Another thing about Lily.
After everything that had happened, Snape tries to tell her how Remus almost killed him.
Snape’s been ordered--possibly threatened--to keep quiet. But, whatever Dumbledore might do to him pales in comparison to losing his best (and possibly only) friend. He’s about to tell her.
Only to find out that James got in first. And, whatever he said, painted himself as the selfless hero of the story.
A lot of people have condemned Lily for that. But, can we look at the whole picture?
One thing about bullies and abusers is that they’re proactive. Gaslighters don’t mess with just their victims. They mess with other people, too. They make sure to get in first--to everyone and everwhere--long before their victims are willing to tell their story. By the time they speak up for themselves, they find out that everyone has heard the story--or lots of stories--about what the victim did. They’ve heard what a liar the victim is and the terrible things the long suffering abuser has had to put up with.
By the time the victim speaks up, there are tons of people standing around, nodding their heads, and thinking how this confirms everything the abuser told them.
And it’s not because the people are stupid or blind. It’s because the abuser has been telling lots of lies for a good, long time--and they were believable lies.
Other people have been repeating those stories. “Everybody” knows this is the truth, and nobody stops and traces back how what “everybody” knows are a bunch of stories that all trace back to one person.
James lied to Lily. What happened in the Shrieking Shack is just the latest in a long line of lies he’s told. The lies he’s told about Snape were all set up to do one thing: to make him look good, to make what he did look right.
Do we even know if Snape called other people Mudbloods? He doesn’t argue when Lily accuses him of it, but she doesn’t give him much chance to say anything.
Because she knows. Or she thinks she knows.
How does she know? I can’t see Snape telling her, and I doubt Lily would sit back and say nothing while he was calling other people names while she was right beside him.
But someone told her that was what Snape did. And, when he said it to her, she believed them, even if she hadn’t before. That was when she probably believed all the other stories “everybody” had been telling her and “everybody” knew.
Lily didn’t swallow one lie, she didn’t swallow all the lies. But, when hit by a mountain of them over five years, she believed enough of them.
