I suspect many of us agree that the greatest magic of JKR’s characters is not at all the amazing things they can do as wizards and witches. All of their displayed magical powers - from flying as a bird over an asphalt playground or forcing the petals of a flower to pulse like a heart, to their more “channelled” way of performing powerful charms that transform their surroundings or mixing up complicated potions that “ensnare the senses” – all of them are truly inspiring and open up your mind to an infinity of possibilities. But to me, the most magically beautiful thing about these characters, is rather that they are so real, so very much alive, that they seem capable of walking right out of the pages and into our own heads to stay there. We could as well have known them personally...  And, to quote Albus Dumbledore: “Of course it’s happening inside your head Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”


Lily Evans Potter is one of the characters who don’t have much “stage time” throughout the series, but she is definitely one of those who have left the most lasting imprint on my mind. To Harry, she continued to be merely a faint symbol of motherly love and sacrifice for most of his childhood – his only personal memories of her were ironically coming to life with “help” from the eerie Dementors, who made him hear Lily screaming in despair and pleading with Voldemort not to kill her son, but to take her instead.

This symbolic meaning of Lily is, I believe, best emphasized in the last book, when Harry visits his place of birth, Godric’s Hollow, and sees a statue of Lily, James and Harry’s own baby self on the central square of the little village (DH, Ch 16 Godric's Hollow):

The statue of the “holy family” is, I think, somewhat mirrored by the golden Statue of Magical Brethren at the Ministry of Magic (OotP), where the wizard and witch seem admired and worshipped by other magical creatures who are depicted in “inferior” poses. The statue of Lily and her little family is literally placing her on a pedestal – an image which has already been reinforced to Harry by almost anyone alive who has mentioned Lily to him, with the sole exception of his aunt Petunia.

It’s definitely worth mentioning, of course, that the distorted view of the Magical Brethren is symbolically destroyed at the end of the fifth book, when the whole statue is blown to pieces by the duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore and thus by the reality of war. The statue of Lily and her loved ones, however, remains intact, magically concealed by a Muggle war memorial…

Lily’s stepping into Harry’s life as a more realistic person does not seem to begin until the moment he manages to get access to a real, objective, memory of her registered by another character. In Snape’s Worst Memory (OotP) Harry is for the first time able to see what Lily actually says and does and how other people respond to her actions and words. The sense that she has truly been alive strikes Harry with heavy force when he eventually finds a letter from her at Grimmauld Place, where she is talking about her everyday life and feelings in a handwriting Harry recognizes as similar to his own.

In this letter, which is addressed to Sirius Black, I get the impression that Lily shows a degree of innocence boarding to naivety, considering the fact that by this time she is participating in a full raging war, working for the Order of the Phoenix, and her family is hiding from a ruthless murderer. Nevertheless, she gives out a lot of un-coded information in a letter and she shows complete faith in all her husband’s friends, in spite of having probably heard warnings about a possible traitor close to the family.

But it’s not until Harry’s final Pensieve dive into Severus Snape’s memories at the end of the series, that Lily becomes fully “fleshed out” as a character, when Harry sees her growing up and is able to put together all the remaining fragments of her former existence into the image of a real person.

When I first read the Pensieve sequences about the budding friendship between Lily and Severus, and how it eventually ended, I felt both deeply touched by what she represented to Severus and angrily upset by how she treated him. The image of Saint Lily finally trailed away and was replaced by a more realistic picture of a pair of troubled kids who weren’t able to solve the problems appearing in their relationship, as the cruelty of the outside world was closing in on them.

My take on Lily Evans Potter is that she was basically a very kind and compassionate person, but I also perceive her as quite a bit vain and perhaps spoiled by people’s attention to her. She seems to have been, at the same time, both intelligent and skilful, as well as naïve and confused by her own feelings. She was, in my view, a bit too used to getting things her way to be able to grasp other people’s points of view and actually learn from reality – a most common phenomenon in those people who are raised in the center of attention and popularity. And it’s perhaps this mix of a loveable person capable of caring for others, and the self-centeredness of a young child, that makes Lily so much more like a person from real life.

I think Petunia’s jealousy is a good example. It seems clear that Lily, who is a girl with both good looks and extraordinary talents, doesn’t want to realize the most probable reason for her sister’s rejection. Lily doesn’t want to see what it means to her older sister that Lily’s special gifts not only makes her awesome among both their family and other kids, but also guarantees her access to a whole world which Petunia can never reach. At the playground Lily is hardly trying to restrain her overshadowing of her sister, but instead she wants to impress Petunia further by displaying her magical abilities. At Kings Cross station she even tells Petunia that she, Lily (who obviously is just an eleven year old kid), will attempt to persuade the Headmaster of Hogwarts to accept her older sister as a student…  When Petunia starts to insult her in her jealousy, Lily retorts that she and her friend have been reading Petunia's letters and know all about her own pleads to Dumbledore...

