James’ Desire

This is what obsession looks like

Warning: This essay is clearly anti- James Potter. If you are a fan, read at your own risk.

Disclaimer: The draft of this essay dates back to 2021, where my writing style was much “louder”. On review, I tried to tamper it, but it’ll still be felt. 

Introduction

When delving into the fandom, Severus’ love for Lily is always brought up as criticism against him. I have already dealt with this matter in the previous essay “Love, not desire!”. Yet what I always found curious, especially after the re-reading of the HP books, is that James Potter’s relationship with Lily has scarcely been brought up as a subject to study what is toxic love in the HP fandom. So I dug a little deeper and I found quite the treasure within a few pages only. 

Within this essay, we will try to see why James Potter’s desire for Lily is, hum, extremely “problematic”. 

Might as well warn you right now. Fans of James Potter as well as the Jily ship, brace yourselves because I’m not going to say nice things about him. I tried to avoid too much bashing, let alone slandering, but there is a point where the facts have to come through, and I can’t just ignore them.

Basically, you know all the accusations made on Severus being a stalker or an obsessed man or whatever mainstream bullshit? Well, the funny thing is that it never was Severus Snape who did all that. It was James Potter. 

And the funniest thing is that I’ll prove it.

The Facts

Blackmail

In SWM, the OWLs finish and Harry follows his father out on the grounds of Hogwarts. There are some elements that we will have to skip for now, so we’ll just fast-forward again to the moment James and his friends spot Severus and decide to attack him.

Lily comes to the rescue. In this scene, we realize that James doesn’t mock Lily solely during the scene on the train. He also does right in SWM, during what he likely considers acceptable flirting: 

“Leave him alone,” Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. “What’s he done to you?” 

“Well,” said James, appearing to deliberate the point, “it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean…” 

Many of the surrounding students laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included, but Lupin, still apparently intent on his book, didn’t, and nor did Lily. 

When Lily asks James what Severus has done to, I guess, “provoke” him, James fakes thinking long and hard about what she asked then turns her words into ridicule, effectively mocking her and having the crowd laugh at the exchange. 

And then James steps to the next level:

“Leave him alone.” 

“I will if you go out with me, Evans,” said James quickly. “Go on… Go out with me, and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.”

So, at the end of his fifth year, James already tries to force Lily to go out with him against her will, despite her visibly disliking him intensely, by in effect holding Severus hostage and threatening to go on persecuting him unless Lily relents. 

That is called blackmail.

A statement as repulsive as “I’ll stop laying a hand on your friend only if you go out with me” doesn’t come out of nowhere. Harassing the loved ones of the target girl and using them as leverage is a tactic typically used by abusers (and wife-beaters). 

Severus is used as a bargaining chip to coerce Lily on a date. If Lily doesn’t accept, James promises that he’ll keep on the violence against her best friend. And he does just that after she rebuffs him.

I would like you to imagine a scenario where Lily actually accepts his bargain. Where she goes on a date with him, just so he can stop bullying Severus, hopefully without his friends keeping on the work instead.

It’s a totally plausible scenario. That is what James asks for. Isn’t it Lily who told Voldemort she would do anything to protect her son? The Jily couple that starts off thanks to blackmail. Does that seem normal and healthy to you?

This is not something to be brushed off as normal or a joke, because it isn’t. If James really was more concerned about Lily rather than his own person, then he never, ever would have done that. Just as in real-life, you do not use blackmail. James blackmailing Lily will never be okay.

But that’s not the end of it.

Threat of Physical Violence

Not content with having just blackmailed Lily into dating him by using her friend as a bargaining chip, James crosses another line.

« Ah, don’t make me hex you, Evans, » James said earnestly.

…

Okay. Let’s make it Muggle:

« Don’t make me hit you, Evans. » 

That’s the same thing, only with magic in the words.

When Lily tries to protect her friend, James threatens her with violence for daring to oppose him. « Don’t make me hex you. » This is an absolutely classic example of an abuser’s attitude to their prey: « I’m going to hit you, but it will be your fault for not doing as you’re told ». 

Threat of violence and gaslighting.

And before anyone argues to defend James on that one, I want you to know: It doesn’t matter if, somehow, “deep down” or anything, “he didn’t mean it” or that he didn’t do it in the end. The threat is enough. The mere idea of hurting the girl he fancies is enough. 

What he said is already too much.

The text says that James said it earnestly anyway, so, yes, he was serious about it – he sounded serious enough that no one would risk going against him, not even Lily who resorts again to yell, and only that.

He says it clearly and earnestly: he was ready to hit Lily with a hex and escalate in the violence.

