This Is Your Daily, Friendly Reminder To Use Commas Instead Of Periods During The Dialogue Of Your Story,

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

Honestly, Severus should've just stomped on Lames Snotter's face till it wasn't a face anymore.

Him stepping over his body was the loveliest thing he did to this pathetic butt-monkey of a human.

As a non movie fan, my reaction to people going "He stepped on James' body", was "excuse me, are you perchance remembering some fanfic you wrote?", because it's something that not only didn't happen in the books, but also makes no sense timelinewise.

After hearing about it a hundred times, my new reaction is,

Why is James entitled to any respect from the man he bullied for 7 years, at least one of those behind his wife's back? From a man James choked with soap and threatened to take off his underwear?

If my best friend quit being my friend and decided she was in love with one of my former bullies? I might still care about her, because I rarely stop caring about people I once considered a close friend, but I'm not required to care about her husband to upset if she dies.

I don't care how much people have been told that couples are basically a single unit and we have to love both of you to love either. If it even applies normally (gag, I'm not convinced of that), it sure doesn't apply to situations where one of you marries someone who choked people in public.

from a watsonian perspective both snily and jily had dysfunctional and unhealthy elements to their dynamics, but from a doylist perspective snily's flaws were intentionally written into their story as to set it up as a tragedy, thus giving their relationship and subplot real emotional weight. whereas jily's flaws are a result of jkr failing to write a healthy relationship and framing james' lack of respect for her wishes as a quirk. snily is a successful tragedy. jily is a failed love story.

This is also true. Even if you take out the whole death eater/Voldemort war element out of it, Snape and Lily’s story is ultimately much more interesting and stronger to base a lasting relationship off of (they come from different classes, they’re both talented at potions/school, they’re both childhood friends, they’re both studious, they’re both shown to have sharp tongues, they’re both very protective of the people they care for, the element of both of them having to confront their own shortcomings/house/class differences to grow as people and a couple is fascinating, Lily is even shown to be BLUSHING over him, the fact they have some of the most romantic lines in the series, etc) as opposed to James and Lily, where we get NO growth, see no basis of connection besides they’re both gryffindors I guess, and are just expected to accept it. If JK wanted us to buy them as a truly loving couple, she wouldn’t have purposely put in scenes where they’re shown to be antagonistic towards each other right from the start and to where Harry literally thinks “my dad forced her into marrying him”. THAT is not a good thing. That is not how the main character should be viewing his own parents’ relationship as. Even worse is when he confronts Sirius and Lupin about it, they’re only excuse is “well he deflated his head a bit!”, only to add yeah, he lied to her and kept bullying Snape behind her back despite her specifically asking him to stop. Like, really? This is not the basis of romance, that’s the basis of a horribly incompatible relationship and proof James did not grow as a person. They have little in common, their shared scenes are obviously one-sided and entitled, and we know off canon that James couldn’t keep ONE promise to her. How is that okay? At least to make Snily work, Snape AND Lily have to work on both their issues, not one bending to the will of the other.

And no, James trying to fight off Voldemort is not “growth” or being a shining hero, that’s literally bare minimum of being a decent person and parent. You really think Lucius and Narcissa wouldn’t try to fight off someone trying to kill Draco? How about Mrs Zabini for Blaise? The Greengrasses for Daphne and Astoria? How about Arthur and Molly over their kids? The Grangers over Hermione? Hell, let’s say Snape was in James’ place instead, you really think he wouldn’t try everything to keep her and their child safe? Any loving parent would do that, but James is lauded as a beacon of heroism for literally doing something the majority of parents would do anyway.

Also, like, it’s really sad that Lily seemingly has no life or personality outside of James. Her only friends are his friends (despite us seeing she had her own in school? Where did they go? Why don’t they matter?), they only person to talk about her outside of Snapes memories and people mentioning her eyes is SLUGHORN for gods sake. It’s sad Harry gets all this info and treasures from the Potters but NOTHING from the Evans side. Surely there’s nothing they could have left him and she made sure he’d have? Really? Why was her personality taken away to accommodate him? And then of course there’s her letters, where it’s obvious their little picture of domestic bliss is not working. Her life all but revolves around Harry, while we know James is antsy to leave at any moment (and from what we saw, when he did get out it was doing reckless shit). Which yes, is a factor off the fact they were so young and like, probably shouldn’t have a kid, but it’s a red flag that she’s putting in most of the effort while he wants to goof off with his buddies. That’s not a sustainable relationship. That’s a divorce waiting to happen had they survived the war. People can make up all the cute headcanons they want, but the reality is it was far from a fairytale romance.

Like, as I’ve said and you pointed out, they’re a failed romance. They’re not even viable if you look at the elements. Not to say Snape and Lily would be picture perfect, but at least they had a true basis of compatible and would help challenge and make the other grow. You can’t say that for her and James, which ultimately is used to prop him up while degrading her to merely his wife and mother of his child. Snape and Lily have “it’s real for us” and “Always” while James and Lily have her saying hes an arrogant toerag and that she never wants to date him, but somehow they’re the real romance? Give me a break.

This perfectly shows how disgusting and actually scary the marauders were. Both in their early and later lives.

