It must be a sign...
I was debating to myself just last night whether I ought to write up a theory that had been taking shape in my mind over the last few weeks, when I saw this, on the comments to a recent posting at The Leaky Cauldron:
I kind of get this idea that all of the Marauders were vying for Lily (as if she were some object *F*) and James just happened to win...but it's curious how they end up together. I mean, the scenes in OotP. Eek. I'm wondering if James does something to her magically to entice her.
So, since I am obviously not the only one who has had this thought since reading OotP, and since lizbee and pharnabazus have been kind enough not only to indulge my heretical musings in this regard but to admit that the idea makes sense and even (in the case of pharnabazus) to suggest corroborating evidence, I am going to make the case here and let my readers tear it to bits -- or build it up some more -- as they see fit.
Ahem.
James Potter Is Ever So Evil. And Dead, Too (But We Knew That).*
Up until OotP I always assumed James Potter was as much a good guy as Harry imagined him to be. Oh, sure, getting into a bit of mischief here and there, but wholesome stuff, you know, nothing sinister. And after all, everybody (like Hagrid, and McGonagall, and other compassionate, sincere, no-reason-to-lie types) always said the Potters were such a nice couple. Plus, James saved Snape's life when Sirius played that prank, and all, so he must have a good heart. And if all that seeming perfection did get a bit tedious at times, surely it wasn't James's fault that he was rich and smart and talented and came from a good family and was an ace at Quidditch. I always imagined James as being just like Harry (after all, everybody keeps telling Harry how much he looks like James; and Snape, among others, seems to think there are some shared personality traits as well), only without the dark edgy bits that make Harry interesting.
Then I read OotP. And whoa. I was not expecting that. I especially wasn't expecting Lily to have such a low opinion of James. I've seen their relationship compared to Ron/Hermione -- the boy and girl who bicker all the time but are secretly attracted to each other -- except there is one fundamental difference here: unlike Ron and Hermione, James and Lily are not friends. They aren't even well enough acquainted to call each other by their first names -- it's "Evans" and "Potter" with them. And Lily makes it quite clear that she doesn't want to be friends with James, either. Not only does she find him insufferably vain and self-centred, she is appalled by his cruelty and bullying of those weaker than himself. Her objections to James aren't merely aesthetic, or a matter of conflicting personalities: they're moral objections.
It's an interesting dynamic between James and Lily, in Snape's Pensieve memory. James is clearly eager to get Lily to notice him, to be impressed by him, to give him a chance -- she's his current obsession (as witnessed by his doodling her initials on his exam paper, and oh-so-casually following her and her friends down to the lake after the exam so he can watch her and try to get her attention). Lily, meanwhile, ignores all of James's attempts to show off, and only intervenes when she finds him bullying Snape. All at once James sees his chance, and he jumps at it -- "I will [leave Snape alone] if you go out with me, Evans... Go on, go out with me and I'll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again." He takes advantage of what he sees as a weakness on her part -- her sympathy for his victim -- to try and persuade her to become romantically involved with him. Of course, Lily sees through the stupidity and immaturity of the proposal, and refuses to be blackmailed, even for Snape's sake. But the fact that James made such a proposal at all, even taking into account that he is fifteen years old and therefore bound to do some pretty stupid things under the influence of rampaging hormones, strikes me as... disturbing.
More disturbing still is Remus and Sirius's inability to satisfactorily explain to Harry how it was that his parents got together. Harry himself was so distressed by the sight of Lily's loathing for James that "he simply could not understand how they could have ended up married. Once or twice he even wondered whether James had forced her into it..." (italics mine). When he relates the story to Remus and Sirius, the best explanation they can give is that Lily didn't really hate James (which is simply not true -- Harry could see that she did), and that they had started going out in seventh year once James had "deflated his head a bit" (a bit?) and stopped hexing people "just for the fun of it," (but not entirely?) except of course for Snape, who was "a special case" and therefore still ripe for hexing -- but only behind Lily's back. And according to Sirius, Lily was unaware that James was still trading curses with Snape -- if she had known, she would certainly not have approved.
