smear any stray tears away, then folded his hands tight and pressed them to his lips. Still, the red rimming his eyes, cheeks and nose gave him away, though his face was cold and disinterested as marble.
His voice was a mere whisper, though the boggart hiding under the sink heard it and obeyed:
“Let it be silent.”
***
Tags! I do appreciate all of your reviews and ops, I enjoy reading your excitement!
Could you expand on the James was implied to be abusive?
So, to clarify, everything in this meta isn’t necessarily my interpretation. Some of it is, but some is in fact the opposite of my own interpretation (esp. re: Snape). But I’m going for a Doylist lens for once and trying to unweave what JKR was trying to do. This isn't normally how I analyze the text - but it's helpful to know so people can develop a more informed version of their interpretations.
I think JKR intended Jily as, at best, a dysfunctional marriage where they weren’t truly in love, and at worst, an abusive one. I’ve seen speculations that JKR based James on her abusive ex-husband - I’m not sure where that comes from or is true, it might be entirely made up, but I’m mentioning it here.
1.0 In Photographs
Photographs are regularly used in canon to show family estrangement and rejection, and in this section I'll demonstrate how they're used for the same purpose with James and Lily.
To start off, we see James and Lily in the Mirror of Erised, standing next to each other - but remember what the inscription on the frame means (I show not your face but your heart's desire), and what Dumbledore says:
[...] he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her.
“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. [...] However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible." (PS)
What we'll realize via a close analysis is that the image of James and Lily in the Mirror of Erised standing next to each other is exactly what Dumbledore says - it’s only Harry’s heart’s desire, it isn’t the truth. That Dumbledore’s words about the Mirror not being real isn’t just about James and Lily being dead, but the hidden meaning is that it also refers to James and Lily’s marriage.
Next, we get James and Lily's wedding photo, and in that photo James and Lily are standing arm-in-arm, according to Harry's POV Lily looks "alight with happiness", and Lily's also standing next to Sirius. So temporarily, in that snapshot, the image in the Mirror of Erised seems like it's still the truth.
But then we get to the Order photo in OoTP, the book Harry's meant to shed his idealization of his father:
“That’s Dumbledore’s brother, Aberforth, only time I ever met him, strange bloke... That’s Dorcas Meadowes, Voldemort killed her personally... Sirius, when he still had short hair... and... there you go, thought that would interest you!”
Harry’s heart turned over. His mother and father were beaming up at him, sitting on either side of a small, watery-eyed man Harry recognized at once as Wormtail: He was the one who had betrayed their whereabouts to Voldemort and so helped bring about their deaths. (OoTP)
Most notably, James and Lily aren't next to each other, because Wormtail sits between them.
Note that Dumbledore is also standing apart from Elphias Doge and Aberforth, hinting at the way he keeps emotional distance from his friends with the former and family estrangement in the latter, and Remus is similarly standing apart from his friends - and just as important is where Lily is standing. Also note that the other married couple, Alice and Frank, are implied to be standing next to each other.
This is our first clue that what Harry sees in the Mirror of Erised and in the wedding photo is at least a partial lie.
Then, in DH, Lily sends Sirius a picture of herself and Harry - with her husband out of frame, to the point that Harry initially can’t even tell for sure it’s James in that photo:
A black-haired baby was zooming in and out of the picture on a tiny broom, roaring with laughter, and a pair of legs that must have belonged to James was chasing after him […] (DH)
Then he ripped in two the photograph he was also holding, so that he kept the part from which Lily laughed, throwing the portion showing James and Harry back onto the floor, under the chest of drawers (DH)
Very like the following quotes and examples:
Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets — but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too. (PS)
He couldn’t remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house. (PS)
A photograph of the Weasley family stood beside the in-tray. Harry noticed that Percy appeared to have walked out of it. (OoTP)
The china, which bore the Black crest and motto, was all thrown unceremoniously into a sack by Sirius, and the same fate met a set of old photographs in tarnished silver frames, all of whose occupants squealed shrilly as the glass covering them smashed.
he had also managed to retrieve the silver-framed family photographs that Sirius had thrown away over the summer. Their glass might be shattered, but still the little black-and-white people inside them peered haughtily up at him, including — he felt a little jolt in his stomach — the dark, heavy-lidded woman whose trial he had witnessed in Dumbledore’s Pensieve: Bellatrix Lestrange. By the looks of it, hers was Kreacher’s favorite photograph; he had placed it to the fore of all the others (OoTP)
The old man’s eyes traveled to the painting of the girl over the mantelpiece. It was, now Harry looked around properly, the only picture in the room. There was no photograph of Albus Dumbledore, nor of anyone else. (DH)
As displayed above, OoTP in particular introduces many estrangements: Percy's from his family, Sirius's from his family, Aberforth making his first appearance and hinting at his conflict with his brother, and of course the continuous emphasis on Petunia's estrangement from Lily, and all of these are emphasized via photographs... as is Jily's estrangement.
The comparison to the Dumbledores is probably the most apt - Aberforth and Albus both talk of Ariana very lovingly while being estranged from each other, similar to how Lily talks of Harry in her letter while there being minimal references to her relationship with James by itself.
Additionally, right before Harry reaches Lily's letter and the photograph with her and Harry, he views the photo of the Marauders on Sirius's bedroom wall and muses on the group's specific dynamics, and then thinks “or was it simply because Harry knew how it had been, that he saw these things in the picture?”
But the thing is, Harry can't see the truth in the picture Lily sends Sirius, that it's a sign of an broken marriage with James - because he doesn't know how it had been with Lily, will never know, and accepting that is meant to be part of his acceptance of death. (Worth noting that JKR wrote HP while her own mother was dying/after her death).
To summarize, Jily get farther and farther away from each other in these snapshots - they go from first standing next to each other, to standing apart in the Order photo, to not standing together again in the photograph Lily sends to Sirius - because James isn't in the photo at all.
Of course, the evidence here is circumstantial - I'm not going to make a judgment on i.e. Sirius and James's closeness by them not standing together in that or the wedding photo (Sirius and Lily standing together in both on the other hand…).
But since James and Lily are explicitly stated as standing next to each other in the Mirror of Erised, and the narrative goes out of its way to point out they aren't standing beside each other in that photograph in the same book you get stuff like "Lily loathed James and maybe James forced her to marry him", I assume it's significant, especially given the Mirror of Erised explicitly comes up several times in OoTP itself:
A great black dragon was rearing in front of him… His father and mother were waving at him out of an enchanted mirror (OoTP)
He remembered seeing his dead parents in the Mirror of Erised four years ago. He was going to be able to talk to Sirius again, right now, he knew it — (OoTP)
2.0 Lily as The Golden Snitch
A very, very important point is that James doodling Lily’s initials with the Snitch was never meant to be romantic - because the hidden, true meaning of this is that Lily is represented by the Snitch and James playing with the Snitch represents James and Lily’s relationship:
Harry stared at Wormtail for a moment, then back at James, who was now doodling on a bit of scrap parchment. He had drawn a Snitch and was now tracing the letters L. E. What did they stand for?
“Me too,” said James. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a struggling Golden Snitch.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Nicked it,” said James casually. He started playing with the Snitch, allowing it to fly as much as a foot away and seizing it again; his reflexes were excellent. Wormtail watched him in awe.
[...] James was still playing with the Snitch, letting it zoom farther and farther away, almost escaping but always grabbed at the last second. Wormtail was watching him with his mouth open. Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Wormtail gasped and applauded. After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn’t tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention. Harry noticed his father had a habit of rumpling up his hair as though to make sure it did not get too tidy, and also that he kept looking over at the girls by the water’s edge.