To be clear, there is no defense for what James just did. Any excuse one could give would only underscore the self-righteous violent streak of James Potter, including when it comes to the girl he desires. Not to mention, perpetuate the culture of violence against women, notably rape culture.

We know the worst Severus can do to Lily: insult her indirectly. 

With James, we haven’t seen the worst, he wasn’t pushed to his limits, and yet he already goes too far. Let’s say it: the fact that he threatens Lily when she defends her friend makes it possible he might have become a wife-beater. I’d love to see how James treats Lily when he gets truly angry.

Notice that Lily putting herself before the person she protects sets a direct parallel between Harry / Severus and Voldemort / James. That’s called a red flag.

The only thing that seems to prevent him from following through on the threat or hitting Lily without bothering with a warning this time, is the presence of witnesses who condone abuse only so far – and the knowledge she’s not tied to him with marriage yet. (And even then…)

Up until now, James has given Lily the illusion of control. He has purposefully created a scenario where he causes trouble so he will draw Lily’s attention and when she tries to tell him to stop, he can give her the impression that she only needs asking for him to oblige:

“Let him down!” 

“Certainly,” said James and he jerked his wand upwards; Snape fell into a crumpled heap on the ground.

But this falls apart when Lily dares try to interfere if it doesn’t abide by the rules he created, by effectively threatening her with physical harm.

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” Lily shouted. She had her own wand out now. James and Sirius eyed it warily. 

“Ah, Evans, don’t make me hex you,” said James earnestly. 

“Take the curse off him, then!” 

James sighed deeply, then turned to Snape and muttered the counter-curse. 

The illusion of control also falls apart as Lily comes with the objective to stop James from bullying Severus. James doesn’t stop: content to have drawn her attention, he uses that as an opportunity to “flirt » with her over the torment of her best friend. In the end, he doesn’t care about the fact that she’s had to shout and beg to stop the torment. The scene concludes with James keeping on bullying Severus ever more, nevermind all that she previously said. Because if it doesn’t benefit James, what she wants and asks for doesn’t truly matter.

Casual Misogyny

I’m expanding on that particular subject because I see some fans calling James Potter… a feminist. Well, let’s see how much of a feminist he’s supposed to be!

So, finally… as if he hadn’t just spent the last ten minutes being abusive to Lily and tormenting her best friend, he suddenly thinks he can step forward and “protect Lily’s dignity”, or whatever he convinces himself of doing:

“Apologize to Evans!” James roared at Snape, his wand pointed threateningly at him.

Pardon me for the grand terms, but this type of behaviour is a very classic example of misogyny and paternalism. Let’s see:

“I don’t need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!”

Lily blinked.

“Fine,” she said coolly. “I won’t bother in future. And I’d wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus.”

“Apologize to Evans!” James roared at Snape, his wand pointed threateningly at him.

“I don’t want you to make him apologize,” Lily shouted, rounding on James. “You’re as bad as he is…”

Lily visibly wasn’t that shaken by the insult; she didn’t cry or anything, she just “blinked” and insulted Severus right back. Yet by intervening, James is sending the message that Lily cannot defend herself and that it is his right to do it in her stead. That despite managing herself very well, he “knows” Lily needs apologies to feel better, and that she needs him if she wants to get them.

He also sets himself as someone linked affectionately to Lily’s life, as if he already were her husband, or she was his possession, whether she likes it or not, and he sends the message: “if you hurt Lily you hurt me”. That’s why “apologize to Evans” is, really, “apologize to me”. But he isn’t her husband or her father or anything to her but “an arrogant bullying” bastard. He just should mind his own business and stop setting himself as Lily’s white knight in shining armour when he’s proven so far to be the contrary and to have no qualms about hurting her. This is incredibly insulting and infuriating since it pushes Lily to try and assert her independence as a woman again. 

Finally, James seems to consider it his right to “take in charge” whatever problem Lily encounters. The twist is that he, James, is precisely the man who created those problems purposefully. 

Just so he could coerce Lily to approach him, he has fabricated a show, the jeering mob as the spectators, him and his friends, the performing troupe, and Severus, the circus animal:

Sirius’s head turned. He had become very still, like a dog that has scented a rabbit.

All the while, James has made Lily endure his incessant, unbearable “flirting” over this shockingly brutal performance. 

When Severus doesn’t lay still to take another of James’ kicks and finally lashes out, in that instant, James has succeeded to create a “villain”, or perhaps more accurately, to make “a beloved pet turn savage” (HBP), so he can set himself as Lily’s knight. But when you look at the wider picture of this spectacle, both Lily and Severus are the true victims, and James is the real monster. 