I could believe this -- almost -- if Lily had been presented to us as a less perceptive, intelligent, or strong-minded young woman. If she were a dreamy sort of girl, or weak-willed, it would be easy to swallow the idea that she hadn't really felt that strongly against James to begin with. In that case it would also be more plausible that James could have gone on hexing Snape without Lily ever finding out about it. But given what we learned about Lily and James in the Pensieve, I find it difficult to take Remus and Sirius's remarks at face value. Which is not to say that either of the men is lying -- just that they don't seem to have given the question much thought to begin with, and really aren't that sure of the answer. All they really know for sure, it seems, is that in seventh year James and Lily started going out, and eventually got married. The rest is rationalization after the fact, and given that Remus and Sirius have already shown a dangerous tendency to rationalize everything that James Potter did in life, and to regard even his most unpleasant attributes with fond indulgence, I would suggest that their testimony is really not to be trusted in this case. And by the whole way Harry's conversation with Sirius and Lupin is set up, I think JKR means us to question it. It's all too rushed, too glib, and the core issues -- James's arrogance and bullying, Snape's helpless victimhood, the strength of Lily's dislike -- are never properly addressed.
All of this made me wonder, like Harry, whether James had forced Lily into marriage. Not obviously, but subtly, indeed so subtly that his best friends (who of course wanted James to be happy, and already believed him worthy of love and admiration) never suspected it. Did he use a love potion, perhaps, to soften her heart toward him, and blind her eyes to his bullying? Or might it even have been -- horrible and extreme as it sounds -- Imperius?
The latter idea, though alarming, is not entirely without canonical support. From GoF we know that it is possible for Imperius to be exercised over an individual for a prolonged period of time, controlling every aspect of their behaviour even when the caster is not present (as Barty Crouch Sr. did to his son after smuggling him out of Azkaban -- Barty Jr. was still under Imperius when seated with Winky in the Top Box, though his father was nowhere in sight). We also know, from the same book (and here I am indebted to pharnabazus for pointing this out), that when a person is fighting Imperius you can see it in their eyes. And who has the ability to fight Imperius better than all his classmates? In whose eyes do we see the fight going on? Harry, who we're repeatedly told has his mother's eyes.
What if Harry experienced, even in the womb, the sensation of what it was like to struggle against Imperius? What if the evidence of that battle, however fruitlessly fought (for James Potter was an exceedingly gifted and powerful wizard) could be seen in Lily's eyes by those who knew where to look, and was somehow passed on to the infant Harry?
And what if Snape, with his prodigious knowledge of the Dark Arts, saw the evidence of Imperius in Lily's eyes when she was with James, and guessed the truth -- but found himself helpless to do anything about it even if he wanted to, because of course nobody would believe him? It would be in James's best interest to appear respectable, even be respectable, in every other way so as to avoid suspicion. And it is quite possible that in some sort of lovesick madness James believed all along that he was acting for the best, that he and Lily were meant to be together and that she would surely come to love him on her own, in time -- he just needed a bit of Imperius (or love potion, but the bit about Imperius being seen in the eyes does make me lean a little more in that direction) to nudge things along, as it were. As such, he might indeed have been a pleasant, mature-seeming young man, earnestly involved in fighting the Dark (as Crouch Sr. was, for that matter -- fiercely and obsessively so: it's interesting to note that James's hatred of the Dark Arts is described in similarly fanatical terms), maybe even an accredited Auror, and still (like Crouch) have this little family secret on the side.
If Snape knew, or at least suspected, about James's magical hold on Lily, he might well have reported it to Voldemort. Which would bring a new and chilling level of meaning to Voldemort's insistence that unlike James, Lily didn't need to die. V. might not have spared a thought for the possibility that Lily's death would give Harry protection because he didn't believe Lily capable of loving James's child that much -- not of her own free will.
Another thought: Hagrid says in PS/SS that "Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get [James and Lily] on his side before [the incident at Godric's Hollow]..." It may not be that much of a "myst'ry" if Voldemort knew that James was playing about with Imperius: until he learned of the Prophecy and guessed that Harry Potter might well be the child born to fulfill it, he might have kept his knowledge of Lily's coersion as the ace up his sleeve, something he could pull out at the first moment James Potter looked like becoming a serious threat. There's even the possibility that he did play that card with James at some point (again, prior to the knowledge of the Prophecy -- once the Prophecy was known, all bets would be off), and that James struck some kind of deal with him. In which case...