Imagine Severus Snape when he’s running away from the Marauders and hiding in various places

Imagine him getting to know Hogwarts well

Hiding in in various broom closets

Bathrooms

Empty classrooms

Imagine him waiting in fear

Thinking this time they might not find him

This time he might not have to go to the hospital wing to get his teeth back in

This time he won’t have to try and find a way to get back to the Slytherin dungeons naked

This time he won’t have to cast a spell on his clothes to stitch them back together

But no matter

Where he goes

Where he hides

No matter how secret the place is

They

Always

Find

Him

Trevor and Neville’s Boggart

I have long advocated that Boggarts are representations as opposed to literal fears - for instance, we don’t believe that Remus was terrified of the moon; he’s terrified of his illness, and what the moon represents.  Similarly, it’s likely that Hermione’s Boggart was a fear of failure and subsequent rejection from the wizarding world due to her background - not that she wouldn’t pass a few exams.

Consequently, I have often suggested that Neville’s Boggart being Snape is not necessarily a deep-seated fear of Snape himself.  Instead, Neville’s worst fear is being a failure as a wizard - he frets that he is not magical enough and is incapable of living up to both the legacy of his parents and his family’s expectations.  

But one thing I hadn’t noticed until @the-great-snape-debate​ posted this passage from PS earlier, is this:

Trevor the toad was purchased for Neville by Great Uncle Algie - the same Great Uncle Algie who dropped him out of an upstairs window and pushed him off Blackpool pier, which had the consequence of Neville almost dying.  It is explicitly made clear that Trevor wasn’t just any familiar, but Trevor was explicitly a reward for Neville finally being deemed sufficiently magical.

Despite being accepted into Hogwarts, Neville’s struggle at school is well documented in both PS and CoS and occurs across a number of classes, and he frets that he is almost a Squib.  

In PoA, in the Potions class immediately before Lupin’s Defence lesson on Boggarts, Neville fails to brew his potion correctly and midway through, Snape laments that Neville doesn’t listen to his instructions:

“Didn’t you hear me say, quite clearly, that only one cat spleen was needed?  Didn’t I state plainly that a dash of leech juice would suffice? What do I have to do to make you understand, Longbottom?”

Snape then threatens Trevor:

“At the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens.  Perhaps that will encourage you to do it properly.”

Of course, Snape has no way of knowing exactly what Trevor represents to Neville - it is incredibly unlikely that Snape would know Neville’s history with Great Uncle Algie or that the toad was bought as a reward.  

Snape presumably sees the toad as just a familiar and his threat is simply a dark way of motivating Neville to concentrate.  In contrast, Neville sees Trevor as being representative of his success at being a legitimate wizard.

This explains why Neville is so fearful of Snape specifically - a few minutes prior to the Boggart scene, Snape threatened Trevor - both figuratively and literally.  Importantly, Snape doesn’t threaten Trevor because he thinks it’s a funny thing to do or because he understands what Trevor represents - Snape explicitly threatens Trevor because of Neville’s performance in his class.

Incidentally, this also goes some way to explain why the Boggart is pushed into Neville’s grandmother’s clothes - when Neville was accepted into Hogwarts, his grandmother had to concede that she was incorrect and Neville was sufficiently magical.  By forcing Boggart-Snape into those same clothes, Neville is meant to see that this is exactly the same problem he’s already confronted; he is magical enough and this new authority figure will also eventually be proven to be wrong, just as his grandmother was.

TL,DR:  Neville’s worst fear is being a Squib.  Snape, as an authority figure in the school, deemed Neville magically inept and threatened to remove Neville’s reward for being magical enough (Trevor) as a direct consequence of Neville’s own failure.

Olaudah Equiano.

He is perhaps..one of my absolute favourites..

Olaudah Equiano was a freed slave, and was prominent in London afterwards, supporting campaigns against the slave trade, striving for the abolition of the trade. He came in contact with William Wilberforce after hearing that he too supported abolition and struggled to get supporters for his campaigns, and presented to him the chains and shackles used for the neck, legs and arms which would then be placed on the slaves as they worked. The two maintained a correspondence afterwards. He also wrote an autobiography, in which he described the horrors of being a slave. This book sold thousands of copies and helped in the passing of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.

In his autobiography, Equiano describes how he was captured with his sister, then shipped across to Barbados, then Virginia, where he was sold to a Royal Navy officer, Micheal Pascal whom renamed Equiano Gustavus Vassa after the King of Sweden. He then travelled with Pascal for eight years, during which he was baptized, and learned to read and write. In his biography Equiano describes how he was then sold to a prominent merchant, Robert King, in London. It was during this time that Equiano started earning his own money. While Equiano served as a deckhand, valet and barber for Robert King, her earned money by the means of trade on the side. It took him only three years to earn enough money to buy his freedom. Once he bought his freedom, Equiano describes how he spent the next 20 years of his life travelling the world, including trips to Turkey and the Artic.

Finally in 1786, he became largely involved in the movement for the abolition of slavery, and became a part fo the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group, in the same year. Three years later, Equiano wrote his autobiography, titled ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African’, and travelled promoting the book. His writings became extremely popular, and made him a very wealthy man. His autobiography is actually one of the first books published by an African writer.

Olaudah later married an Englishwoman, Susanna Cullen in 1792 and had two daughters with her: Joanna Vassa and Anna Maria Vassa. It was a marriage that he would include in editions of his autobiography from 1792 onwards. Susanna unfortunately did at age 34 in February 1796, and Equiano himself died just a year later on 31st March at the age of 52, though sources vary on this subject. Equiano’s place of burial is unknown, too. His youngest daughter, Anna Maria Vassa, died soon after at the age of four, leaving the only surving child, Joanna, with Equiano’s estate and wealth. I love this man, honestly. I tried to explain his life very simply for those who are not at all familiar with him.