Because of all that, Lily intervenes:

“I don’t want you to make him apologize,” Lily shouted, rounding on James. “You’re as bad as he is…”

“WHAT? But I’d never call you a–You-Know-What!”

“Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you’ve just got off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can — I’m surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK.”

It is curious that Lily, to justify why she considers James just as bad as Severus, textually equals being referred to as a Mudblood, to all of the above: James messing his hair, showing off with the Snitch, hexing people just because he can. So either being called a Mudblood isn’t much to her, or what James did truly reached the insanely creepy levels.

Either way, I just want you to remember: Lily has just said that James is as bad as someone who calls her a Mudblood.

James repeatedly pursues her and can’t take “No” for an answer. Lily has already told him:

“I wouldn’t go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid,” said Lily. 

She had to shout twice more after that to have James letting Severus off. When James doesn’t attack Snape, it is Sirius who takes up on it, and James lets him do, despite the fact Lily has shouted a total of 5 times for them to stop. And in fact, James takes the opportunity every time to keep on “flirting” with Lily. She has clearly said no, but he doesn’t care about what she’s said, since apparently, he agrees it’s only a matter of: 

“Bad luck, Prongs,” said Sirius. 

That is, he only has to try his chance another time. Oh, and he tries.

Lily has to tell him to stop meddling with her problems another time, and when she leaves in a hurry… James doesn’t let go. He wants her back:

She turned on her heel and hurried away.

“Evans!” James shouted after her, “Hey, EVANS!”

But she didn’t look back.

Visibly, James will never stop trying to “flirt” with Lily, no matter how many times she tells him “no”. He’s sexually harassing her.

“What is it with her?” said James, trying and failing to look as though this was a throwaway question of no real importance to him.

“Reading between the lines, I’d say she thinks you’re a bit conceited, mate,” said Sirius.

“What is it with her?” and “Reading between the lines” are typical misogynistic sentences. Lily has just shouted what she hated in James. But apparently, she’s not being clear enough for him. “What is it with her” implies she’s got a problem, that she’s just being too emotional and irrational. That he doesn’t care about what she says, it is her behaviour that he doesn’t like. 

Indeed, James doesn’t put himself in question after what Lily blamed him for. He doesn’t say, “okay I admit I have gone too far, I’m sorry”. No, he makes it as though the problem is within Lily.

His best friend Sirius argues in the same direction: as though Lily was only being hysterical, he doesn’t argue directly on what Lily has said – no, he has to translate it, he has to “read between the lines”. Because we all know women have got a different language that is up to men to interpret, right? that Sirius is able to see “what Lily truly thinks inside” whereas apparently Lily wasn’t able to make herself clear on what she truly thought? 

James doesn’t scold Sirius for being sexist, because James is precisely misogynistic himself.

I mean, regarding Sirius, this has the same spirit as:

“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably. “She hated him!” 

“Nah, she didn’t,” said Sirius.

Even though we read this:

• She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike.
• You make me SICK.
• Yet, the memory of the look on her face as she had shouted at James disturbed him quite as much as anything else; she had clearly loathed James, and Harry simply could not understand how they could have ended up married. Once or twice he even wondered whether James had forced her into it… 

Granted, we know where that comes from, and no, it doesn’t look good:

MA: How did they get together? She hated James, from what we’ve seen.

JKR: Did she really? You’re a woman, you know what I’m saying. [Laughter.]

Anelli, Melissa and Emerson Spartz. « The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Three, » The Leaky Cauldron, 16 July 2005

https://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2005/0705-tlc_mugglenet-anelli-3.htm

And so next scene:

“Right,” said James, who looked furious now, “right —”

James doesn’t feel guilty or ashamed that Lily sees him as a narcissist (which he absolutely is). He feels furious. He doesn’t regret what he’s done, he’s angry that Lily reacted the way she did. And we know what happens next.

There was another flash of light, and Snape was once again hanging upside-down in the air. 

“Who wants to see me take off Snivelly’s pants?

He doesn’t remove Snape’s underwear because he insulted Lily: no, she rejected him when he tried to set himself as her “defensor”. He removes his underwear after Lily leaves because he got rebuffed. He does it because he is furious that Lily balked away since she thinks he’s being “a bit conceited”.

Oh wait–could it be possible?

Celibate? Check. 

Involuntary? Check. 

Willing to resort to violence against men he perceives as a threat and against women to get what he wants? Check check and check.