“Put that away, will you?” said Sirius finally, as James made a fine catch and Wormtail let out a cheer. “Before Wormtail wets himself from excitement.”
Wormtail turned slightly pink but James grinned.
“If it bothers you,” he said, stuffing the Snitch back in his pocket. (OoTP)
Lily is the one James “nicked” aka stole, the one struggling against him, the one trying to escape but being grabbed at the last second by James AKA James finally managing to go out with Lily 7th year AKA James making a “particularly difficult catch”.
Lily as symbolized by the Golden Snitch is a really important part of canon that encompasses the whole text, not just SWM, and I promise I have a lot more evidence on that thread, but I'm writing a separate meta regarding that. (For now note that - Lily is the Snitch and Harry is the Seeker, because Lily’s playing hide-and-seek with him throughout the narrative and Harry has to seek her. Try doing Ctrl+ F + Snitch in OoTP and DH and see if you can spot patterns/hidden allusions to Lily).
3.0 My Analysis on SWM
(This section is most directly my personal thoughts)
It starts off with James attacking Snape specifically to get her attention, or at least, that's one of the reasons (“Snape lay panting on the ground. James and Sirius advanced on him, wands up, James glancing over his shoulder at the girls at the water’s edge as he went”). This is already a red flag. To clarify, in the context of the war and the atmosphere at Hogwarts, imo James attacking Snape even when Lily happens to be nearby isn't the issue, but doing something he knows upsets her specifically to get her attention is.
Second, he asks her out publicly, in front of a literal crowd. This is another red flag. This also goes back to him the imagery of him showing off with the Snitch - a.k.a showing off with Lily, liking the attention of others when he tries to "catch" her.
And the biggest red flag - blackmailing her with "I'll stop hurting Snape if you go out with me".
Now, I will say that it's questionable whether he 100% meant it or if it was a spur of the moment thing. I say this because when she says no, in a pretty dramatic and cutting way no less, he doesn't seem upset specifically by that. He just sort of moves on. (What he is upset by and his reaction to it, I'll get to in a bit). That said, if Lily had actually said yes, and they had had sex, that would've been rape.
Whether James asked her out repeatedly / harassed her, idk, I think it could go either way, from Sirius's words and SWM overall it is at least clear James making his interest in her known in showy and obnoxious ways even if he didn't directly ask her out before, despite her making her disinterest in him known just as much. But the way he asked her out in this scene is bad enough, even if it was just once.
Then James continues to call after her despite her speech making it clear she’s very infuriated and very not into him.
Then James doesn’t get why she’s upset at his behavior and goes “what is it with her” (putting the blame on her for her reaction) and then is so enraged by her rejection that he escalates his attack on Snape. This does not have great implications for what he’d do to Lily at other times when she similarly does something he doesn’t like.
As for Lily’s reaction in the scene, I think every word frankly speaks for itself regarding how much she dislikes James.
Lily compares going out with James to dating an animal at the bottom of the lake - this evokes the idea that dating James is equivalent to “drowning in despair”.
Also see how affectionately she talks about Harry's flight vs. the words about James (and this is a particularly sick burn towards James given Lily has been able to fly unsupported since she was 9 years old and Snape can probably fly unsupported by then too - Lily truly does NOT like this man).
“Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you’ve just got off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can — I’m surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK.” (OoTP)
Thank you thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favorite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself, I’m enclosing a picture so you can see. You know it only rises about two feet off the ground, but he nearly killed the cat and he smashed a horrible vase Petunia sent me for Christmas (DH)
“She turned on her heel and hurried away.” - Lily is hurrying away from James, she’s running away from him, she’s the Snitch trying to escape from him.
4.0 Harry's reflections
Harry muses on the Marauders' attack on Snape, and then we have these paragraphs right after it:
Harry reminded himself that Lily had intervened; his mother had been decent, yet the memory of the look on her face as she had shouted at James disturbed him quite as much as anything else. She had clearly loathed James and Harry simply could not understand how they could have ended up married. Once or twice he even wondered whether James had forced her into it... (OoTP)
To reiterate - Harry was just as disturbed by James’s treatment of Lily and Lily’s loathing of him as he was by the extreme violence towards Snape in that scene. The text clearly puts those things on the same level and on par with each other here.
And to reiterate again, JKR… literally had Harry wonder if James FORCED Lily to marry him. There was zero reason for JKR to include this if Jily was ever meant to be read positively. This isn't a "cute hate to love" type of framing, JKR clearly framed Jily as disturbing. The idea of James potentially forcing her, Lily literally saying she wouldn't go out with him if it was a choice between him and the Squid - the language here is consistently of force, of lack of choice.
Then Harry's misery about the violence towards Snape is again linked to his misery about James and Lily:
For nearly five years the thought of his father had been a source of comfort, of inspiration. Whenever someone had told him he was like James he had glowed with pride inside. And now... now he felt cold and miserable at the thought of him. (OoTP)
“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably. “She hated him!” (OoTP)
The descriptions of the struggling Golden Snitch a.k.a. Lily trying to escape from James is also likened to Snape struggling to escape from the Marauders' attack on him:
He put his hand in his pocket and took out a struggling Golden Snitch.
Snape was trying to get up, but the jinx was still operating on him; he was struggling, as though bound by invisible ropes.
“There you go,” he said, as Snape struggled to his feet again, “you’re lucky Evans was here, Snivellus —” (OoTP)
And another hint JKR might've put in is James greeting them both similarly ("All right, Snivellus?" and "All right, Evans?"). Now, regarding Harry's conversation with Sirius and Remus:
“If we were sometimes arrogant little berks, you mean,” said Sirius.
Lupin smiled.
"He kept messing up his hair,” said Harry in a pained voice.
Sirius and Lupin laughed.
“I’d forgotten he used to do that,” said Sirius affectionately.
“Was he playing with the Snitch?” said Lupin eagerly.
“Yeah,” said Harry, watching uncomprehendingly as Sirius and Lupin beamed reminiscently.
“Well... I thought he was a bit of an idiot.”
“Of course he was a bit of an idiot!” said Sirius bracingly. “We were all idiots! Well — not Moony so much,” he said fairly (OoTP)
Notice the language here when they talk about James in the memory - Sirius and Remus are smiling, they’re laughing, they’re affectionate, they're speaking of him eagerly, they’re beaming reminiscently - even at the stuff that i.e. Sirius was annoyed by in the actual memory (James showing off with the Snitch, etc). You can even feel the affection in Sirius going "we were all idiots <3”.
But then we get to the topic of James and Lily, and that totally and completely ends:
“And,” said Harry doggedly, determined to say everything that was on his mind now he was here, “he kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!”
“Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around,” said Sirius, shrugging. “He couldn’t stop himself showing off whenever he got near her.”
“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably. “She hated him!”
“Nah, she didn’t,” said Sirius.
“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. (OoTP)
They are not effusive at all. Sirius in fact sounds just as unimpressed and critical of James as he sounded in the actual memory. (“Bad luck, Prongs”, “Reading between the lines, I’d say she thinks you’re a bit conceited, mate”, the double meaning of Sirius telling James to put the Snitch away).
Sirius emphasizes James showing off for Lily and trying to get her attention and "making a fool of himself" (again, not positive wording), and it’s only when Harry brings up Lily seeming to hate him that Lily’s feelings are addressed at all, and all Sirius says is “nah she didn’t hate him”, never saying she liked or loved him and painting it as very one-sided.
This text uses the word “love” very, very intentionally - and it’s never once used for Lily’s feelings towards James (or even vice versa, frankly).