Later on, Lily seems unable to understand why she can’t make her best friend Severus abandon his only male friends based mainly on what she criticizes them for. She seems, however, to turn a rather blind eye to similar bad traits in her fellow male Gryffindors, claiming that their purposes would be somewhat nobler (DH, Ch 33 The Prince's Tale):
It merely looks as the Marauders have managed to feed Lily with selected parts of the truth from that night, leaving out the tiny details of who was luring Severus down the tunnel and for which purpose, but painting a neat picture of James as the hero… But Lily prefers sticking with these other boys’ version of the events, before that of her own best friend. Hmm…

In Snape’s Worst Memory (OotP), Lily valiantly steps in when she sees people outnumbering, bullying and humiliating her friend, which is admirable. But instead of loyally placing herself on his side and try to check on him, she seems a lot more interested in lecturing one of the bullies about his conduct in general… It’s hardly a coincidence that the boy in question is asking her out and flirting with her at the same time as he’s trying to impress her with his four-to-one dominance over his victim. And in spite of what she states, Lily seems to have swallowed the flattering bait in some sense; after her friend has rejected her presence with a foul slur, she actually sides with the bullies and then leaves her friend to their mercy.

Lily seems to be struggling with the issues of “good” and “evil” at the same time as she is discovering her own romantic feelings and tries to handle them – adolescence is never easy, and even less in a situation of war, I guess. She had a best friend in Severus, but she didn’t ever seem to need him as much as he needed her.

I like to look at Lily’s destiny as yet another representation of the Tale of the Three Brothers, a wizard’s fairy tale that plays a central role in the Deathly Hallows book. The Tale is about human choices and how they can be affected by arrogance, illusions and humility. Instead of the three brothers and their different choices of Hallows, I think we can discern Lily making three important choices in her life concerning love:

1.
Lily lets go of her beloved friend Severus when he begins to glide down a slippery slope, finally turning her back on him after Snape’s Worst Memory when she refuses to accept his apologies. She is not offering him any other help than cold criticism, which has basically no better effect on him than Snape’s own criticism of Harry’s behaviour has on the boy many years later. Lily is attacking him verbally, but she doesn’t want to take in a word of what he is trying to say about his motives. Lily retains her pride and dignity, but Severus is lost to the Dark Side, a fact which eventually contributes to Lily’s own death.

I think her blind and stubborn belief in her own moral superiority, that she is taking a real stand against the Dark Side by condemning her friend’s association with it, resembles the oldest brother’s faith in the unbeatable Elder Wand. The Wand can be very useful indeed, but he uses it in the wrong way and, eventually, gets killed in his sleep.

2.
Lily falls in love with the “bullying toerag” James Potter and nurtures (in my view) the illusion that he has now changed his personality according to her will, which must feel satisfying. However, even if James does calm down a bit publicly, we are told that in seventh grade the hostilities between James and Severus continue as before. Lily doesn’t get to know about this and she proceeds to marry James after school is finished and to have a family with him. As an adult, James still seems to remain rather arrogant, though. He prefers to trust his old gang of reckless Marauders and their supposed brilliant ideas, rather than accepting Dumbledore’s offer to be Secret Keeper - a choice which also involves Lily and contributes to her death. As Dumbledore says to Snape after her death; “She and James put their faith in the wrong person”.

It’s a bit like the second brother’s desire for the Resurrection Stone, which gives him an illusion that everything is fine and he can rely on having his loved one back. But he refuses to focus on any other world than the one created by the Stone, gets trapped by its deceptive power and ends up killing himself.

3.
Lily’s third and final choice, though, concerns a love which is much deeper – the love of her son over her self. She shows herself ready to do anything – literally anything – to save Harry’s life when it’s threatened, which she also states to Voldemort. She ends up offering her own life in exchange for her son’s and she takes the killing curse aimed at Harry. By doing this she saves not only Harry, but a series of other people, which eventually leads to Voldemort’s final downfall.

It makes me think of the humble third brother in the Tale, who only asked for the protective Invisibility Cloak, a temporary way of hiding from death and hold it at bay, but who willingly gave up his life in the end, letting the protection of the Cloak pass on to his descendants…


I’m fully aware that the resemblance to the Tale of the three Brothers and their Hallows, their choices affected by hubris, arrogance, longing, illusions and humility, could be applied to other characters as well, for example Snape or Dumbledore, or to anyone among us, actually. I just think it’s interesting to explore this allegory in relation to Lily, since she has come across as one of the most "innocent" characters in the series. I don’t think she was that very innocent, but perhaps a bit naïve. To which extent Lily managed to make the “right” choices in her short life is up to anyone to interpret. She died very young and could obviously not have predicted the terrible events that lay ahead of her, nor reflected later in life over where her choices led her.