James is now an incel! [#JincelPorker]

“Whether James had forced her into it…”

Harry gets out of Snape’s Worst Memory and he tries to digest the shock of getting to know his father in all his glory. He meditates on what he has just witnessed. And so we read this:

Harry kept reminding himself that Lily had intervened; his mother had been decent. Yet, the memory of the look on her face as she had shouted at James disturbed him quite as much as anything else; she had clearly loathed James, and Harry simply could not understand how they could have ended up married. Once or twice he even wondered whether James had forced her into it… 

James’ behavior to Lily was so disturbing, his own son wonders if he forced her to marry him. Harry is basically wondering if James, his father, is an actual rapist with Lily as his victim. This is, of course, heavily based on the knowledge that James has used threat and blackmail to coerce Lily on a date. And Harry cannot see how it could have worked another way between them. At what point do you see this and consider that everything is okay?

Additionally, Harry is upset to see his father constantly glancing at the girls by the lake:

• Harry noticed his father had a habit of rumpling up his hair as though to make sure it did not get too tidy, and also that he kept looking over at the girls by the water’s edge.
• Snape lay panting on the ground. James and Sirius advanced on him, wands up, James glancing over his shoulder at the girls at the water’s edge as he went. 

This is creepy enough for Harry to call it out:

“And,” said Harry doggedly, determined to say everything that was on his mind now he was here, “he kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!” 

Sirius answers:

“Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around,” said Sirius, shrugging. “He couldn’t stop himself showing off whenever he got near her.”

I see Sirius trying to save his friend’s image, but really, this doesn’t help his case. 

Sirius just admitted that the behaviour James showed in Snape’s Worst Memory didn’t just happen once. It didn’t even happen exclusively as he was tormenting Severus. He has just confirmed that James Potter always had this obsessive behaviour whenever he got near Lily. And it never stopped:

“Leave him ALONE!” James and Sirius looked around. James’s free hand jumped to his hair again.

All right, Evans?” said James, and the tone of his voice was suddenly pleasant, deeper, more mature.

Well, in fact she doesn’t even need to be near him. During his OWLs, she couldn’t be seen, yet James already draws “LE” on a parchment. (Notice that none are written on the Prince’s book – again, Severus isn’t the obsessed one.) Outside, Lily is with her friends by the lake, and yet James keeps sending glances in her direction so much Harry is appalled by James’ creepiness. He does it all again as he rounds on Severus. 

So unless this obsessive behaviour “always” occurs because James getting “near” Lily means “being somewhere at Hogwarts”, we can expect it got just worse when she dared crossing the 10-meters radius of James’ vicinity. 

Lily was visibly fed up with James’ obsessive behaviour:

“Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you’ve just got off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch […]. You make me SICK.”

Referring to:

James was still playing with the Snitch, letting it zoom further and further away, almost escaping but always grabbed at the last second. Wormtail was watching him with his mouth open. Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Wormtail gasped and applauded. After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn’t tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention. […]

Harry noticed his father had a habit of rumpling up his hair as though to make sure it did not get too tidy, and also that he kept looking over at the girls by the water’s edge. […]

“Leave him ALONE!” 

James and Sirius looked around. James’s free hand jumped to his hair again.

Of course, Sirius tries to soften the blow by using excuses that are typically used in sexist arguments. James is not harassing Lily or being obsessed, no, he’s merely “making a fool of himself”. It’s not his fault, why, “he couldn’t stop himself”. Really.

That is literally rape culture right here.

A man is not a savage animal, and if dogs can obey when we tell them not to eat a piece of meat that’s presented right under their noses, then there is no reason a man like James Potter wouldn’t be able to control himself whenever Lily is around. It’s not a matter of losing control; it’s a matter of choosing not to stalk her around–let alone if it means being abusive like he proved to be earlier.

James Potter never truly changed

In seventh year Lily starts dating James because she believes he has grown up, thinking he changed for the better… except that he never did. In fact he is deceiving her in a very nasty way.

When discussing Snape’s Worst Memory, Sirius and Lupin tell Harry that his father has apparently stopped hexing people, at least not for the fun of it. Harry asks if he also let Severus off. And then:

“Well,” said Lupin slowly, “Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?” 

“And my mum was okay with that?” 

“She didn’t know too much about it, to tell you the truth,” said Sirius. “I mean, James didn’t take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her, did he?” 

And there you have it. Right in the middle of the defense they try to pull for James and themselves, which is very well established as extremely biased and unreliable by the time we get to that part of the conversation, Sirius and Lupin admit that Severus Snape was James’ “special case” regarding his so-called resolution of stopping to bully people, and that worst of all, James purposefully hid it all from Lily. That Lily “never knew too much about it”, and was kept in the dark all this time by her own husband (and his friends).

“Yeah but in the book it’s said that Snape cursed James!”

This is going on the territory of the upcoming essay “Bullying Apologia”, but since I’ll have to justify what I write (or else I won’t be believed), this’ll take longer than I’d like. But nevermind.