And in this conversation, the emphasis here quickly goes to the fact that James broke his promise to Lily (sort of evoking a broken wedding vow, etc):
“You think you’re funny,” she said coldly. “But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.”
“I will if you go out with me, Evans,” said James quickly. “Go on... Go out with me, and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.” (OoTP)
“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 okay 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?” (OoTP)
Again the language here, it's clearly making an intentional reference to James's "promise/agreement" to never attack Snape if Lily goes out on a date with him.
This is likened to Voldemort's broken promise to Lily - Lily says "Leave him alone" three times before James says "I will if you go out with me", just as Lily offers her own life for Harry's three times (take me, kill me instead, I'll do anything) and says Not Harry seven times and Voldemort seals the agreement by taking Lily’s life, and then “breaks that promise” whenever he tries to kill Harry (Voldemort's broken promise to Lily is brought up many times specifically in OoTP in coded language, part of why the parallel seems intentional, but I’ll get to that in other metas).
To clarify, I don’t think James did anything wrong there - certainly by 7th year Snape would’ve been a marked Death Eater who already murdered people, I’m just pointing out what the text is trying to do here.
5.0 Some comparisons
5.1 Wearing masks with each other
It's emphasized that Sirius is the one James stops showing off for, not Lily, and that James's hair is different and voice is different when he speaks to Lily - basically, that James is wearing a mask with Lily:
Harry had the distinct impression that Sirius was the only one for whom James would have stopped showing off.
“Leave him ALONE!”
James and Sirius looked around. James’s free hand jumped to his hair again.
“All right, Evans?” said James, and the tone of his voice was suddenly pleasant, deeper, more mature. (OoTP)
Again, none of this is positive framing for Jily. In comparison, in the Prince's Tale we have Snape taking off his long coat and is comfortable wearing his mother's clothes in front of Lily. In other words, unlike James who puts on a mask with her, Snape is taking the mask off with Lily.
And as James wears a mask with Lily, Lily wears a mask with him, because in the death scene memory, her face is covered by her long hair while she speaks to James, vs. the Lily from the Resurrection Stone who pushes her hair back to look at Harry.
This is Lily setting the terms of who is and isn't allowed to see her - because similarly, she's letting Sirius see her face (I'm enclosing a picture so you can see - the picture which not only includes Harry but also Lily herself laughing), she's repeatedly described as smiling at Snape, and of course she's letting Harry see her face, yet with James, we have these passages:
“Evans!” James shouted after her, “Hey, EVANS!”
But she didn’t look back. (OoTP)
his mother had been decent, yet the memory of the look on her face as she had shouted at James disturbed him quite as much as anything else (OoTP)
A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he could not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face. Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother. (DH)
In direct contrast to:
Harry heard Snape let out a tiny groan. Lily took off the hat, handed it back to Professor McGonagall, then hurried toward the cheering Gryffindors, but as she went she glanced back at Snape, and there was a sad little smile on her face. (DH)
“Your mother’s coming…” he said quietly. “She wants to see you… it will be all right… hold on…” (GoF)
One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself, I’m enclosing a picture so you can see. (DH)
but we've had to pack away all the ornaments and make sure we don't take our eyes off him when he gets going. (DH)
Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough. (DH)
This is especially notable given the obvious significance of Lily's eyes and Lily's gaze as a "window to her soul" and most reflective of her true emotions.
This is echoed in the only true James and Lily emphasis in The Prince’s Tale being that of James not paying attention to Lily:
One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father (DH)
Again, James is 11, this is totally understandable and in fact it’d be weird if he was interested in Lily since he was 11, but I’m just pointing out how the language around James and Lily is consistently negative.
5.2 The Bloody Baron
“She sent a man who had long loved me, though I spurned his advances, to find me. She knew that he would not rest until he had done so."
Harry waited. She drew a deep breath and threw back her head.
“He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with him, he became violent. The Baron was always a hot-tempered man. Furious at my refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed me.” (DH)
“What is it with her?” said James, trying and failing to look as though this was a throwaway question of no real importance to him.
“Reading between the lines, I’d say she thinks you’re a bit conceited, mate,” said Sirius.
“Right,” said James, who looked furious now, “right —”
There was another flash of light, and Snape was once again hanging upside down in the air.
“Who wants to see me take off Snivelly’s pants?” (OoTP)
A note on patronuses and extracanon statements
I'm aware JKR has said Lily was attracted to James in SWM in extracanon, and has framed Jily's patronuses positively in relation to each other. However, these statements was years after the books were published - and it's clear JKR often changes her opinions about her characters and dynamics very often i.e. the way she framed Ron and Sirius in the early books vs the later books, so it's likely something similar happened with Jily in the other direction.
In the actual books, the doe patronus is only ever shown and discussed to emphasize Snape and Lily’s bond, it’s never discussed in relation to James and Lily. The stag patronus is firmly about Harry’s connection with his father.
As for the argument that Lily noticing James showing off with the Snitch signifies she’s into him - if some boy is constantly trying to get your attention and being obnoxious about it, you’d be hyper aware of his presence regardless if you were attracted to him. Snape is also hyper aware of the Marauders, Sirius was likewise watching Snape, etc. There is, of course the blush in her conversation with Snape - I'll get to that in a separate meta.
This is another meta about Jily as potentially abusive, I don’t agree with all of it but it’s worth reading.
So this has been requested by quite a few people, now. For those who hadn't seen my previous headcanon post: here it is. I will try and tag all those who have expressed interest in the comments.
In short: After stealing Snape's phone and looking through his saddening search history, the trio come up with a plan to make Snape happy. This is how it unfolds, for the Potions Master has little idea what to make of it.
Enjoy and do reblog to inform the others!!
Part One.
All was still in the empty Transfiguration classroom. The dust lay undisturbed and thick upon the solid desks, which in turn were standing silent and endeavouring in their fortitude of unuse. The chalkboard looked dejected, the forgotten endeavours of clearing it of writing still visible in ashy smudges across the charcoal surface. And it would have probably stayed like that for another decade or two if the door wasn’t flung open and three small figures stumbled from behind it, making enough noise for the dust to twitch into the air again. A ‘quick, quick!’ was spat out by one of the disturbers accompanied by a few hisses of urge, then a scrabble as the doorknob was found and the door was pushed.
The dust jumped up from the desk as the door slammed shut and settled back upon it once more as Harry, Ron and Hermoine stood, panting, in front of it.
After a short moment, Ron pushed himself from the door. His face broke out in a wide grin.
“Blimmin’ heck, that was a mess!” He laughed and dusted his hands. “He’ll be looking for it, now, I bet.”
“But we’ve got it!” Harry grasped the trophy tight, as though he was afraid that it would slip from him, back to its owner. “Let’s do it quick, before someone else comes to find us and sees us.”
Hermoine said nothing, but she was far from calm herself - in fact, she was inches from jumping down on the spot and breaking out into a mad giggle. The latter she repressed with difficulty as they all stormed to the nearest table, swept off the perplexed dust from it with their sleeves, then laid out the shiny, sleek device upon its surface.
The device was a phone. It wasn’t any old phone, either, for if it was perhaps only a few of the more eccentric would deem it a subject of interest. This was a working phone, one which withstood any feuds between its power and the magic sparking and fizzing, though quiet and invisible, in the air; even better yet - this phone belonged to a certain man whom the three giggling and bending over its shiny, black surface, hated with a vengeance. This phone belonged to the Potion’s Master: Severus Snape.
“Go on, Hermione.” Ron slid the phone over to the small witch with bushy brown hair. “You said you knew the password.”
