Snape's pride led to the breach between him and Lily: he called her a mudblood when her friends insulted him
You know, I've been wondering if I'm the only person who sees Lily as partly to blame for that rift. Granted, there appears to have been some drifting apart between Severus and Lily, due to diverging magical interests and crowds, as it were, but to sever a years-long friendship over one angry word shouted in a moment of extreme duress and humiliation seems more than a little unfair. After all, didn't he try to apologize to her afterwards? And wasn't she the one who shut him out and seemed incapable of forgiving?
I also wondered how, out of all those wise witching and wizarding folk at Hogwarts, not a one seemed to figure out what was going on with young Severus and how many of his personality flaws were classic symptoms of abuse? If someone had intervened, or shown a little more understanding, at a crucial phase in his student life, or if the "popular" bullies had been held accountable for their behavior towards a greasy misfit, might Snape's life have followed a different course?
Choice matters, but we also only make the choices we are capable of seeing and making. And I think the role of Snape's abusive upbringing is not taken into nearly enough consideration in the moral equation of most commentary on his friendship with Lily and his slide into Death-Eaterdom.
Snape and Lily
You know, I've been wondering if I'm the only person who sees Lily as partly to blame for that rift. Granted, there appears to have been some drifting apart between Severus and Lily, due to diverging magical interests and crowds, as it were, but to sever a years-long friendship over one angry word shouted in a moment of extreme duress and humiliation seems more than a little unfair. After all, didn't he try to apologize to her afterwards? And wasn't she the one who shut him out and seemed incapable of forgiving?
I also wondered how, out of all those wise witching and wizarding folk at Hogwarts, not a one seemed to figure out what was going on with young Severus and how many of his personality flaws were classic symptoms of abuse? If someone had intervened, or shown a little more understanding, at a crucial phase in his student life, or if the "popular" bullies had been held accountable for their behavior towards a greasy misfit, might Snape's life have followed a different course?
Choice matters, but we also only make the choices we are capable of seeing and making. And I think the role of Snape's abusive upbringing is not taken into nearly enough consideration in the moral equation of most commentary on his friendship with Lily and his slide into Death-Eaterdom.