The funny thing is, when Lupin says the word “cursed”, he could just as well mean Severus used swearwords, as it’s been done several times throughout the books, notably by Snape himself in his Worst Memory.

• The lift clattered into view and they hurried inside. Every time it stopped Mr. Weasley cursed furiously and pummeled the number nine button. 
• As Marietta raised her head, Fudge leapt backwards in shock, nearly landing himself in the fire. He cursed, and stamped on the hem of his cloak which had started to smoke.
• She had knocked on the door before Bella, cursing under her breath, had caught up.
• Across the table, Ron was cursing fluently under his breath; his potion looked like liquid licorice.
• Harry, who had found nothing useful in the Half-Blood Prince’s notes so far, looked around; the three of them were now the only ones left in the common room, Seamus having just gone up to bed cursing Snape and his essay.
• Snape let out a stream of mixed swear words and hexes, but with his wand ten feet away nothing happened.
• Harry swore. Someone screamed. He looked around to see a gaggle of first years running back around the corner, apparently under the impression that they had just encountered a particularly foulmouthed ghost.

Meanwhile, Sirius talks about James using jinxes. Yet just as McGonagall and Snape teach us in book 1 and 5, resorting to physical violence like jinxes after some petty insults is worse.

Especially coming from a Head Boy, which James Potter was at that point. 

At worst, if Severus really was going down with some foul curses – the magical ones – James could have used the Shield or Disarming Charms, since he held a position of power and responsibility – but instead he used jinxes, meaning that instead of using spells that de-escalate from violence, like he ought to do as a Head Boy, he used outright offensive ones, going against the very rules he was meant to uphold. And we know that what we call a “jinx” can prove fatal in HP, see: Quirell’s jinx on Harry’s broom, Voldemort’s jinx on the Defense post; meaning that the violence caused by James can range from mild to extreme.

Some might say: 

“But I’m pretty sure that given the context, Lupin is talking of the magical kind of cursing…” 

and so yeah, okay, let’s look at the context.

The context is that we cannot trust Sirius and Lupin whenever they talk about James and their bullying of Severus, considering that they are precisely Severus’ bullies, even as adults. When arguing in James’ favor, they use several forms of manipulation in their recounting of their bullying days, so they can keep face in front of Harry, and so they won’t speak ill of the dead. Harry has long realized it:

Hadn’t people like Hagrid and Sirius told Harry how wonderful his father had been? (Yeah, well, look what Sirius was like himself, said a nagging voice inside Harry’s head… he was as bad, wasn’t he?)

It is obvious that they are not only trying to sugarcoat every blame on James and themselves:

• “a bit of an idiot”, 
• “little berks”, 
• “sometimes”, 
• “a bit carried away”, 

to diminish their responsibility 

• “he couldn’t control himself”, 
• “carried away”, 
• “we were fifteen” [which is a lie btw they were sixteen], 
• “we were idiots”, 

to lie 

• “he said slowly” [he’s making up a lie as he’s speaking], 
• We were in the same year, you know, and we — er — didn’t like each other very much. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch field… anyway” [or perhaps because you bullied him?], 

but they are also proceeding to what is called “victim-blaming”; that’s why they keep trying to justify why they all went after Severus because for them, the blame lies in Severus: for being “an oddball” or for liking the Dark Arts (which isn’t a crime, re: Misconceptions on the Dark Arts) or because Severus was “jealous” and so on – even though we read that they have grossly downplayed what truly happened, that their motives are different:

• “this’ll liven you up”, 
• “i’m bored”, 
• “because he exists”
• “for the fun of it”, 
• “just because you can”, 
• “an old prejudice”,

and we know that none excuse what they did. Because of all that, their defense of James is to be taken with a big bucket of salt.

This is a core theme regarding the Marauders as bullies… I’m sure you’re smart enough to see a bully’s lies where they are. Harry suspected as such:

Sirius frowned at Harry, who was still looking unconvinced.

Now, I’d like to come back to the quotes:

“She started going out with him in seventh year,” said Lupin. 

“Once James had deflated his head a bit,” said Sirius. 

“And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,” said Lupin.  

So the one thing it took for James to date Lily is to deflate his head a bit… Which, considering the size it had gotten to in the first place, is far from being enough.

Lupin says that James stopped hexing people just for the fun of it. But it doesn’t mean he stopped hexing people at all. It only means one of his motives, “for the fun of it”, seems to have disappeared, or that he did it for more reasons than “just” for the fun of it. He still could hex people for other reasons, which are still bad  (and then hide it all from Lily, avoiding detention thanks to his position as Head Boy).