But, in the end, in the moment when Lily let go of all possible selfish purposes for her love, and gave up her own life to save Harry’s, that’s when she reached a true level of heroism, in my eyes. By doing this she not only saved her son, who became The Boy Who Lived with all its future implications for the wizarding world. Lily’s death at the same time made it possible for Snape to “come back to life” through the mission of protecting Harry, which eventually served the same purposes…

I also believe that the ultimate, truly invincible strength of Lily’s love for her son, as well as Severus’ love for Lily once he realized that she was threatened, is that their love was unconditional; Lily and Severus didn’t depend on any counteract from the subjects of their love in order to put their own life at stake to save them. This is all so very beautifully expressed in the short words that Lily and Severus share in the series:

Thanks Sly_Lady, I'm glad you liked it! 
I guess this was just something that had been brooding for a while within me, coming from all the emotions reading DH, when we finally got to know more about the mysterious Lily... And I'm so happy it was actually Snape who provided the information. He must have had plenty of time throughout the years thinking about who was Lily and what did they do to each other, even if I imagine he would mostly have preferred avoiding the subject, with all the pain it contained. But, knowing all what's shown in Prince's Tale about her and much more, knowing she'd never be his, he still had the ability to love her the way he did. That's huge, I believe.

I'm sorry you've been accused of "character bashing" - that's just too silly! Who would actually prefer a saint, a glorified image, before a real person? I'd feel extra sorry for Harry if he hadn't ever had the opportunity to get to know that his mother was more than a stone statue, worshipped by most people and loathed by her sister. A Lily of flesh and blood must have had flaws, just like anyone in the series, otherwise it would be impossible to truly love her...

Nyctalus:  Inspired and Inspiring to me!    Thank you for writing about Lily!

I especially like the structure of the Tale of Three Brothers, as well as the comparison of the Statues in the churchyard to the adoring statues at the DoM.

And I think Snape's greatest gift is his unconditional love for Lily in spite of her personality and rejection.  And you are right - he had years to analyze her character, which in retrospect is naive.  I find her letter quite disturbing because she breaks every rule Harry has learned about "homeland security" during wartime."  She shouldn't have written such a detailed letter, and she shouldn't have talked about James's "excursions."  It just brings home the point again that the Marauders never grew up or really changed.

Snape's view of Lily reminds me so much of the "selfish flower" who is worshipped by the Little Prince in Antoine de Sainte-Exupery's novel.  He knows her faults, but still wants to protect her, because for him, there is no one else.
 
From The Little Prince, Chapter 8

"So, too, she began very quickly to torment him with her vanity-- which was, if the truth be known, a little difficult to deal with. . . .

Chapter 9

. . . he realised that he was very close to tears.

"Goodbye," he said to the flower.

But she made no answer.

"Goodbye," he said again.

The flower coughed. But it was not because she had a cold.

"I have been silly," she said to him, at last. "I ask your forgiveness. Try to be happy..."

He was surprised by this absence of reproaches. He stood there all bewildered, the glass globe held arrested in mid-air. He did not understand this quiet sweetness.

"Of course I love you," the flower said to him. "It is my fault that you have not known it all the while. That is of no importance. But you-- you have been just as foolish as I. Try to be happy... let the glass globe be. I don't want it any more."

"But the wind--"

"My cold is not so bad as all that... the cool night air will do me good. I am a flower."

"But the animals--"

"Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful. And if not the butterflies-- and the caterpillars-- who will call upon me? You will be far away... as for the large animals-- I am not at all afraid of any of them. I have my claws."

And, naïvely, she showed her four thorns. Then she added:

"Don't linger like this. You have decided to go away. Now go!"

For she did not want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower...

Every year at school the same eruption occurs--when Bestest Friends Ever! are no longer friends....whatever the combination is, invariably, as kids enter middle school and then upper school, old alliances fall apart as the friends change and develop.  One of the most common pressures on friendships is popularity:  when one half of the friendship becomes very popular for the first time--or both become very popular, but with different groups.....the strain breaks the bond.  And, of course, the single most important thing to any kid in grades 6-10, especially, is fitting in.

In one way, Snape had matured far faster than Lily, because he had fallen in love, and that changed the nature of the relationship.  Lily, on the other hand, viewed him as a friend--and she was also busy making other friends and flirting and being 15....

Slughorn makes a number of references to Lily's spirit and "cheekiness'--that does imply a fairly bold, daring personality.  It seems likely that Lily fell for the Marauder's recklessness--everything was an adventure and about being cool.....Very close to irresistible to a 15-16 year old girl who's pretty daring herself.

