I read some part in the book that snape looking at lily intensely and it made her blush, can you go further on that?
I posted a bit on this the other month. I like the parallel between the two passages, but it’s merely a headcanon.
Otherwise, the blushing moment is a passage that’s easily read in lots of ways.
Much of fandom seems to read his intensity as being because he’s attracted to her, and she blushes because she realises it. Given that the two don’t end up together, some elements of fandom assume that she blushes because such intensity from him is unwanted.
It’s possible - but I think it’s reasonably plausible that you’d blush, especially at that age, under intense scrutiny from anyone. Equally, it’s plausible that the opposite is true - that she quietly harbours an attraction to him, and his intensity makes her blush, especially if it’s unexpected.
Additionally, his intensity doesn’t have to be borne of attraction - it could simply be that he’s desperate for her to take him seriously.
A different reading on the passage is that they’re talking about the Marauders when this happens. He says that he’s trying to show her that they’re not wonderful as everyone seems to think they are - and then she blushes. It’s perfectly valid to see this as Lily secretly thinking that they were wonderful, and her quelling under his scrutiny.
The linked post talks about Legilimency as a potential reason, so what if the opposite is true - what if Severus is on a path to becoming a skilled Occlumens and Lily knows it, and in this interaction he deliberately opens his mind for her as an invitation to prove his point?
There’s not a clear theme on blushing in the books - sometimes it’s embarrassment, sometimes it’s irritation, sometimes it’s even pleasure - so it’s impossible to extract authorial intent via consistency.
I suppose the closest we’ll come is the context of the scene itself, where Lily does go on to defend the Marauders. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that she blushed because despite her protests that James was a jerk, she secretly liked him, and Severus unwittingly struck a nerve.
A different reading on the passage is that they’re talking about the Marauders when this happens. He says that he’s trying to show her that they’re not wonderful as everyone seems to think they are - and then she blushes. It’s perfectly valid to see this as Lily secretly thinking that they were wonderful, and her quelling under his scrutiny.
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I suppose the closest we’ll come is the context of the scene itself, where Lily does go on to defend the Marauders. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that she blushed because despite her protests that James was a jerk, she secretly liked him, and Severus unwittingly struck a nerve.
This has always been my personal interpretation of that scene. Largely because of the context of when that scene transpires, as you noted. I do believe it hints to the fact that Lily already harbored some interest in James and, further, was conflicted about that because she was at least aware of some of the bad blood and history between James and Snape (if not the full details, which I personally do not believe she was based on evidence Rowling presents us with in the text) and that James does tend to be a bully to more students than just Snape. Many people focus on the fact that Lily does call James out for his flaws in SWM but they also often overlook how revealing her call out is of her familiarity with James. We see that Lily does seem to have been very aware of James and his mannerisms (e.g. the fact his hair was messy because he messed it up to look as if he had come from flying on his broom) which does suggest that she had been watching James closely enough to make those observations. I do believe that it exposes her for the possibility that, for all that she doesn’t approve of James’s behavior, she still fancied James and may have felt guilty and/or conflicted about that (i.e. she may have “protested a little too much” in her vehement complaints about James to Snape). The irony is that Lily may have been the girl who fell for the “bad boy,” it’s just that at that point in time Snape wasn’t quite the “bad boy” that she fell for –James, for all the more problematic examples of the sort of toxic masculinity and negative tropes that you might expect to find in the traditional boarding school narratives, was.
If you wanted to go further with this interpretation, one could also theorize that this conflict between her attraction and disapproval of James was also one of the motivating factors in her finally ending her friendship with Snape the way she does. Her initially not wanting to hear an apology from Snape and her quickness to speak over Snape, place words in his mouth, draw her own conclusions, and generally adopt a confrontational tone of accusation could be read as Lily’s defensive need to convince herself that she’s right in wanting to end her friendship with Snape (not to say she didn’t have good reasons, given that Snape was clearly being courted and/or groomed by those in his house who were sympathetic to Voldemort’s cause). That is to say, among the valid reasons Lily had for not wanting to accept Snape’s apology she may also have not wanted to because believing that Snape was too far gone for them to remain as friends was also a convenient resolution to the emotional conflict between her loyalties to him as a “good friend” and her growing interest in James (i.e. she would not be betraying a friendship in liking him if she had already ended her friendship with Snape because he betrayed her first, ergo, she’s freed from any sense of guilt).