James said that he bullied Snape because he existed. Snape surviving during 6th and 7th year is coherent with Lupin’s recount of the fact James kept bullying him: it wasn’t just for the fun of it, it was because Severus existed, “if you know what I mean”. 

“Even Snape?” said Harry. 

“Well,” said Lupin slowly, “Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James, so you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?”

Let’s consider for a moment that indeed Snape never lost an opportunity to curse James – whatever meaning you give to the word “cursed”.

Lupin’s argument still allows the scenario that the Marauders never lost an opportunity to hex Severus first; and then they punished him because every single time he dared raise some self-defense under the form of curses. That their victim dared not submit completely… they couldn’t “take that lying down”, you know. That they went so far into the “punishment”, they drew fun out of it, which turned Severus into James’ special case indeed, and they just had to take care of not jinxing Severus where Lily could see. It would involve some amount of lie by omission, which is something A LOT of characters in HP have been proven able to do regarding Harry’s father, particularly Lupin. As Sirius says, James took care that Lily “never knew too much about it” and “did not take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her”.

At the very least, he never should have started to keep her in the dark about a subject that she visibly cared for, let alone just because it incriminates him in her eyes.

If James really had been that good of a person, if he had truly, definitely changed, then there wouldn’t be any of that ambiguity in his friends’ defense. As far as we know, this doesn’t prove anything substantial, and thus, he never truly changed – except in the worst ways. 

So at first, you would think Lily would never have dated James if he hadn’t had a change of heart.

But then we remember that Lily is not a perfect character, she is not an angel bound to choose a good man, and that she certainly isn’t omniscient. If she were, she would never have trusted Peter with the Fidelius.

It is not the first time James lies and twists the truth for his personal interests. Lily never knew that Sirius had sent Severus to be mauled by werewolf Lupin. As Severus Snape was silenced by the Headmaster, forbidden from ever telling the truth, James, not silenced, took the opportunity to spread a tale of Severus fooling around and James coming to his rescue, so he could paint himself as a magnanimous hero for all ears – especially Lily’s. And Severus was unable to tell her that James “saved” him because they had just tried to kill him off.

Likewise Lily never knew that James continued to harass Severus behind her back. Both Lupin and Sirius admit it. James knew full well that she would never have dated him if she did know, but he also knew that Severus and Lily were no longer talking to each other, which made things easier, and that he had all the means to perpetrate his relentless assaults on Severus: a group of 3 friends to coordinate the attacks and to control the information that they kept harassing Snape in secret, a tracking Map (which is the perfect tool for stalking and spying Severus and Lily), a Two-Way Mirror to communicate at any time even when separated, Peter’s form as a rat Animagus which also makes him a potentially good spy, the Invisibility Cloak, and finally… James’ new position as Head Boy.

You could speculate that the fact James became Head Boy proves he must have changed for the better; that he grew up enough to deserve that position. So I’ve searched throughout the books for any kind of argument that affirms James Potter became Head Boy for that reason; and guess what… I have found none. This argument is only fan-made, it doesn’t exist in the books.

It’s not hard to see that James becoming Head Boy doesn’t mean anything regarding his speculated change-of-heart. We know Dumbledore and McGonagall enough to understand that Gryffindors always get enough favoritism to get positions of power without actually deserving it, especially if it revolves around a Potter. 

Besides, Tom Riddle aka Voldemort once became Head Boy himself! And he wasn’t a good boy at that time either.

So James was prosecuting an illegal private quarrel through the corridors of Hogwarts. He was betraying the Head Boy/Girl job which he and Lily shared and continuing to hex her old friend, which is something he evidently knows she would hate if she knew about it, since he goes to the trouble of hiding it from her. He was, in effect, a corrupt and manipulative “cop”. 

It also wouldn’t surprise me if Sirius, Peter and Lupin did most of the bullying job later and James covered their backs as Head Boy, becoming a bystander bully like Lupin was as a Prefect. I mean, Sirius and Lupin defend James, but they never deny that they haven’t changed, and seeing who they became as adults, they truly didn’t:

• “And I haven’t changed” 
• “He deserved it”
• “I’ve warned you, Snivellus”
• You’d want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground

When James left school, he probably didn’t have Severus under his hand anymore, so the fact he possibly stopped bullying him is less a matter of changing and more a matter of not having the occasion to prove he hasn’t. Then again, it’s just as likely that he messed around with other people after leaving Hogwarts, whether it was for the fun of it, or for another self-righteous reason.