Hermione nodded, growing solemn at the task at hand, shoved her brown mane out of her eyes and bent over the screen, which grew illuminated at the touch of a button.
“Merlin’s beard, what my dad would give to be in our place,” Ron breathed, as Hermoine tapped out some letters and numbers with her forefingers. “A fellytone, and a working one too-”
“It’s called a telephone, Ron,” Harry corrected, though he could barely breathe as he watched Hermione’s fingers working. “Ha, I cannot believe we’ve actually managed to do this. Fred and George are nothing compared to us, now.”
“I’d love to see their faces,” Ron whispered, almost wriggling with glee. “And I’m the one who fished it out of his pocket! Now, all we need to do is-”
“Got it.” Hermione smiled as the screen changed, displaying buttons with different icons upon a plain, dark backdrop. “Now, if I remember correctly, it's called explorer…”
“Why aren’t we doing this in the common room, again?” Ron continued. “I know Percy’s a prefect, but even he wouldn’t-”
“Because, Ron,” Hermoine began as she chose the right button, “we have no idea what Snape actually keeps or searches for on this phone. If it’s all weird, we’d be too embarrassed to even attempt showing it to them. Plus,” she added, when Ron opened his mouth to interject, “it’s not like we’re going to cast it out of the window as soon as we’re done. It’s not magic - at least I don’t think it is - and it won’t just disappear or fly out to find Snape. We can show the rest of our classmates later.”
Ron opened his mouth again, but then understood the sense of this and closed it.
“There it is,” Harry said, as Hermione searched for the right option. “History. Oh, boy, this is gonna be good. If he’s not cleared it.”
Ron rubbed his hands and rocked on the balls of his feet as he leaned on the table. “Yeah, as ‘Mione said, I bet it's all weird. Let's see what’s first.”
Dangling hair and breathing mingled and hovered inches from the square surface as all three leaned in to see. However, there was hardly any giggling, after they all read the first position on the records of what, precisely, the Potion’s Master searched for whenever he had a spare moment. In fact, there was none at all, and the glee was slowly replaced with something that none of them had been expecting.
Hermoine’s eyes dulled and eyebrows furrowed as she read the first position aloud.
“... ‘How to be more approachable’.”
There was a rather awkward pause. Hermione made a rather sad ‘oh’ sound. Ron shifted slightly.
“That’s kind-of sad, to be honest,” he finally managed, frowning.
“Scroll down, Hermione,” Harry waved aside the tension and leaned forward again. “That’s only the first position. Perhaps he’s had a change of heart.”
“And the most recent,” Hermione murmured, but she scrolled down obediently.
“Yeah, I bet it’s all weird further down,” Ron muttered, but they were all disproved again. Their childish glee was completely reduced to something rather prickly and uncomfortable as Hermione ploughed through the searches:
“...Where can happiness be obtained…”
“...How to tolerate children…”
“...Patience, tips...”
“...Wholesome fiction with happy ending… stories with happy ending… which sad books to avoid… books to make one’s soul happy…”
And then:
“...Fast, effective…”
Here, Hermione paused and bit her lip, her eyes sparkling strangely, her brow now heavy. Harry glanced at her, then finished for her.
“Fast, effective headache relief.” He straightened and shifted from foot to foot, then looked at Ron for some sort of inspiration to dilute the thickness of the air. “Did you know Snape gets headaches, Ron?”
“Nope,” Ron offered, looking rather ashamed of himself and his gloating, the tips of his ears pink. “I didn’t think so. I mean, it makes sense though, doesn’t it…?”
“I feel terrible,” Hermione whispered, balling her fists.
“Yeah, we should probably put it back,” Ron said, though he didn’t look as enthusiastic about slipping the phone back into the Potion Master’s pocket than he did about proudly obtaining it. “Should we just leave it on his desk when he’s not in the classroom?”
“And how are we going to do that?” Harry asked, frowning. “We can’t go running around the dungeons. The Slytherin common rooms are there.”
Hermione sniffed, then rolled her eyes, pushing the phone away from her. “You have an invisibility cloak, Harry. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue.”
“Oh, yeah.”
They stood there for another few seconds, before Harry reached out and hesitantly pocketed the phone. “Let’s get back to the common rooms. We don’t need to mention this to anybody.”
“No, we don’t.” Ron said sadly, recalling his former words of potential victory over Fred and George and how they just went down the drain. “Never mind. Let’s just go.”
The dust was rather glad to be free of them, and so was the classroom. Only the desks, however, were rather miserable that they once again stood alone in their fortitude of unuse, unnoticed, only there to be berated and slandered by the students. Just like, as the trio would soon deduce, Severus Snape, the Potion’s Master, was.
*
A week passed. The phone was returned back to Snape’s desk without much ado. After that, it was unmentioned, and whenever it was glimpsed, three pairs of eyes were averted to the candles or windows, and most certainly not to each other, no words about it leaving their mouths, though they most certainly bounced around in their brains, though some were more cluttered than the others’.
It was through Harry’s mouth that the uncomfortable topic surfaced and it did so on a Saturday evening, in the library, when the day was slowly coming to an end and the sun was sinking slowly outside the mullioned windows. Ron was scowling at his Transfiguration homework, when Harry shot out a sigh through his nose and put down his quill.
“Listen, guys,” he started, nudging Hermione, who didn’t look as though she had heard him and just kept right on scribbling, her nose nearly touching the parchment. “I’ve been thinking… Hey, Hermione, are you listening?”
“Shush.” Hermoine glared at him, then shot a pointed glance at Madam Pince. “We’ll get kicked out.”
Ron’s scowl didn’t shift and was merely re-directed at its favourite subject of complaint with large front teeth and a vehement urge to stuff her head with new fragments of knowledge.
“Not if we keep our voices down,” he said, potting his quill too. “Talk, Harry.”
Harry opened his mouth mainly to play on Hermione’s nerves than to follow through on his plans, when his mind did a detour to the wisdom of him touching on such a sensitive topic in a public place.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” he said with a nod. “Not because this is the library. We need to speak about… you know what.”
This was of enough weight for Hermione’s quill to stop moving. She shot him a glance, then met eyes with Ron and sighed.
“Yes,” she whispered. “We can’t speak about this here. To be honest, I’ve been meaning to speak about this to you both too.”
They latched up their bags, grabbed their stationary, then swiftly exited the library, tripping over Harry and Ron’s untied shoelaces. Hermoine grabbed them by their bags when they turned the corridor towards the portrait of the Fat Lady.
“The common room’s full,” she hissed. “We should go outside. We won’t be overheard there.”
“Hermoine’s right,” Harry said, nudging Ron. “Let’s go.”
They turned around, then began slowly walking down towards the main gates. They all kept silent, their eyes trained mainly to the floor, sometimes only looking up to meander around the other students milling around the corridor. It was probably why they didn’t notice the ominous figure walking towards them until they had all but face-planted themselves into its black robes.
Hermione was the first to look up and stick out her arms to halt the other two, her eyes sharpening after she was prodded out of her thoughts by this slightly unwelcome reality. Harry and Ron had similarly dumb expressions as they blinked up at her, then at what was in front of them.
Professor Snape’s voice was as restricted to nothing but cold disdain as usual, and the black of both his clothes and expression matched this regularity.
“Where are we going?”
Harry opened his mouth, but Hermione beat him to it.
“Outside for a moment, Professor Snape.”
Harry paused, then nodded along with Ron, trying to appear as though they weren’t hiding anything at all. The Potion’s Master observed them for a moment or two longer, before lowering eyebrows and, as it seemed, his guard.
