cmonridethepaynetrain:

phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess:

zmeyette:

phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess:

Sometimes I want to just grab people who defend Snape’s actions, by the lapels, and shake their stupidity loose…

Yes, he was violently, creepily obsessed with Lily Evans.
That does not make what he did okay.

Do we excuse stalkers in the real world? No, we see them as hella creepy (the damn truth of it all).

He even tried to barter the lives of James and 6mo Harry for Lily, ffs.

And people say he was only mean to Harry to keep up cover… well no. Fred and George, plus others, told all the first years to watch out for Snape because he was a known twat… a bully.

He mocked Hermione straight up, for her enthusiasm to learn. And later on, mocked her physical appearance.

He treated Harry like dirt, because he -a grown ass adult- couldn’t let go of his hatred towards the child’s father. An adult, in a position of power, used it to torment a child/minor… that would be prosecuted as hell in modern times.

He actively went out of his way to torment Neville Longbottom, a child whose parents had been tortured so violently by Bellatrix Lestrange that they now sat as drooling husks in the Janus Thickey Ward of St Mungos.
People excuse that for some reason.

But remember that Snape scared Neville SO MUCH, that the Boggart they faced in third year actually turned INTO Snape for Neville. A boggart takes the form of your greatest fear… that says a lot.

-

“Oh, but he died for Harry”

No, his very last line said it wasn’t for Harry at all.

“You have her eyes.” means he was seeing Lily. The obsession he had for her was terrifying, and bordering on psychotic (under psychological definitions, he was in a position where this focus was unhealthy and actively prevented him from living a normal life).

We all will love someone, have affection for someone and watch it go unrequited… half of growing up is knowing when to let it go and move on. Relationships, certain goals, dreams, etc.

Snape never did that. He clung to this twisted ‘love’ for Lily, and clung even tighter to the hatred he felt for James Potter…

Yes, James Potter was an absolute twat to Severus in that one little snippet of memory we got. I’m not sure if you’ve met many teenagers, but most of them are absolute little shits on occasion…

But you know what else James was, besides a twat?
He was someone who defied modern conventions, he helped Sirius deal with being the only Black in Gryffindor (imagine how that went down at home), gave Peter courage in an abstract way, but most importantly… saw his friend Remus was in a situation where he’d become completely undesirable to the general population… and broke the law to show support.

James Potter was an unregistered animagi, and so were the others. To support Remus… that was big.
If they’d been caught…

And he grew out of the d-bag phase, which was the most important thing. People say it was only Lily’s influence that did it, that if she’d been with Snape… that would have ‘fixed him’, but it’s incorrect.

People only change if they are open to it, if there is an internal drive to do so, and external influences are important to a lesser or greater extent (more support).

- - -

Also, I absolutely abhor people treating Lily Potter (nee Evans) as a commodity. She was the Brightest Witch of Her Age, unlike anything Slughorn (collector of the best, brightest, most connected and talented) had every seen… she was brilliant.
Lily Potter faced down the firebolting Dark Lord Voldemort, KNOWING she could not win. KNOWING her husband had died on the stairs trying to save them, give them more time…
KNOWING he was going to kill her, but god dammnit, she was not going to stand aside and let him hurt her baby, her Harry.

Voldemort told her to stand aside, that she could live if he let her kill the child…
[As per his deal with Snape, who seriously believed she would actually take that deal… thus showing he knew NOTHING about Lily at all].

…but she did not.

Lily Potter put herself between Voldemort and Harry in a blatant display of defiance, of love, of devotion that even death could not diminish. And it was that, her Gryffindor nature to protect and fight to the end, to never back down… that saved her son.

That put a magical barrier around her son that Voldemort could not touch.

Lily Evans was not a prize to be won by James or Snape, she was a brilliant, clever witch who actively CHOSE who she wanted to be with. Do you think James could have stopped her from doing anything, if he tried?
No.

Kind and empathetic, but a lioness with deadly intelligence.

That was Lily Evans-Potter.