There exists a prequel which you could take as extra canon. In it, you realize that even in his late teens, James has kept his bullying habits: breaking Muggle rules, putting other Muggles in danger by driving so fast not even the police officer could register his speed, baiting Muggles, mocking them, using his their to stop wizards without repairing it, and leaving them shaking in fear on the ground with the car that they broke and potentially dangerous wizards who might wake up at any moment to attack those Muggles, so he can depart in all of his “glory” to the sky without an Obliviate either (breaking the Statute of Secrecy several times in a row). 

Of course, Rowling uses the trope of the “big fat Muggle”, a name that also literally implies “stupid”, to make the “rockstars” look better. Oh, and both James and Sirius use caricatural unisex names as their joke, great…

There was so little space between the car doors and the walls of the alley that Fisher and Anderson had difficulty extricating themselves from the vehicle. It injured their dignity to have to inch, crab-like, towards the miscreants. Fisher dragged his generous belly along the wall, tearing buttons off his shirt as he went, and finally snapping off the wing mirror with his backside. 

“Get off the bike!” he bellowed at the smirking youths, who sat basking in the flashing blue light as though enjoying it. […]

“No helmets!” Fisher yelled, pointing from one uncovered head to the other. “Exceeding the speed limit by – by a considerable amount!” (In fact, the speed registered had been greater than Fisher was prepared to accept that any motorcycle could travel.) “Failing to stop for the police!” […]

“Names!” `

“Names?” repeated the long-haired driver. “Er — well, let’s see. There’s Wilberforce . . . Bathsheba . . . Elvendork . . .” 

“And what’s nice about that one is, you can use it for a boy or a girl,” said the boy in glasses. 

“Oh, our names, did you mean?” asked the first, as Anderson spluttered with rage. “You should’ve said! This here is James Potter, and I’m Sirius Black!” 

“Things’ll be seriously black for you in a minute, you cheeky little —” […]

Fisher’s knees bucked; he sat down hard; Anderson tripped over Fisher’s legs and fell on top of him, as flump — bang — crunch — they heard the men on brooms slam into the upended car and fall, apparently insensible, to the ground, while broken bits of broomstick clattered down around them. […]

There was an earth-shattering crash, and Fisher and Anderson threw their arms around each other in fright; their car had just fallen back to the ground. Now it was the motorcycle’s turn to rear. Before the policemen’s disbelieving eyes, it took off into the air: James and Sirius zoomed away into the night sky, their tail light twinkling behind them like a vanishing ruby. 

This shows, again, that James never matured. Or he did in the worst ways.

Objectively, as we saw in “Love, not desire!”, the one wrong Severus has done to Lily is to refer to her as a Mudblood in a moment of pure distress. Severus took Lily’s answering insult without protesting, was desperate to apologize, and when Lily refused, he respected her choices: he left her alone, forever.

That was canonically their last interaction.

Meanwhile, James Potter has become worse when fancying Lily and in his pretense to have grown up.

James hasn’t repented, he hasn’t regretted. This is not having a true change of heart. This is doing the bare minimum for getting to shag a girl and getting away with it.

Additional Disturbing Facts

First Encounter

We’ll start slow with James and Lily’s first interaction in the Hogwarts Express before their entrance at Hogwarts. 

“This is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!” She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.

 “You’d better be in Slytherin,” said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a little. 

“Slytherin?” One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father: slight, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked. 

“Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him, and with a jolt, Harry realized that it was Sirius. Sirius did not smile. 

“My whole family have been in Slytherin,” he said. 

“Blimey,” said James, “and I thought you seemed all right!” 

Sirius grinned. “Maybe I’ll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?” 

James lifted an invisible sword. “ ‘Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!’ Like my dad.” 

Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him. 

“Got a problem with that?” 

“No,” said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be brawny than brainy —” 

“Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” interjected Sirius. 

James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and looked from James to Sirius in dislike. 

“Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.” 

“Oooooo…” James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip Snape as he passed. 

“See ya, Snivellus!” a voice called, as the compartment door slammed…

Severus, Lily, James and Sirius find themselves in the same compartment on the train. Severus tries to uplift Lily’s mood and tells her to go into what he thinks is the best House. 

Up to that point, James Potter doesn’t give a fuck that Lily has been crying in the compartment that they share. 

One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father

However, right as Severus comes to take the blame, comfort Lily and try to make her think of something happy, James decides it is okay to instill a fight with the person who seems to be her friend and who tries to comfort her, just because he, personally, doesn’t like Slytherin House: 

“Who wants to be in Slytherin, I think I would leave, don’t you?” 

Not only does he perfectly echo Draco Malfoy — and that is not a compliment right there, 

‘Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been – imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?’

but he gives the idea that if Lily was ever Sorted in Slytherin, she would be an object of shame.

When Severus tries to get things even, Sirius says that Severus has no brain nor brawn, and James roars with laughter. Lily gets up and tells her friend to leave with her. 