James and Lily might not have defied Voldemort three times. Or at least, James didn't -- he was merely believed to have done. And if Snape knew this...
...then he also would know that Harry Potter was not the true child of prophecy, but an (unwitting) impostor. And that Neville Longbottom was the real Prophecy Boy, but nobody -- Dumbledore included, for all that Snape might have tried to persuade him -- would take that idea seriously. Which would make Snape even more furious and impatient with Neville, because he knows that the power is in there somewhere, and he wants Neville to prove his worth, but Neville keeps on being nervous and ineffectual. And meanwhile, the child born to Lily and that hypocritical, traitorous swine James, the child Snape can't look at without seeing James Potter's face and Lily's Imperius-tainted eyes, is being groomed to fight Voldemort -- a fight he can't (in Snape's estimation) possibly win.
Of course, there'd have to be another twist in all this -- that Harry is really the hero anyway because of some other factor that Snape didn't know about (possibly the fact that thanks to the curse, he's got a bit of Voldemort in his head, and if Voldemort ever gets that missing piece back he's bound to find it strongly Harry-flavoured). Because I don't really think that JKR is going to pull the rug out that completely in the end. Neville will surely have some major (and probably heart-rending) part in the final conflict, but I think it really will come down to Harry vs. Voldemort.
Still, wouldn't the "James Potter Is Ever So Evil (He Put Lily Under Imperius)" theory explain a lot?
ETA: Other bits of evidence you can insert into this theory as desired: 1. When Harry sees his parents in the Mirror of Erised, Lily is crying even as she smiles. 2. When Lily and James's magical avatars emerge from the wand in the original edition of GoF, James tells Harry to hold on because his mother's coming (there's the Lily obsession again), but when Lily emerges she doesn't even acknowledge James's existence -- she's wholly focused on Harry. 3. Petunia Dursley, nee Evans, refers to James as "that awful boy" (though there's the slight possibility she may be referring to Snape).
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*Apologies to skelkins for scavenging her amusing turn of phrase -- I couldn't resist.
I kind of get this idea that all of the Marauders were vying for Lily (as if she were some object *F*) and James just happened to win...but it's curious how they end up together. I mean, the scenes in OotP. Eek. I'm wondering if James does something to her magically to entice her.
So, since I am obviously not the only one who has had this thought since reading OotP, and since lizbee and pharnabazus have been kind enough not only to indulge my heretical musings in this regard but to admit that the idea makes sense and even (in the case of pharnabazus) to suggest corroborating evidence, I am going to make the case here and let my readers tear it to bits -- or build it up some more -- as they see fit.
Ahem.
James Potter Is Ever So Evil. And Dead, Too (But We Knew That).*
Up until OotP I always assumed James Potter was as much a good guy as Harry imagined him to be. Oh, sure, getting into a bit of mischief here and there, but wholesome stuff, you know, nothing sinister. And after all, everybody (like Hagrid, and McGonagall, and other compassionate, sincere, no-reason-to-lie types) always said the Potters were such a nice couple. Plus, James saved Snape's life when Sirius played that prank, and all, so he must have a good heart. And if all that seeming perfection did get a bit tedious at times, surely it wasn't James's fault that he was rich and smart and talented and came from a good family and was an ace at Quidditch. I always imagined James as being just like Harry (after all, everybody keeps telling Harry how much he looks like James; and Snape, among others, seems to think there are some shared personality traits as well), only without the dark edgy bits that make Harry interesting.
Then I read OotP. And whoa. I was not expecting that. I especially wasn't expecting Lily to have such a low opinion of James. I've seen their relationship compared to Ron/Hermione -- the boy and girl who bicker all the time but are secretly attracted to each other -- except there is one fundamental difference here: unlike Ron and Hermione, James and Lily are not friends. They aren't even well enough acquainted to call each other by their first names -- it's "Evans" and "Potter" with them. And Lily makes it quite clear that she doesn't want to be friends with James, either. Not only does she find him insufferably vain and self-centred, she is appalled by his cruelty and bullying of those weaker than himself. Her objections to James aren't merely aesthetic, or a matter of conflicting personalities: they're moral objections.
