Snape Fans, Time to Admit: Lily Had Too Much Self-Respect to End Up with Him

Even many years after the finale of the Harry Potter series, there are many Potterheads who consider Severus Snape’s “Always” the most beautiful moment of the entire franchise and the manifestation of true love. Typically, this opinion comes from the same fans who justify Severus Snape in general — and hate James Potter.

If this describes you or some friend of yours, boy do we have something to tell you.

The sentiment that “Lily Evans married the person who blackmailed her and assaulted her friend,” an arrogant jerk and a bully James Potter, is wrong on so many levels — and funnily enough, it’s also disproven by the books right there in the text. Lily Evans never married the man from this description; she did the opposite.

For as long as James Potter behaved in that nauseatingly obnoxious way, Lily was cold and harsh with him. Never even once has she given in to Potter Sr.’s manipulations and blackmails. She kept shaving the boy off and bluntly telling him that he was an arrogant idiot and a bully, effectively rendering his efforts useless.

Whenever James tried to assault Severus Snape, Lily’s friend who was hopelessly enamored with her, she always stood up for him and made Potter drop the act. However, Snape himself didn’t seem to value her help — and their relationship — enough to not publicly insult Lily and join the group set to exterminate her kind.

After Severus Snape had called her a “filthy little Mudblood” in public, Lily Evans cut him off in the same brutally honest fashion she’d been shaving off James Potter. There was not even the tiniest bit of pretense in her, and her strict demands remained the same no matter if it was Potter trying to blackmail her or Snape trying to abuse her. Lily Evans gave in to neither of them.

From this alone, we can draw the only logical conclusion: Lily gave James a chance only after he’d changed his ways. She made it clear she wanted nothing to do with a bully, and when Potter Sr. matured enough, he dropped his ugly behavior and became a better man for her. That’s when they truly met each other for the first time.

So no, Lily Evans didn’t marry a man who blackmailed her into dating and assaulted others. She married a grown-up man who became better for her and took responsibility for his actions. Not a bully but the Order’s soldier, so to speak.

And Snape…Snape broke their friendship with his many terrible decisions and remained a bully even many years later — the kind to take out his anger on 11-year-olds and cultivate his self-pity after killing the woman he allegedly loved.