She also revealed herself when she confronted Snape about not being grateful to James, as we must make the logical inference that she had been speaking to James regularly enough for James to tell her partial truths about an incident where James “saved Snape’s life.” I say logically because, given the measures Dumbledore took to prevent it from being made public that he had brought Remus into the school and arranged special accommodations for him only for a student to have nearly escaped an encounter with him as a fully transformed werewolf, I sincerely doubt that Lily would have learned about it from him or another member of the Hogwarts’ staff. Further, we can conclude that she didn’t learn it from Snape as his response when she confronted him about it strongly suggested that that was the first occasion she had ever made it known to him that she knew about some of the details of the incident. Thus, we can argue there is strong evidence to suggest that James told Lily about it (for reasons that are open to interpretation but, given his interest in her, could also be strongly argued to have been a desire to impress her/ingratiate himself to her and show her he could be a nice guy as evidenced by the fact he did heroically save her friend’s life) and that Lily and James must have been on semi-regular speaking terms where James could feel comfortable and assured enough to approach her and tell her his version of what happened without needing to fear her reacting badly, making a scene, or breaking confidence to make it into a public issue that would have made Dumbledore aware he was going around talking about it (especially considering Dumbledore explicitly threatened Snape with expulsion should he ever do the same).
Additionally, the fact that Lily was made aware of a situation where Snape’s life had been in danger and the first occasion we see her bring it up to Snape directly is during an argument over James being a not-so-nice-guy is also very revealing in the sense that it exposes the fact that Lily and Snape’s friendship may have already become more strained than he realized. That is, Lily was already emotionally distancing herself or pulling away from Snape while simultaneously talking more and/or spending more time with James. Otherwise, one would wonder at the fact that Lily would learn her “best friend” had been involved in some incident that required James to save his life and not saw fit to check in with him and see how he was after such a close call. As such, her blushing could be interpreted as evidence of her conflict when it came to her growing attraction to James and her awareness that James could be a bully while also acknowledging he was clearly not all bad if he was a “nice enough guy” to save her friend despite their animosity. That is not to say it could also not be read as her awareness of Snape’s own attraction to her. One could also debate Lily’s conflict there, especially given Rowling has suggested Lily could have seen Snape as a potential romantic interest if he had made different choices in their youth. Indeed, it’s also possible Lily was aware of Snape’s interest and conflicted because she was either torn between her affection for him and growing interest in James or simply more interested in James and, as a teenager, lacked the experience and emotional maturity at that point to figure out how she could manage to navigate a complicated situation where her childhood friend had developed an unreciprocated attraction to her while she had developed an interest in his school bully and bitter enemy.
Interestingly, it’s possible that while Snape was lashing out at Lily while being humiliated by James, some of Lily’s own calling out was partly her lashing out at James because his actions had put her in the very sort of awkward position she had been trying to avoid. Effectively, she had been warming up to the idea of him being a nicer guy than Snape believed (especially after he did something heroic like save her friend) and then he goes and bullies her friend “because he exists” and forces her to publically choose between them. In fact, Rowling again hints to Lily’s potential emotional conflict of interest in the way she alternates between having Lily seem to genuinely condemn James’s actions and also banter with him and try not to show she does find some amusement in it all herself when Harry observes the way her lips twitch as if she were suppressing a smile. Then, of course, Snape lashes out at her and Lily proceeds to lash out at James. The sad irony may be that Snape lashing out gave Lily the final excuse/out that she needed to resolve her internal conflict.
That is not to say she wasn’t genuinely hurt by Snape at that moment, indeed, her lashing out at James could be read as an expression of her anger, hurt, and frustration at being put in the situation where a boy she cared for as a childhood friend and a boy she had started to warm to and maybe fancy had brought everything to a head in such an ugly, public, and humiliating fashion. However, if we do interpret Lily as someone who had already begun to develop an attraction to James and been conflicted about that, we could also say that that moment between her, Snape, and James solidified for her a very stark reality; the two could not peacefully coexist and it would have been impossible for her to continue to maintain her friendship with Snape and encourage any flirtation or relationship with James. Essentially she had to choose, she could either keep her friendship with Snape and forget about James or end her friendship and leave the door open for James to prove to her he could be more than a bully and an “arrogant toe-rag.”
