Jumping Ship from the Lily's Pad

[oneandthetruth]

On Saturday night I was catching up on reading DTCL and came across a post from terri_testing about why so few people claim James and Lily as friends. (posted 8/6/12, in reply to “Lupin’s ‘Resignation’,” by danajsparks) Part of it reads:

What did happen to those witch friends Lily had in fifth year, the ones who couldn't understand why she even

Comments

[sunlit_music]

You raise some excellent points here. Lily's friends might not have liked how she ended her friendship with Severus. I know the characters were teenagers at the time and teenagers can do awful, hurtful things that they regret later once they're adults. Yet only one person in SWM changed for the better. All parties behaved badly here, but only Severus apologised for his behaviour and learnt from it. Severus became an adult who told Phineas Nigellus not to use the word Mudblood and died fighting against Voldemort (and Voldemort persecuted non magic users and people with non magical parents. Please excuse me - I don't like using the word 'muggles', it sounds ridiculous to me

[aasaylva]

Severus' racial slur against Lily was inexcusable, but she should have protected him from being beaten up and humilated by James Potter and his friends. Hm, I think there are two aspects in all of this

[oryx_leucoryx]

Pressure and humiliation tends to bring your defences down, meaning you cannot controll yourself from saying things you normally wouldn't say. It doesn't MAKE you say things you don't think.So? Consider the other swear word in HP-canon, the word 'bitch'. For a long time it was often used to specify a woman who didn't 'know her place' - whether by standing up for herself or rejecting a man who believed himself entitled to her attention or any other way. The word criticizes a woman for not being 'womanly enough'. But it became an all-around insult for a woman for whatever reason, whether said reason would also apply to a man or not. So people may intend it either as 'insufficiently submissive woman' or as 'evil person who is female' (even if they don't believe all women are inferior to men). In other 'net places I hang out at the more vocal posters are raising awareness for such behavior and are advocating the idea that gendered insults are uncool, regardless of the reason the word was chosen, because even if the speaker did not intend

[snapes_witch]

That moment was already too late. Lily should have done more, whether as a prefect or a friend before things got bad enough that he lashed out at her. No, I don't expect her to be a mind-reader, I'm saying her supposed 'defense' of Severus was not. She was standing there arguing with James instead of disarming him and undoing his hexes. If she was going to use Severus' humiliation to mentally bat her eyelashes at James then yes, he had no need for her 'help'.

Good point, even JKR says she's flirting with James! She even has a quick smile as she walks up to them.

[snapes_witch]

Then there's the fact that Lily apparently had no one to stand up with her at her wedding, and Harry has no godmother. What's up with that? It sounds to me like James managed to separate her from her girl friends, perhaps actually alienated them in some manner.

[terri_testing]

Good post

[annoni_no]

The simplest explanation is that she truly believes that's how the world is. If she doesn't have any true female friends, only strategic 'alliances' like she learned growing up, why should she believe other women when they say their relationships are different? The same goes for the racist sentiments.

Although, there is a more disturbing options if we assume that she subconsciously wishes these things were true, even though she consciously denies them in interviews and the like. The world certainly would be much simpler and less stressful if you could tell at a glance who was good or bad or stupid or cruel....

[sunnyskywalker]

You whittle a group down to 3-4, and yes, you might achieve isolation.

Okay, I have to chime in as someone who actually attended a small high school. My graduating class was the largest to date at 39 kids - ie, almost exactly the same size as Harry's class - and the class before mine had 22.

You know what happens when there are 40 kids in your year? You make friends in other years, that's what. At minimum, with the kids one class ahead and one class behind. Especially since given the way school cutoff dates work, the kids one year ahead or behind you might actually have been born just a few months (or one month) apart from you. There really isn't that much of a gap. Hell, I was two years younger than most of the students in my year, and they didn't even know unless I told them. Also, wasn't exactly uncommon for, say, seniors and sophomores to hang out sometimes either. Occasionally even seniors and freshmen, though that was less common. My school also would almost certainly have had inter-house friendships, had we had houses, given

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, and yes, it is bizarre that none of those characters are ever so much as mentioned having girlfriends in an aside. That Landscaping Covenants Committee of Little Whinging's Garden Estates Properties, or something like it, seems so likely that it's utterly bizarre it doesn't exist. And it would fit right in! "Harry had to do more chores than ever that day, because Aunt Petunia was going to her equally horse-faced friend Mathilda's house for tea, and she would not be able to scrub the kitchen herself..." Or perhaps Petunia is so warped by her fear of accidentally revealing Harry's freakishness that she has deliberately isolated herself? But that still wouldn't explain why Molly never mentions friends, or Harry never comes across McGonagall discussing Quidditch scores with Sinistra.