“I suggest you look where you’re going,” was all he said, before drawing his cape about him and turning to pass them. But he didn’t manage to pass them, when Hermoine opened her mouth and after drawing a deep breath, emitted a string of words strung upon the same one:
“I hope you have a good night, Professor Snape.”
It was quite uncanny, really, how all three males looked at her with the same degree of incredulity and astonishment upon their faces, apparently forgetting things like enmity and dislike. It was enough to make poor Hermione flush a deep red and her words to run away from her before she could properly filter them through her teeth and tongue.
“Just being polite, is all,” she muttered, before she tugged on Harry and Ron’s sleeves sharply. “Come on, let’s go.”
She dragged them off with enough force for Snape’s surprise to cool off and his usual stone face return as he watched them stagger, though that was only visible to Harry and Ron for a few seconds before the vehement grip on their arms prevented them from turning back around, in case they both got whiplash.
“Are you mental? What was that?” Ron hissed at her, when they rounded a corner, then he did a double take when he fixed his eyes on her features. “Blimey, Hermione, you’ve gone absolutely scarlet.”
“You’ve gone redder than his hair,” Harry commented, though with a hint of admiration in his tone as he stared.
“Oh, shut up,” Hermione muttered, then dragged them through the main door, into the cool of the evening. “Never mind that. Let’s talk about the subject at hand. And don’t tell me you’ve not been thinking about doing something similar to what I did.”
She glared at Ron and Harry, still flushed. They both pulled faces back, but they dropped their gaze after a few seconds as they trudged through the foliage.
“Alright, maybe,” Ron muttered under his breath, when they reached the black lake. “But it was nowhere near to what you just did.”
“What precisely did I just do?” Hermione snapped. “I was just being polite.”
“You were sucking up to him-”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Yes you were.” Ron put on a high-pitched voice. “I hope you have a wonderful night, Professor Snape-”
“Oh, shut up!” She stamped her foot. “You act as though you’re entirely ignorant. You were there when we looked at his history. You saw it. And if complaining and arguing about this is the best you can do, then I pity you, Ronald Weasley!”
“Alright,” Harry cut in, weakly. “That’s not what we came here to do. Let’s just get it over and done with before curfew.”
Hermione glared at Ron once more before settling down. Both folded their arms and stared at the lake. Harry pursed his lips, for it was much harder to project his thoughts than he thought it would be, now that they were actually all together for that purpose alone.
“I think Hermione’s right,” he began, when Hermione was no longer red. “It would be wrong to keep at… you know.”
Ron snorted. “Being mad at Snape for picking on us for no reason?”
“He picks on everyone.” Hermione said, her eyes narrowed. “We’re no exception. Well, perhaps Harry is, but then you did get off to the wrong start at the beginning of the year.”
“No he didn’t,” said Ron.
“He was talking back to him,” she argued. “And it was the first interaction they had. No wonder Snape hates Harry.”
“And you,” Ron said pointedly. “You’re pretty much every teacher’s pet but his, and do you know why? Because he’s an-”
“Can you two not?” Harry snapped. “Can you two calm down? Please? This is serious.”
The arguing pair scowled at one another and resumed evaporating the lake with their glares.
“So,” Harry said, once enough silence had passed, “I think we ought to… you know, help him a bit. Be, erm, nicer.”
Ron turned and creased his forehead, but Hermione nodded, solemnly.
“We ought to,” she said, softly. “I told you, I was thinking about it. It’s all about perspective, really.”
“Perspective?”
“Yes,” she said. “Think about it from Snape’s perspective. Do you reckon he has a lot of friends?”
Ron scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh. Who would want to be friends with him? ‘Course he hasn’t.”
“Precisely,” she said, though she looked at him reproachfully. “You’re teaching over five-hundred children Potions, all of whom, if I may add, are intent on either not listening, not doing homework, or just being downright rude. Yes, Ron, I know he’s like that too, and perhaps he does deserve it, and if we didn’t know better, we’d be justified in biting back. The point is, he’s clearly sad. He looks it. He looks downright miserable all the time.”
“You’re blowing this over.”
“Oh, am I?” Hermione said. “Tell me one time in which you saw him smile. And I don’t mean meanly. I mean happily. Have you ever heard him laugh? Because I haven’t.”
Ron sucked on his lips, looking torn. Harry listened, looking solemn.
“I haven’t either,” he said, quietly. “At first, I thought like Ron does, but… I’ve lived with the Dursleys my whole life. They’ve held grudges for no reason, for a long time, and it's tiring to be the person receiving them and keeping them up.”
Hermione looked at him with eyes lined with admiration. She nodded.
“Exactly, Harry. We could just be the reason for somebody’s… well, perhaps not happiness, but… tolerance.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Ron asked, still looking begrudging, but not unwilling. “By saying good morning and good night?”
“We could,” Harry said thoughtfully. “That wouldn’t be going over the top, or anything.”
Hermione must have thought about this more carefully than both of them put together, because she started counting out everything they could do upon her fingers as she spoke.
“Not just that,” she began. “We could do everything which is expected of us, for starters. Like doing homework on time, doing it correctly, not just so that it's done and boxed off without thought, the right parchment length, perhaps more… I know, we could get the older students to check it for us, so that we know we’ve done it right… then, we could actually listen in lessons and excel…”
Ron was frowning as she spoke. Even Harry was getting slightly doubtful they would ever manage such a feat.
“...Do extra work. If you don’t want to, Ron, then we could do something outside of lessons. Not necessarily work.”
“Then what?” Harry asked. “Like what?”
“We could… you know.” Hermione’s face became slightly pink again. “We could find out when his birthday is.”
“That’s going too far,” said Ron, firmly, looking slightly agonised. “Imagine his face… oh, no, I couldn’t.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Hermione agreed. “But then, I don’t know what else to do.”
“That sounds like a pretty good start to me,” Harry said. “Let’s start with lessons, Hermione, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll think of something else.”
Hermione’s face lit up, and for a moment both boys were afraid that she’d hug them.
“Great!” She grinned, then began walking towards the castle. “We have Potions on Monday, and homework due. Let’s get this done now! There’s still time. Alicia Spinnet’s good at potions - she’ll be able to point us in the right direction.”
Harry and Ron turned from the lake and began to follow Hermione as she marched towards the castle with an enigmatical spring in her step.
“I don’t know about you,” said Ron, as she talked on, “but I’ve got a weird feeling this is going to end up in a mess.”
“We’ve been in loads already,” Harry said, though there was something uneasy in his chest too, “so it won’t really make a difference. But Hermione’s got a point,” he added, after they reached the steps to the castle gate, “it must be annoying, being Snape. And, as we all know, doing homework properly’s always a good start to everything.”
“That’s utter garbage.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, grinning. “I’m quoting Hermione. She does it like she can’t live without it. And, from a teacher’s point of view, less marking seems like a good thing, at least to me.”
So the endeavours began, though they didn’t hold out to be as constant a flourish and blaze as Hermione made it out to be. Especially not after she insisted that they do twice the usual length as some form of surprise.
“I’m not doing that,” Ron complained, throwing himself back in his chair and folding his arms. “I’ve got enough work as it is. And I’ve already done it to the best possible standard. Even you’ve said it's not bad, Hermione.”
“It looks decent,” she said, unrolling her homework, which made both Harry and Ron’s pale in comparison. “But if we’re going to show that we’re not hostile any more, we ought to try harder.”
So the homework was done somewhat begrudgingly and everything seemed to be going to plan, before Sunday evening. More precisely, the free afternoon of Harry and Ron was disturbed by Hermione suddenly coming in through the portrait hole, clutching something behind her back, then moving swiftly towards them and sitting at the table at which they were currently playing wizard’s chess.