I think that's very true. The differences between them were huge; she was beautiful, popular, recieving a lot of attention from boys and had a group of giggling friends on her side (mentioned in SWM). Lily had a whole world to discover, forming opinions, going on adventures, flirting, eventually dating, joking, laughing, learning - and she had a lot of people in whose company she could do it. Sev, on the other hand, was an outsider who had never "fitted in" anywhere. He was neglected at home, just like Harry, and wore funny clothes, he was reserved and probably more interested in studying magic than fooling around. And the Marauder's bullying probably made it very difficult for him to relax and try to make friends with people.

But a young guy needs to fit in with other guys, and it seems the only ones who would be of easy access to him were his fellow house-mates, some of them probably from brutal Death Eater homes or perhaps haughty pure-blooded families. But, of course, they were "tough guys", and to fit in with them you had probably also to handle the Dark Arts stuff, which was one of the few things where Severus measured up...

I also think that Lily's and Sev's relationship was very uneven; the part who's less keen on it will be setting the conditions, as the other one will be ready to do much more to please his mate. So I guess Sev being in love with someone who didn't take it all quite so seriously might have been a bit bad for his self esteem, while bolstering up hers a bit too much. We can see it in their conversations; as soon as she gets upset with him he "backtracks":

I agree, it would be difficult at that stage - he was probably not at all what Lily was seeking those years. He wanted to protect her, but she couldn't see any dangers. All the things he could tell her when they were younger, all the mysteries of the magical world, well, she could now have it by herself, and from other people. He needed her for a series of reasons, but she didn't actually need him very much.

But I could see her choosing him a bit later in life, once she had been going through a few things herself, once she'd had enough of the Marauder's adventurous rubbish and opened her eyes a bit more to reality. Unfortunately, she married and died extremely young...

I'm around teenagers alot, of all ages, and I think there is a world of difference between 15 and 19.  Lots of friendships do fall by the wayside, most of the time for the better, but sometimes kids cast away good friends for bad. 

I do think popularity was going to Lily's head, but if there had been no James in her life, perhaps she might have kept trying with Severus.  But as pretty and vivacious as she was, I think someone else would have been a rival to him eventually anyway.  There are popular boys in all the Houses - a Cedric, for instance.

That's a great point that Snape was already older in some ways than Lily, but not socially adept or poised.  And the poor kid was tongue-tied about love, though so painfully honest in every other way.  God, you just have to feel sorry for him! 

You're right, Olwen, it's interesting that it was JKR's 'spiteful bully' who knew Lily so well and was rejected by her in favor of James, who brings Lily to life for Harry and for us. Snape turns out to be a forgiving soul. He's terribly wounded by Lily's rejection, but able to get beyond his pain and keep loving her unconditionally.

Both Snape and Lily are shown to Harry in their essential humanity. Snape is awkward and needy, Lily is a bit arrogant in her popularity, and quite unkind as she dumps Severus. Yet I think Snape is so uninterested in artificially prettying things up, so direct and blunt, that he gives Harry the precise truth about who they were as children. It's far more powerful than than a series of posed photographs.

When Lily chose to die for Harry, you're right, Nyctalus, her act also gave Snape a purpose, so he lived on because of his love for her. I find it inspiring, because she was no more a great hero that any other person who sacrifices herself for someone she loves. She was not a saint, yet her death set into motion amazing things.

(This probably reflects my irritable mood today more than anything, but I'll toss it out anyway. Forgive me if you can.)

The mid-teenage years are probably a very poor gauge of what a person will be when she/he grows older. At least I hope not. As someone who was not a popular, socially powerful girl, Lily's adolescent arrogance and self-righteousness toward young Severus grate on me. She naturally enjoyed her popularity, but chose to curry favor with the Marauders. Probably most teenage girls might be tempted to do the same. I know I'm judging her too harshly, but until then, her best friend was an unattractive, socially inept geek who was passionately loyal to her. So in the process of being popular, she decided that Severus just didn't cut it. So much for the Lily Evans who saw the best in people. Maybe she did see the best of Snape, but it wasn't good enough in comparison with the Quidditch hero and class bully…

She allowed herself to be persuaded by James' half-truths and omissions about Severus's guilt in the so-called "Prank," in spite of the fact that she'd known him well. Then she watches as the boy she's attracted to assaults her former best friend. Having intervened, she make James mad and he escalates the attack on Severus to a really creepy level. She then walks away.

Even if she believes Severus is a Dark Lord in training and that James Potter is a knight in shining armor, once she stepped in, she should have done something effective. Most kind-hearted girls I know wouldn't leave a stray dog to be tortured by a gang, and in that case, how do you justify letting it happen to a friend you've known since you were a little kid?

Having said all these judgmental things, I do believe Lily was a good person. She loved Harry devotedly, she was obviously a loving, loyal wife and a kind friend. She died heroically and great good happened as the result of her sacrifice. But she was no more a saint that any of us flawed mortals and what we saw of her during her fifth year didn't impress me.