Severus Snape did not call Lily Evans a Mudblood because he was ‘under duress’ or ‘being bullied by James and Sirius,’ he called her a Mudblood to hurt her.
To explain this I’ve got to digress a bit.
Firstly, I just want to touch on the fact that Snape and Lily’s friendship almost directly mirrors that of an abusive relationship, with Snape playing the role of the abuser. Abusive relationships often begin with emotional, not physical, abuse, and we’ve seen evidence of that from Snape’s own memories. His treatment of Petunia, insulting her, searching her room, etc, most certainly indicates both a disdain for Muggles and a desire to separate Lily from other people. His primary focus was keeping James as far away from her as possible, but his memories most certainly give a strong indication that he was very likely jealous of every single person in her life. He wanted her all to himself. He watched her ‘greedily.’ He told her he ‘won’t let you’ involve herself with James Potter as if he could claim some sort of control over her behaviour. In short, Snape wanted Lily to conform to a specific set of choices and actions that he deemed acceptable. This makes him an abuser.
“But his childhood! His father was an abuser! This excuses everything!” you might cry, to which I say, dude, that I’m a living example of a victim of childhood and adolescent abuse from a parent, both physical and emotional, and I’ve never treated another living soul in the way Snape treated Lily, or her son, or anyone else, for that matter. I’ve got no tolerance for that kind of shit in relation to Snape’s behaviour. It’s a crutch for a weak-ass argument. Oh, but JKR forgives him? She defended Johnny Depp. Like her opinion means a damn thing anymore.
Yeah, Snape was a kid, and a ten or eleven-year-old is bound to need guidance in differentiating between right and wrong, but again, speaking as a victim of abuse, it’s NOT that fucking hard to learn it yourself as you grow, simply by meeting others and observing their actions, especially when you’re spending ten months out of the year away from your abusers. Snape had Lily – a beautiful, rich wealth of decency and kindness - for a best friend, and he learned jack shit from her.
I firmly believe that Lily was spared from further evolution of this abuse by two things – one, she was a Gryffindor, two, she never actually dated him. Being a Gryffindor and living in separate quarters meant that Lily spent a significant amount of class and leisure time away from Snape. This meant that Lily had ample time to pave her own way through Hogwarts, make her own friends and establish herself as a separate entity to Snape’s Best Friend, all without the unhealthy influence of his presence. It makes sense that as a new student, and a Muggle-born, Snape may have represented a sort of safety to Lily in the early days. However, she was a bright, confident little girl who became a bright, confident young woman. It wouldn’t have taken long for her to find her feet. Snape was co-dependent. She wasn’t.
(Side-note: You just know that Snape went into frequent rage spirals as he sat in his dorm in the dungeons, thinking about Lily up in Gryffindor where he couldn’t get to her, couldn’t watch her, couldn’t regulate the contact she had with other people – specifically James)
Because she never dated Snape, she denied him a form of ownership that abusers often feel when romantically involved with their victim, because a romantic relationship has a singular quality (unless you are in an open relationship, in which case, more power to you girl/boy/person) that holds distinction from others. Most people still conform to the monogamous norm, wherein you can have many friends but one partner. He never felt that exclusivity. He never came close. There was something he wanted from her that he could not have, and she probably didn’t realise how much that spared her from.
Maybe Snape always thought he never would have hurt her. Maybe he really, really thought that their relationship wouldn’t have devolved further into darkness had Lily ever been interested in him romantically. But I don’t believe it.
So, why did he call her a Mudblood? Two reasons.
One, take on board the above, and then recall that Lily caught him in a moment of extreme vulnerability. Abusers do not like appearing vulnerable in front of their victims. A great example of this in fiction is from the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones (or, indeed, the show) where Joffrey is beaten and humiliated by Arya and Nymeria, and rage-shouts at Sansa, ‘his lady,’ when she rushes to his aid with tears and sympathy. Obviously, there’s a difference between the Joffrey/Sansa scenario and Snape/Lily, because Snape was being set upon by two other students, but it doesn’t matter. Lily came to his aid in a moment of weakness and he resented her for seeing him in that state. He wanted her to think him powerful, impressive, and commanding. She didn’t. It made him mad.
The second reason is because of James, but not for the reason people often argue. It’s clear from Snape’s memories that despite Lily’s poor opinion of James’s behaviour, she was attracted to him regardless. She blushes when talking to Snape about him, for one, but more telling is that when she rushes over to stop James and Sirius from bullying Severus, her attention is on James basically the entire time, and boy, she most certainly had a big ol’ list of observations on his behaviour to throw in his face. Do you notice that someone has a habit of ruffling their hair if you’re not, you know, paying attention?
Wouldn’t you notice that your friend fancied someone else if you, too, were paying attention? Close attention? Snape knew. Of course he knew. Likely he knew before she did, even. Lily behaved in a certain way around James, reacted, looked, moved, probably, in a way she never did around him because she wasn’t attracted to Snape, and that formed the basis of his insane obsession with James. Nothing mattered to Snape as much as ‘Potter,’ and keeping Lily away from him, so when she charged over – earnestly, decently – to save her friend, with whom she had almost had it up to here because he was well on the road to becoming a fucking Death Eater – and he saw that James was commanding most of her attention, it pissed him off. He wasn’t just angry with Sirius and James, he was angry with Lily, but it was a scarier, unhealthier and totally unwarranted form of anger. It is the anger an abuser feels towards his victim when he cannot exert his control.
So, In conclusion, Severus Snape did not call Lily Evans a Mudblood because he was ‘under duress’ or ‘being bullied by James and Sirius.’
He called her a Mudblood to hurt her.
FYI to the Snape apologists who will inevitably take issue with this and reblog with nasty comments, I don’t care, I’m not going to dignify that nonsense with a response, and I love James Potter goodbye.
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