“I’ve got something,” she said, slightly flushed. “You’re not going to believe what I made in the girls’ bathroom.”
The game was paused and the boys looked suspicious as they turned to look at her.
“The girls’ bathroom?” Ron repeated bluntly. “What have you been making in the girls bathroom, Hermione, that could make you go so bloody pink?”
They both looked blank as she withdrew a hand from behind her back and placed its contents upon the surface of the table with a rather proud flourish. It was a glass bottle, the sort which looked rather like a cuboid, stoppered with a round cork. It was filled with a light blue liquid, which seemed to glow faintly as it rested within its cool, glass confines.
“That doesn’t look innocent,” Harry commented, knocking over Ron’s bishop. “What is it, Hermione?”
“It’s a headache draught,” she said proudly. “I found the recipe in one of the books in the library.”
Ron pushed his lips out as he stared at it, then picked it up.
“How d’you know he’ll know this is a headache draught, Hermione?”
“I reckon he’d know, since he’s the Potion’s Master.”
“But doesn’t that mean he’s fully capable of making these himself?” Harry asked. “It’s not like it would be a problem for him.”
“Yes, Harry,” Hermione said slightly impatiently, taking back the bottle from Ron, “but the thing is that some people, men especially, simply don’t bother with taking care of themselves. That’s what my mum once said, and I’ve observed it since. I have a good reason to suspect that Snape isn’t the sort to ensure his health is top-notch.”
“I wouldn’t care if I was him,” Ron agreed. “What’s there to live for, for him? If I had to teach a bunch of snotty kids Potions everyday, I’d probably kill myself.”
There was a bit of an awkward pause - Harry had begun to nod, but lost the ability to move his head as he caught the disapproval in Hermione’s eyes.
“I mean,” Ron corrected himself, “you’re probably right, anyway. How long did it take you to make this?”
“An hour,” she replied, “but that was because I messed up the first one. I added a bat-wing too many, so I had to pour that down the sink. Anyway.” She sat up straight again, folding her hands on the table neatly. “It said that half this bottle is to be drunk with fluid twice daily. So we need to make this once a day.”
“We’re going to run out of ingredients within a week,” Harry commented.
“Not unless we take a little too many during Potions,” Hermione said coolly. “It’s a basic potion, using basic ingredients. Nothing Snape doesn’t have in his cupboard.”
“That would be stealing, though,” Ron said.
“No it wouldn’t, though, since we are giving it back to him in the form of self-help,” Harry replied. “And you are going to be making it every day, Hermione?”
In response, Hermoine thrust her hands into her pockets and produced another six vials, placing them with a clink, clink, clink upon the table, neatly. The boys looked at her with varying degrees of astonishment and admiration as she lined the bottles up.
“When these run out,” was the nonchalant reply, though the pink returned to Hermione’s cheeks as it was spoken, “I will do so. Unless you’d like to help me make them.”
“I think I’m good,” Ron said. “You can take all the credit if you want, Hermione - I’ll be happy with just doing extra work.”
“Great,” Hermione replied, ignoring the slight annoyance tinging the last two words spoken. “Then we will start from tomorrow.”
*
As all three of the enlightened Gryffindors lined up outside the dungeon’s classroom on a Monday morning, all three could feel their hearts beating somewhere in their stomach. Hermione, as usually was the case when feverish with excitement or trepidation, wouldn’t stop talking, even for the danger of any nerves exploding in her counterparts.
“Remember what I mentioned yesterday,” she whispered with obstinance, leaning in so that she wouldn’t be overheard. “If anything happens, try not to shout, don’t argue, just try to be as polite as you can. Yes, even if it isn’t your fault, Ron,” she added, cutting off Ron’s indignant reply. “Just try to be as good-willed as possible.”
A drawling voice cut off this heartfelt advice.
“What are you three whispering about?” Draco Malfoy called from the front of the line. “You must be conspiring, since you’re standing so close to each other. Or are you just trying to kiss Potter, Granger?”
Hermione straightened, Ron scowled, Harry opened his mouth to retort, but they never got to, since the former turned around and raised her eyebrows.
“I hope you’re not jealous,” she replied, coolly, “because that would be gross.”
Malfoy scoffed. “Jealous? Of kissing you? Bleh.” He made a show of shuddering, then nudged Crabbe and Goyle, standing beside him. “Imagine kissing someone with teeth like that. They're absolutely massive. It would be like trying to kiss a beaver.”
Hermione’s lips turned down; Ron flushed a fiery red and took a step forward, but Hermione grabbed his shoulders before his clenched fist could go into swing.
“Snape will invite us in any second,” she hissed. “Don’t be provoked, Ron.”
“Yeah, don’t listen to him,” Harry said, shooting a look of hatred towards the blonde, pinched-featured boy guffawing. “He’s just being an idiot. It’s his natural state, he can’t help it.”
At that moment, the doors to the classroom creaked open, and they all began to file into their places. Harry and Ron began to meander towards the back of the classroom to their usual spot, but Hermione knocked on their arms and pointed towards the front row instead.
“Oh no,” Ron moaned, looking fearful, “no, not the front desks, Hermione…”
“Shut up, Ron,” was all she said before she dragged them towards the ominous front desks, just (oh, horror!) in front of the black board. They ignored the strange looks they received from the others around them and instead focused on unpacking all of their things needed for the lesson.
It seemed that they were all off for a good start, when Harry opened his bag, rummaged around in it for a moment, then looked stricken.
“What is it?” Hermione hissed, noticing, as she laid out her stationary geometrically on the desk. “Did you forget your homework?”
“No, I’ve forgotten to bring my Potions book,” he replied, turning his bag upside down. “Oh, great…”
“Silence,” Snape called from behind his desk, watching them with a distasteful look on his pale face. “Sit down.”
They all sat and slid their bags off the desk. Harry hoped nothing amiss would be noticed and instead of wriggling around nervously, he tried to listen carefully as the lesson began. Of course, Hermione had made the effort of ensuring that she was sitting between him and Ron, so that they wouldn’t give into temptations and burst into conversation with one another during inappropriate times.
Snape’s eyes darted towards them in a rather suspicious nature as the lesson began, as though he was expecting something dishonest at the least from this sudden change of seating and eagerness. However, the three looked back with innocent eyes, which, in turn, made the Potions Master’s eyes narrower, before he turned to write upon the chalkboard.
“You will be working in pairs,” he said, once all the instructions had been written and the sleeping draught introduced, “I expect this to be done and detailed on parchment by the end of the lesson.”
The vehemence with which Hermione threw herself into the task was quite unsettling, at least for the other two. However, since there were three of them, either Harry or Ron was going to have to go and work with another, and since neither of them wanted to be parted from Hermione (who, as usual, looked as though she knew exactly what she was doing) there was a little bit of dithering done.
“Ron, why don’t you go and work with Neville?” Hermione suggested, as Harry slid over to her and almost grasped her arm as though to claim her for the lesson.
Ron looked stricken.
“Are you mad?” he hissed, as discreetly as he could. “We’ll blow up the classroom!”
Hermione sighed. “No, you won’t-”
“Yes we will! It’s already happened twice before!”
However, Snape intervened before anything could be decided. They flinched, feeling the cold of his shadow and turned to see him standing behind them with his arms folded and his eyes still narrowed.
“Well?” He looked at the dithering three, from bushy brown hair to green eyes to freckles on nose. “This doesn’t look like a pair, to me.”
Harry shot a look at Ron; Ron glowered and made no move to move away. Hermione looked desperate.