It's an interesting dynamic between James and Lily, in Snape's Pensieve memory. James is clearly eager to get Lily to notice him, to be impressed by him, to give him a chance -- she's his current obsession (as witnessed by his doodling her initials on his exam paper, and oh-so-casually following her and her friends down to the lake after the exam so he can watch her and try to get her attention). Lily, meanwhile, ignores all of James's attempts to show off, and only intervenes when she finds him bullying Snape. All at once James sees his chance, and he jumps at it -- "I will [leave Snape alone] if you go out with me, Evans... Go on, go out with me and I'll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again." He takes advantage of what he sees as a weakness on her part -- her sympathy for his victim -- to try and persuade her to become romantically involved with him. Of course, Lily sees through the stupidity and immaturity of the proposal, and refuses to be blackmailed, even for Snape's sake. But the fact that James made such a proposal at all, even taking into account that he is fifteen years old and therefore bound to do some pretty stupid things under the influence of rampaging hormones, strikes me as... disturbing.
More disturbing still is Remus and Sirius's inability to satisfactorily explain to Harry how it was that his parents got together. Harry himself was so distressed by the sight of Lily's loathing for James that "he simply could not understand how they could have ended up married. Once or twice he even wondered whether James had forced her into it..." (italics mine). When he relates the story to Remus and Sirius, the best explanation they can give is that Lily didn't really hate James (which is simply not true -- Harry could see that she did), and that they had started going out in seventh year once James had "deflated his head a bit" (a bit?) and stopped hexing people "just for the fun of it," (but not entirely?) except of course for Snape, who was "a special case" and therefore still ripe for hexing -- but only behind Lily's back. And according to Sirius, Lily was unaware that James was still trading curses with Snape -- if she had known, she would certainly not have approved.
I could believe this -- almost -- if Lily had been presented to us as a less perceptive, intelligent, or strong-minded young woman. If she were a dreamy sort of girl, or weak-willed, it would be easy to swallow the idea that she hadn't really felt that strongly against James to begin with. In that case it would also be more plausible that James could have gone on hexing Snape without Lily ever finding out about it. But given what we learned about Lily and James in the Pensieve, I find it difficult to take Remus and Sirius's remarks at face value. Which is not to say that either of the men is lying -- just that they don't seem to have given the question much thought to begin with, and really aren't that sure of the answer. All they really know for sure, it seems, is that in seventh year James and Lily started going out, and eventually got married. The rest is rationalization after the fact, and given that Remus and Sirius have already shown a dangerous tendency to rationalize everything that James Potter did in life, and to regard even his most unpleasant attributes with fond indulgence, I would suggest that their testimony is really not to be trusted in this case. And by the whole way Harry's conversation with Sirius and Lupin is set up, I think JKR means us to question it. It's all too rushed, too glib, and the core issues -- James's arrogance and bullying, Snape's helpless victimhood, the strength of Lily's dislike -- are never properly addressed.
All of this made me wonder, like Harry, whether James had forced Lily into marriage. Not obviously, but subtly, indeed so subtly that his best friends (who of course wanted James to be happy, and already believed him worthy of love and admiration) never suspected it. Did he use a love potion, perhaps, to soften her heart toward him, and blind her eyes to his bullying? Or might it even have been -- horrible and extreme as it sounds -- Imperius?
The latter idea, though alarming, is not entirely without canonical support. From GoF we know that it is possible for Imperius to be exercised over an individual for a prolonged period of time, controlling every aspect of their behaviour even when the caster is not present (as Barty Crouch Sr. did to his son after smuggling him out of Azkaban -- Barty Jr. was still under Imperius when seated with Winky in the Top Box, though his father was nowhere in sight). We also know, from the same book (and here I am indebted to pharnabazus for pointing this out), that when a person is fighting Imperius you can see it in their eyes. And who has the ability to fight Imperius better than all his classmates? In whose eyes do we see the fight going on? Harry, who we're repeatedly told has his mother's eyes.