- - -

In short… yes, Snape died.

And it was, in a very roundabout way, for the benefit of good… but what we really get when you examine the text critically… if that the whole thing was literally just Severus’s way of throwing a big ‘Fuck you’ at Voldemort for killing Lily.

It must also be noted that JK Rowling herself has said that if Harry were anyone else’s child, if Snape had not loved Lily, he would not have cared in the least what happened to him.

Some see that as romantic. Let me step on that notion with harsh reality.

A child who has a giant target painted on him from the second Trelawney uttered a syllable of her prophecy… who is hunted by the darkness and abused by his muggle family members; who finds a new world where people readily accept him and are actually excited to see him…

[In canon …he is immediately pissed on by a man who knew his parents but won’t tell him anything.]

In the AU version we are discussing, where Snape feels nothing for Harry… just imagine it. Watching a grown man (Voldemort) and his followers attempting to murder a child, year after year, and feeling nothing… not a single desire to even talk to him about it.

He has no empathy for the child.

Well, he has none for Harry in canon, either. He just stares at Lily’s eyes and apparently that turns on his ‘protect her DNA’ senses internally or something… which isn’t much better.

If we have to celebrate any male character, where the flying firebolt is the Hagrid love?

[Still annoyed with Dumbledore]

Right off the bat, Hagrid went out of his way to care for baby Harry, and then child-Harry when he came to tell him about Hogwarts. Like, he brought a cake, got him a present, talked to him, treated him nicely, sent him a letter his first week at hogwarts… all the way to the battle when his face was abso-fucking-lutely devastated while he carried Harry’s ‘body’ in his arms…

And you could see on his face that he remembered carrying baby Harry just like that, a tiny thing cradled in his big half-giant arms… except this time Hagrid thought he’d failed. He thought Harry was dead. And it was killing him.

But people want to hold up Snape as the ultimate pseudo-father figure for Harry?!

No.

Enough.

It is Hagrid.

Always Hagrid.

With Sirius and Remus being cool uncles on the sides…

- - -

This is how it is, fight me.

THIS! All day, every day. (Except the part about Hagrid, not too sure about that, but I am willing to accept that).

…Hagrid was the first person to show Harry true kindness and I will physically fight you on this.

He carried baby Harry on that fateful night, indicating familiarity with the baby (that he would have had if James and Lily brought him to Order meetings, and you know they did). 

And then… the devastation on his face as he carried Harry’s body back to Hogwarts. He thought he had failed to protect him. 

To someone with half-giant strength, there was probably no difference between baby Harry and teenage Harry… he was just a little, pale, fragile thing.

Think back to how many times throughout the years something went tits-up and they turned to Hagrid for help?

Hagrid was fiercely loyal to Dumbledore, and even then he would countermand a direct order from that man to do what was right for Harry. You know it.

Because to Harry, Hagrid was always there except for that stint in Azkaban… wherein they worked hard to get him back.

…fight me.

YES. 1000 times YES. I agree with everything. I think people forget about Hagrid because he wasn’t “smart” or “cool.” Maybe because he couldn’t really use magic because of his wand, I don’t know, but he used what he could. He’s being held hostage by Voldemort and ALL the death eaters before carrying Harry!!!!! Does no one wonder how the hell he got there?! He must have been throwing bows in the Forbidden Forest because everyone else was too scared to go in there!!!! He goes to AZKABAN and comes back pretty okay to be honest. Whereas Sirius comes back a total psycho. He travels across the world to try and talk sense into GIANTS. Giants who are presumably evil and actually fought for Voldemort previously.

On top of all this he LOVES Harry. Like, actually loves him. Not because he reminds him of his mom (Snape), not because he reminds him of his Dad (Sirius), and not because he’s a means to an end (Dumbledore). Now I do think Sirius and Dumbledore truly did love Harry, but it wasn’t the pure kind of love that Hagrid had for him. The only character that I think comes close to this is Molly.

In short, Hagrid is a badass and if you don’t think he’s the most lovable character you are wrong. The End.