“I’ll work with Neville,” she said, making them both shoot her panicked looks instead. “You two work together.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Snape said coolly, his eyes darting back and forth between them. “Potter, move your things to Longbottom’s desk. Weasley, you will work with Granger.”
Harry was about to open his mouth to protest, when Hermione stood on his foot and he ended up shutting it and nodding instead.
“Yes, sir,” he said, though sounding slightly dispirited, then obediently gathered up his things and went to sit with Neville, whose round eyes didn’t leave Snape for the entirety of the time. He laid out all of his things, trying not to look at Ron, who looked rather smug at the change of circumstances, then looked up to find Snape’s eyes narrowed more still as they swept over the things he laid out on the desk.
“Where is your textbook, Potter?” Snape asked softly, his arms folded about him, looking much displeased. “Did you perhaps think that the presence of the scar on your forehead makes you unobliged to bring it? Or perhaps you think you know what to do already, without the book’s aid?”
Malfoy, who was working with Goyle to their left, snorted and nudged his crony. Harry remembered Hermione’s words and swallowed down his words, which were far too red and sharp for the plan they were trying so hard to execute.
“I apologise, sir,” he said, managing to sound relatively polite and stop himself from glowering at the same time, then took a deep breath. “I must have left it in the library yesterday. It’s my fault entirely.”
Neville stared at him. So did Snape. Harry turned to the former.
“Can I share your potions book today, Neville?”
“Sure,” Neville stammered out, then slid it over to him. “Here… here you go.”
“Thank you.” He turned to look back at Snape, who was looking incredulous at the least, almost nervous at the fact that he wasn’t firing a projectile of arrogance back at him. “Sorry to be an inconvenience, sir.”
At this, Snape actually took a small step back, twitching his cape around himself as though putting up a shield of defence, his eyebrows unbending themselves and creeping slowly upwards. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione shoot him a huge grin and give him a very big thumbs-up. Ron looked torn between cringing and clapping, but ended up nodding in approval.
Snape must have been so thrown off-balance by this alarming bout of humility on Harry’s part, that didn’t even give him a reply. He just slid away from their desk with a last thorough look at him, probably deciding he was under the influence of some spell and not being worthy of both his time or his nerves.
“Nice job, Harry,” Hermione said to him over her bubbling cauldron. “See, you can keep your cool if you want to.”
“I nearly didn’t,” Harry replied with a grin, feeling some odd sense of pride from this accomplishment. “But tell me, Hermione, how are you going to put that vial on his desk?”
“Oh, I’ve got that all figured out,” she said rather breezily, dropping powdered porcupine spine into her mixture. “I’ll leave my book here, then come and get it during break, while he’s gone to the staffroom. Or perhaps I’ll just do it when his back is turned. I’ll manage somehow.”
With that Harry couldn’t argue, so he turned back to his potion and met with Neville’s intrigued face.
“What are you up to?” he asked quietly, as they cut and measured. Harry thought there wasn’t any point in elaborating, so he just said:
“We’re trying to be nice to Snape.”
“Nice to Snape?” Neville repeated, pausing with his cutting knife hovering above his cutting board. “Why’s that?”
Harry shrugged, stirring his potion the way it said on the chalkboard. “Nothing much. Thought we’d have some fun and do some good, you know, Neville?”
Neville didn’t look as though he understood, but then he shrugged and nodded.
“That’s… nice,” he murmured thoughtfully, then nothing more was said on the matter, though he didn’t look quite as uneasy as he did before. In fact, he looked slightly impressed.
Everything would have ended nicely and according to plan if Harry and Neville weren’t stationed at that particular desk. Their sleeping draught was slowly turning a bright-purple colour, as was Hermione and Ron’s (when Harry glanced over), when suddenly there was a sound of splashing and Harry was slapped in the face with several globs of his concoction; someone had thrown something into their cauldron.
Goyle was grinning. Malfoy sniggered, then moved a few steps back to his desk.
“Looked like it needed more bat-wing, Potter.” He shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
Harry stepped forward and was about to tell him exactly what he thought of him with his fists, when Neville poked him frantically and said, “Look!”
He turned back just as the huge, purple bubble swelling out of the rim of his cauldron popped; there was a sound like a giant slug being squelched and Neville and Harry were drenched from head to toe in sticky goo.
There was a gasp, silence, then a few pounding footsteps, rustling of fabric and Snape stood before them with his eyes black and his mouth sneering.
“You idiots,” he began, whipping out his wand as their cauldron gave another sickening squelch and more gunk splattered out. “Did you not read the instructions? Can you two even read?”
“It wasn’t our fault, Professor,” Neville stammered, wiping gunk off his face, looking worriedly at his ruined robes. “Malfoy threw a bat wing into our cauldron. It was coming along so well, too…”
Snape’s eyes flickered to Malfoy, who pulled a face which was obviously meant to look innocent, then back to Harry, who had taken off his glasses and was frowning as he tried to remove the sludge from their surface so he could actually see.
“That’s right, Professor,” he managed, frowning. “We’d followed your instructions, this time.”
From the corner of his eye Harry saw the shape of Hermione draw something out from her pocket, nip backwards a few steps and discreetly place it on Snape’s desk.
Snape didn’t notice anything, still looking furious. He looked at the purple gunk disdainfully, waved his wand, vanishing it off them and the table.
“Five points from Slytherin,” he snapped at Malfoy, then turned to Neville and Harry. “And five from Gryffindor, for the disturbance.”
This was horribly unfair and normally, Harry would have exclaimed and let him know that it was just so, but Harry had a certain mindset now along with Hermione making frantic motions at him from behind Snape’s back, and so he didn’t say a word as he put his glasses back on and stared at him.
“I apologise for the inconvenience, sir.” He pursed his mouth and shot a look at Malfoy, who’s grin wasn’t as prominent, now that he had been put in his place. “Thank you for cleaning the mess up for us.”
This time, Snape certainly looked baffled. He even looked displeased, his lip curling downwards, though Harry had a feeling it was because he had no idea what was going on, rather than him being disgusted at the good upbringing he was no doubt convinced Harry didn’t have. Ron stifled a snigger with his hands. Hermione smiled.
“Yes,” Neville piped up, surprising all of them, as he examined his clean robes. “Thanks for the help, sir.”
Snape stared at him, then shot a glance at Harry, then made a sound similar to an incredulous scoff and waved his hand for the rest to get on with working. The babble of chatter slowly resumed, as did the clinking of vials and hushed muttering of the flames beneath the cauldrons.
Harry watched Snape walk back to his desk with his eyes still narrowed, sit down, apparently lost in thought, then actually look at his desk and pause.
Hermione’s eyes shot a discreet look at the Potions Master and the corner of her mouth couldn’t restrain itself from twitching upwards as Snape picked up the headache draught in two fingers (it was very clearly labelled in block writing, so that it was unable to tell who had written it) and read the label. The trio watched his eyes grow wide as his eyes scanned over it - he was astonished! - then flash upwards with suspicion.
Hermione had already averted her eyes with Ron, pretending to be reading a passage in the book together, and Harry managed to do the same very shortly after, so Snape simply scoured the room and found no potential gifters in any of the gathered. He looked back down to the little blue bottle. He uncorked it, brought it up to his nose hesitantly (probably expecting a lungful of poisonous fumes, Harry thought), then with the same expression lowered it, corked it and carefully placed it back down on his desk.