What if Harry experienced, even in the womb, the sensation of what it was like to struggle against Imperius? What if the evidence of that battle, however fruitlessly fought (for James Potter was an exceedingly gifted and powerful wizard) could be seen in Lily's eyes by those who knew where to look, and was somehow passed on to the infant Harry?
And what if Snape, with his prodigious knowledge of the Dark Arts, saw the evidence of Imperius in Lily's eyes when she was with James, and guessed the truth -- but found himself helpless to do anything about it even if he wanted to, because of course nobody would believe him? It would be in James's best interest to appear respectable, even be respectable, in every other way so as to avoid suspicion. And it is quite possible that in some sort of lovesick madness James believed all along that he was acting for the best, that he and Lily were meant to be together and that she would surely come to love him on her own, in time -- he just needed a bit of Imperius (or love potion, but the bit about Imperius being seen in the eyes does make me lean a little more in that direction) to nudge things along, as it were. As such, he might indeed have been a pleasant, mature-seeming young man, earnestly involved in fighting the Dark (as Crouch Sr. was, for that matter -- fiercely and obsessively so: it's interesting to note that James's hatred of the Dark Arts is described in similarly fanatical terms), maybe even an accredited Auror, and still (like Crouch) have this little family secret on the side.
If Snape knew, or at least suspected, about James's magical hold on Lily, he might well have reported it to Voldemort. Which would bring a new and chilling level of meaning to Voldemort's insistence that unlike James, Lily didn't need to die. V. might not have spared a thought for the possibility that Lily's death would give Harry protection because he didn't believe Lily capable of loving James's child that much -- not of her own free will.
Another thought: Hagrid says in PS/SS that "Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get [James and Lily] on his side before [the incident at Godric's Hollow]..." It may not be that much of a "myst'ry" if Voldemort knew that James was playing about with Imperius: until he learned of the Prophecy and guessed that Harry Potter might well be the child born to fulfill it, he might have kept his knowledge of Lily's coersion as the ace up his sleeve, something he could pull out at the first moment James Potter looked like becoming a serious threat. There's even the possibility that he did play that card with James at some point (again, prior to the knowledge of the Prophecy -- once the Prophecy was known, all bets would be off), and that James struck some kind of deal with him. In which case...
James and Lily might not have defied Voldemort three times. Or at least, James didn't -- he was merely believed to have done. And if Snape knew this...
...then he also would know that Harry Potter was not the true child of prophecy, but an (unwitting) impostor. And that Neville Longbottom was the real Prophecy Boy, but nobody -- Dumbledore included, for all that Snape might have tried to persuade him -- would take that idea seriously. Which would make Snape even more furious and impatient with Neville, because he knows that the power is in there somewhere, and he wants Neville to prove his worth, but Neville keeps on being nervous and ineffectual. And meanwhile, the child born to Lily and that hypocritical, traitorous swine James, the child Snape can't look at without seeing James Potter's face and Lily's Imperius-tainted eyes, is being groomed to fight Voldemort -- a fight he can't (in Snape's estimation) possibly win.
Of course, there'd have to be another twist in all this -- that Harry is really the hero anyway because of some other factor that Snape didn't know about (possibly the fact that thanks to the curse, he's got a bit of Voldemort in his head, and if Voldemort ever gets that missing piece back he's bound to find it strongly Harry-flavoured). Because I don't really think that JKR is going to pull the rug out that completely in the end. Neville will surely have some major (and probably heart-rending) part in the final conflict, but I think it really will come down to Harry vs. Voldemort.
Still, wouldn't the "James Potter Is Ever So Evil (He Put Lily Under Imperius)" theory explain a lot?
ETA: Other bits of evidence you can insert into this theory as desired: 1. When Harry sees his parents in the Mirror of Erised, Lily is crying even as she smiles. 2. When Lily and James's magical avatars emerge from the wand in the original edition of GoF, James tells Harry to hold on because his mother's coming (there's the Lily obsession again), but when Lily emerges she doesn't even acknowledge James's existence -- she's wholly focused on Harry. 3. Petunia Dursley, nee Evans, refers to James as "that awful boy" (though there's the slight possibility she may be referring to Snape).
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*Apologies to skelkins for scavenging her amusing turn of phrase -- I couldn't resist.