Abusive!James/ Lily, Potter Marriage, Snape; Liberacorpus

[terri_testing]

A/N: None of the characters is mine, though this interpretation of them certainly is. Canon-compliant in terms of facts: if anybody sees anything I overlooked please, PLEASE tell me so I can change it. I’m just borrowing JKR’s setting to tell a story about a relationship that Smallpotato (marianros) asked for…. (It’s her fault, hers, hers.

Comments

[mary_j_59]

Just chiming in, Terri, to say that I do think James was not actually physically abusive to Lily in their marriage. But, Emestrella, he very clearly had those tendencies in canon, and I do think that, had they survived, he might have become abusive. I don't think James Potter was an especially good person, though he was not (I think) consciously malicious or cruel, and though he was on the "right side" in the war.

You see, one of many things that drives me wild about canon is Rowling trying to convince young girls that Severus was abusive (he wasn't, IMHO, but I do get a couple of faint warning chimes from him) while actually showing James abusing LILY and Sev and giving him a free pass. As I said to Terri, what's shocking about this story is how closely it fits with known canon (Lily's isolation, James' secretly hexing Severus during their seventh year while persuading Lily he had cleaned up his act; Lily not having her wand anywhere at hand that Halloween night; Lily begging helplessly when Voldemort was going to kill her baby (the little girl we met, and even the pre-James-relationship teenager, was not the sort of person who would *beg* anyone. She'd tell them. I may not like DH Lily much, but she did have some spunk as a child. As a young adult, she does seem to defer entirely to James.) That last strikes me almost as learned helplessness - something abuse victims often display; DH Severus seems to me to have it, too. But he always struck me as an abuse survivor. Now Lily does, too, and I'm having a hard time seeing her any other way. Weird!

Sorry for rambling so long. As I understand it, Terri's story is a thought experiment - does anything in canon flatly contradict James' being an abuser? The answer is no. Nothing does. But I certainly don't think Rowling intended to write him as such, and he's not all bad (though I, too, dislike him. It's Sirius I react more strongly against, however, since, before OOTP, James is a nonentity.)

[shyfoxling]

trying to convince young girls that Severus was abusive (he wasn't, IMHO, but I do get a couple of faint warning chimes from him)

I agree. He seems like the type who could be overprotective to a fault, thus seen as controlling. But if so, he would be doing it out of a genuine desire to see that person safe, I think, not because he thinks of them as a possession. (He certainly stays the hell out of Lily's life when she finally chucks him, as far as we can tell from canon. Someone who was actually abusive wouldn't do that.)

James' secretly hexing Severus during their seventh year while persuading Lily he had cleaned up his act

Yeah, that's a pretty ugly piece of work there. Way to be honest with your future wife, pal.

[mary_j_59]

To your last comment - yes, exactly, and that is *CANON*! It is in this kind of thing, (and it was admitted to by the other marauders who were *apologizing for him to Harry) that could really make you see James as abusive. Honestly, the more deeply you look into these books, the more warped they start to seem.

But I do agree strongly that Snape would be overprotective - which can actually be hurtful. That's how I imagine him, and try to write him, as a father.

So I don't think you and I disagree too much at all. I can't see James abusing Lily quite as harshly as this in canon - but, my heavens, it's actually possible. There is nothing in canon that contradicts it.