Like Hermione, Harry couldn’t keep himself from smiling as he watched the Potions Master’s reaction. Snape looked blankly at the vial for a second longer, then a strange expression of bewilderment came over him: he dragged a hand down his face, pinched the bridge of his nose and began to massage his eyes. He looked impressively beaten. More befuddled than Harry had ever seen him, which was strange, for this was nothing but an apparent act of thoughtfulness - it was as though he had no idea how to react to it!
As the class began to unroll their parchments to copy down the writing on the blackboard and add notes, Snape’s eyes kept shooting reluctant glances towards the strange present on his desk. Once or twice he even picked it up with a strange look of calm and intrigue on his face to study it.
Harry couldn’t sit still, and from the looks of it, neither could Hermione and Ron. Ron kept snickering to himself; Hermione was pink with pleasure and often joined him in his quiet outbursts of laughter. Before the lesson was out, all three were in such high spirits that Neville looked unsettled, because whenever he caught their eye they beamed at him richly, then went back to their work smiling.
“Homework,” Snape called at the end of their lesson, back to his dark mood and expression. “I want you to place it on the front table as you walk out. Now, go.”
Harry withdrew his homework from his bag - this, he hadn’t forgotten since Hermione had checked both their bags thrice - along with Hermione and Ron. They packed up, put on their bags, then approached the desk together. All three parchments were unmistakably longer than anybody else’s and almost rolled off the table as they placed them on the pile.
When they turned to Snape, his face was made of marble.
“See you later, sir,” Ron began. “Good lesson.”
“Have a good rest of your day, Professor Snape,” Hermione added.
“Thanks again for your help, Professor,” Harry finished with a polite nod, then turned and walked out.
As soon as they were out in the corridor and the door was shut, they all burst out, clutched at one another in excitement, hissing out observations and whispering:
“Blimey, did you see his face?” Ron chortled, punching Harry in the arm. “He was absolutely gob-smacked.”
“I bet he feels bad about taking points off you, now,” Hermione added, her teeth gleaming as she grinned. “But listen. In a sense, this is completely worth it.”
“Yeah, we couldn’t get him so out of it any other way if we tried,” Ron added with vehemence. “We’re closer to getting him to quit his job by being decent to him than by being awful. Did you see his face when he picked up Hermione’s vial?”
He pulled a face of bewilderment, doing such a good impression that they all burst out laughing as they rounded the corner, running straight into Professor McGonagall who raised an eyebrow at this buzzing of laughter and jovial mood which they were exhibiting.
“Good morning,” she said to them, clearly looking for an explanation which, unfortunately for her, she wasn’t going to get, for her recipients were having far too much fun in their enigmatical benevolence to provide it to her.
“Good morning, Professor McGonagall,” Hermione sang as they walked past. “You look really nice today!”
“Yeah, enjoy the nice weather, Professor,” Harry added, “while it lasts!”
“Have a good morning,” Ron added as they got out of earshot, then waved and turned back around.
Minerva McGonagall stared after them with her lips pursed, wondering whether to follow them to check whether any charms had been cast on them to put them in such a cheerful spell or to pen this strange enthusiasm as the aftereffect of something ridiculous. The former seemed most likely to be the case, since they had just come out of Potions, and as far as everybody was aware - unless something catastrophic had happened which had temporarily rendered the Potions Master a fool in their eyes - it wasn’t exactly their favourite lesson for obvious reasons.
She made up her mind a moment later, and after twitching the quill she was holding in two fingers, she directed her footsteps towards the dungeons and the Potion’s classroom to find out more about the state of affairs.
I was so happy to see this in my notifs when I woke up today! Sev's utter confusion and the trio becoming all giddy over it are quite adorable. I love how Neville got brought in as well. I'm excited to see how this pans out, especially with Sev figuring out who his secret caretakers are 🤩
It boggles my mind when people still try to say pensieve memories are subjective.
If that were the case, then how the hell would Harry be able to hear the Marauders' conversations during SWM? Snape obviously wasn't paying attention to them and had no idea they were there, so how would the memory be able to pick up what they were saying in such clear detail if pensieves weren't completely unbiased?
Peter being a good kid at first, arriving to Hogwarts excited but anxious, having spent much of his childhood bullied and wanting a fresh start. Peter and Remus becoming friends, gravitating to each other as they were far more socially awkward than their roommates. Remus attracting the attention of James & Sirius and introducing them to Peter. The four of them becoming friends. Peter looking up to James & Sirius as these sort of role models; charismatic, funny, and confident guys who give Peter any time of day.
Him watching these two guys he looks up to pick on others, cheering them on because for once it's not Peter being the one bullied and it feels GOOD to have the (somewhat) approval of two 'cool' kids. Getting swept in by it, pushing away any sort of guilt he feels for the bullying by telling himself it's just the natural order of things. Better them than him. Remus and their teachers don't stop them either, so it can't be THAT bad.
The three of them discovering Remus is a werewolf and taking active steps to become animagus and support him. Peter, managing such advanced magic at such a young age – albeit with the help of James & Sirius – and feeling AMAZING. Feeling PRIDE. It kickstarts this downward spiral of Peter always itching for more. It kickstarts this fascination with power. Seeing Remus transformed into a werewolf for the first time doesn't help – the man is a BEAST in a good and ferocious way. Peter is in awe.
He also notices how 'Snivellus' is quite capable of holding his own against James & Sirius. Peter, looking up to the latter, finds this secretly impressive. And with the latter always spouting about Snape's use of 'dark magic', and Sirius speaking about his 'dark magic roots' and 'dark magic family', and seeing Remus, a 'dark creature', SO powerful in that state... Well, what other connection does Peter make other than dark magic being a key to power?
Cue Peter becoming drastically more and more obsessed with the thought. He doesn't tell his other friends – why would he? They HATE dark magic, and he doesn't want to upset them. Cue years of this building fascination, years of this built-up resentment towards all the little insults and hurt he receives from James & Sirius, two people he admires... watching James & Sirius use illegal hexes on students, watching Sirius 'anti-dark magic' Black almost kill Snape with a 'dark creature'... Realizing they're hypocrites...
All of it gradually snowballing into this NEED to show them he's better, this NEED to finally put them in their place, this NEED to be the one to do it.
Cue Peter taking his first chance to join the self-proclaimed 'Dark Lord'.
Cue Peter feeling the best he's ever felt by watching these people he always saw so above him die and go to prison – all because of PETER.
Yes, so hear me out! So basically, if Snape had a phone, his search history would be a huge subject of interest and some sort of trophy to obtain for all those who hate him. Hence:
Harry, Ron and Hermione (after an exhausting attempt and many, many hours of planning) manage to obtain and get into Snape's phone. They're all convinced his browsing history is going to be all creepy and slimy (given he's not wiped it) but instead, when they open it, it goes something like this:
Harry: Got it. Oh, this is going to be good. First one on the list...
Ron:
Hermione: ... "how to be more approachable"?
Harry:
Ron: That's kind of sad, to be honest.
Harry: Scroll down, Hermione.
Ron: Yeah, I bet it's all weird further down.
All three:
Hermione: "...where can happiness usually be found ... ways of tolerating children ... how to be patient ... wholesome fiction with happy ending ... fast, effective headache relief..."
Ron:
Harry:
Hermione: I feel awful.
Ron: Yeah, it's not great. We should probably put this back.
Harry: Yep.
And they end up doing all their homework on time and concentrate in Snape's lessons. Hermione (after dragging Harry and Ron into it) ends up making headache drafts and secretly leaving them on Snape's desk morning and noon. They always say good morning/afternoon whenever they pass him on the corridors and Snape has no idea why the three kids which hate him the most in the school are suddenly going out if their way to excel in his lessons and be nice to him.
(I might actually turn this into a fan fiction, who knows; I love the concept)
