Sticker on Your Forehead?

Speaking of Harry Potter and Alan Rickman and all that, it reminds me of when I saw the fifth movie with my friend at the beginning of the month. She hasn't read any of the books, so naturally the plotline is totally befuddling her. I had to explain it all to her once the movie had ended and we were walking out of the theater.

"And what was with Snape?" she kept saying. "Why was Harry's dad dangling Snape upside down? I though Snape was supposed to be the bad one...?"

Now, my friend here is pretty intelligent, but she is also pretty simple-minded when in comes to the depth of characters and people and all that. I tried to tell her about it in a way that she would understand, but she refused to believe that James was the one being mean, and not Snape.

So the only way I could think to put it was like this:

"Okay," I said slowly, "Think of it like this. Let's say Hogwarts is an ordinary high school, and Severus Snape is an 'emo kid', right?"

At once she nodded in understanding. I continued.

"And let's say Harry's dad, James, is a 'rude jock' type."

Another knowing nod.

"And let's say they both have a crush on Harry's mom, Lily, who is a pretty and smart high school girl. Lily is friends with both Snape and with James, and therefore is caught in the middle of everything. Snape, in this situation, is going to be the one who gets abused the most, because jocks are stereotypically naturally more brawny than emo kids, right?"

"Yeah."

"Because Lily has been friends with Snape for a longer amount of time, she defends him while James is rude to him."

"Oh. Then why didn't she marry Snape?"

Answering this question was kind of tricky because it was weirdly emotional for me.

"Because, after time, Snape gets tired of dealing with James, and he begins to appeal to the dark magic in Slytherin. Lily becomes angry with him for it, and winds up spending more time with James because she's in Gryffindor with him, all that - it sort of snowballs from there."

"But James was an ass!" my friend cried defiantly. "They both liked Lily, but Snape was a better person and loved her!"

"Yeah," I sighed. "Life's unfair like that."


I just thought it was funny... the moment I involved contemporary teenage labels for my friend, such as "emo" and "jock", she understood the whole thing immediately. It's like we have to label everything to death before it can make sense.