#is imo really key to interpreting the Snape/lily/marauders dynamic

[pangaeaseas]

I don’t think she was a particularly good friend at all, though she was certainly the best he ever had (which is pretty tragic, really). But that’s not due to any deficiencies in Lily’s character, but just because this is how childhood friendships between two very different people based on nothing but proximity often go. Lily doesn’t try to understand Severus as a person one bit beyond him being the one to tell her she was magic. Severus equally doesn’t understand Lily one bit beyond her being the one who made him feel important by listening to him tell her about magic. It’s self centred on both parts, but they’re children. Friendships like these usually hang together by nostalgia for a while but inevitably drift apart. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t important or transformative.

I do think she displayed a degree of classism regarding Severus as early as the train platform though. I also read the Evanses as upper working/lower middle class at best, but they live in a house with three bedrooms (because Petunia has her own room) in an area safe enough for the children to play in a well maintained playground without adult supervision. The Snapes are coded as living in truly Dickensian poverty, not just working class but underclass, in a 2 up 2 down, no indoor toilet, bath in a tin with shared water once a week kind of slum housing, and I’ll say as a Brit that nobody disdains the underclasses quite like the respectable working-but-not-on-benefits classes, because they think they’re feckless and give them all a bad name. Petunia got her attitudes from the same parents who raised Lily. There’s still a disparity there even if Lily isn’t *that* much higher on the ladder. Most of this slum housing is gone now except a few relics in the North, but it was poverty beyond belief. But where he’s really lacking compared to her is parental love and protection and the security in identity that comes with that. She doesn’t understand this in the slightest, but no sheltered child could, and it’s not on her to try at the expense of her safety because just as she doesn’t get how his poverty is limiting, he doesn’t get how her marginalisation is terrifying her.

For me, it’s a tragedy because they were two kids who never stood a chance, not a story of one irredeemable kid who threw away a truly wonderful friend.

Again, thanks for being reasonable and not leaving wild takes or personal attacks in my inbox.

The post this was in response to was specifically about the idea that Lily was a bad friend for ending her relationship with Snape after the Mudblood incident (and implicitly for not 'saving' him from joining the Death Eater. A choice he made as a fully autonomous person). I don't think you're saying that here, though---I'm fine with the interpretation that they both had trouble fully seeing each other as people and that their friendship was dysfunctional and would have ended anyway. There are a lot of ways to interpret Lily! I just think that blaming her for ending the friendship when she did is uhhh kinda misogynist (to be clear I don't think YOU are doing that at all, I think your interpretation is actually quite interesting. The one point I would take issue with is addressed later in this response)

I appreciate your insights on the class system, Snape and Lily's relative class positions and how that might have influenced their relationship. I agree that while they come from the working class, Snape is definitely worse off, and that Lily potentially held some prejudice against him (Petunia definitely does). Having gone back and reread the Prince's Tale, I don't see her doing this on the page (I have no idea how the train platform is meant to be read as classism but I may be missing some nuance), (excepting 'Snivelly', which is the one instance of her being classist towards him I think happens on page, and I don't blame her for that lol considering) and from what I've read I don't see her as a bad friend at all, but we don't see too much of their friendship and what we do see is subjective and also dependent on how we interpret the wider political situation, so I think you can validly headcanon she was an imperfect friend and her class prejudices MAY have influenced her relationship with him (though personally I think his growing alignment with Death Eaters was uhhh a good deal worse than any hypothetical classism on her part). I do think Snape's halfblood status and connection to the Death Eaters (established pre SWM) means that by SWM he had a more privileged position in broader wizarding society than Lily. I'm not British, though, and I really don't want to say much about class positions when I am not an expert!

What we do see in the Prince's Tale is Lily being more and more concerned about, y'now, the growing hate group that wants her and people like her dead. We never see Lily making disparaging comments about his background, and 'disparaging comments' is not even the same as 'actively trying to disenfranchise and possibly kill her' (as the Death Eaters he, yes, in part due to his insecure social situation and bullying by the Marauders, is well on his way to joining pre SWM). So I think there's something of a false equivalency you are drawing. She cannot fully understnad his abusive upbringing and complete lack of financial security, yes, but she isn't joining a hate group saying people like him shouldn't exist. Especially given joining the Death Eaters is not a sensible or justifiable response to poverty and abuse. It's understandable, but not justifiable. He had other options!

A lot of my read of Snape and Lily's friendship is influenced by the fact that I think our information about James and Lily is purposefully limited to mimic the experience of a child having to accept they can never truly know a dead parent, so I don't think we have complete information to judge either James or Lily by. From what we do see, I personally think she was a good friend to him, but I don't think there is only one valid interpretation. I do think from what we do see we are meant to see her as a good friend driven away by Snape's turn towards hate but part of the dilemma of Harry Potter is that we can never truly know her!

Feel free to interpret the Snape/Lily friendship how you want, just don't go implying he was Lily's responsibility to save (that's a general message, not to anon specifically)