James humiliates Lily twice with Sirius:

First this: 

“Oooooo…”

Then this: 

James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice 

= “Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment!” but to humiliate Lily.

Finally, as if Sirius’ insult wasn’t enough, James escalates in the bullying and tries to trip Severus as he leaves the compartment with Lily 

James tried to trip Snape as he passed.

which legitimately also puts Lily in risk of harm, because if James successfully trips him, Severus could fall over and land on her. Indeed, James doesn’t care about the prospect of Lily getting hurt.

He calls her friend “Snivellus” despite knowing Lily’s dislike of their bullying. Also notice how his name calling focuses on the word “snivel”; visibly for James Potter, crying is shameful, notably coming from a boy. Toxic masculinity at play. But I guess we now know why James hasn’t comforted Lily when she was being the snivelling one.

James doesn’t just bully Severus in this scene – he bullies Lily too.

“L.E.” the Snitch

Fast-forward five years later, which we witness through Harry’s eyes. Harry plunges into the Pensieve and lands in the exam room where everyone is taking their OWLs. He finally locates his father. We start Snape’s Worst Memory slow with reading this:

He had drawn a Snitch and was now tracing the letters L. E. What did they stand for? […] Harry looked down at his father, who had hastily crossed out the L. E. he had been embellishing.

In canon, we never see Lily’s name in the book of the Half-Blood Prince; this is peculiar because if you wanted to argue that Severus’s love for Lily was romantic and/or unhealthy, then you would expect him to write her name everywhere. Instead, it is James Potter who writes “L.E.”, the initials of Lily Evans, on the drawing of a snitch, then crosses it out. 

Meaning that as soon as during his OWLs, James already was thinking about Lily very hard. 

I bet he has done that many times. Of course, if that were the only thing James had done, it could easily have been attributed to the effects of a simple teenage crush.

But it gets more disconcerting.

Chasing the Snitch

Whenever some fans try to explain what James did to Severus, they often downplay it as a mere “rivalry”. And besides perpetrating bully/rape culture, they may be touching on something. 

After all, a rivalry supposes there to be a prize to win. So whenever they say that it was just “rivalry”, they establish and confirm a mentality where Lily is an object of sexual competition.

Though we know that for Severus, it was far from being a simple “rivalry” – see pet_genius’ essay “The Marauders vs Snape was Bullying, not Rivalry”:

https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/eq77qs/the_marauders_vs_snape_was_bullying_not_a_rivalry/

– James the chaser sure seems to take Lily for a Snitch. 

When James writes LE on the drawing of a snitch, we can take it as a metaphor, or an association, with Lily Evans. And what is a Snitch, to James Potter?

It is an object of competition, a toy, and a trophy used to show off.

In fact, maybe we should just read the book to see how James treats a Snitch:

He put his hand in his pocket and took out a struggling Golden Snitch. 

“Where’d you get that?” 

“Nicked it,” said James casually. He started playing with the Snitch, allowing it to fly as much as a foot away and seizing it again; his reflexes were excellent. Wormtail watched him in awe. 

[…] James was still playing with the Snitch, letting it zoom farther and farther away, almost escaping but always grabbed at the last second. […] After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn’t tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention.

James Potter stole a Snitch and used it to show off in front of his friends, playing a game of catching it anytime it’s on the verge of “escaping”. Considering that the drawing of a Snitch is associated with the initials of Lily Evans, I’m praying for that girl.

You might argue that we are drawing parallelism out of nowhere and the author never intended that.

Funny thing is, that’s how she refers Lily as:

Lupin was very fond of Lily, we’ll put it like that, but I wouldn’t want anyone to run around thinking that he competed with James for her. She was a popular girl, and that is relevant. But I think you’ve seen that already. She was a bit of a catch.

– Anelli, Melissa and Emerson Spartz. « The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Three, » The Leaky Cauldron, 16 July 2005

https://accio-quote.org/articles/2005/0705-tlc_mugglenet-anelli-3.htm

So clearly, that association is constructed carefully. Though of course, it’s not so much the association in itself that’s problematic. It is how it effectively illustrates the way James treats Lily: as though she was his prize to win. And he will do anything to get it.

In Harry Potter, sexual jealousy is used as a ”proof” of true love. Rowling used this trope many times: 

• Harry was jealous of Dean Thomas for dating Ginny so much he had a “monster” roaring in his ribcage
• Ginny was jealous of Cho and prevented her from ever approaching Harry in DH because she once dared dating him
• Hermione was jealous of Lavender for dating Ron and attacked him with birds in her fury
• Etc

And in Rowling’s novels, no matter if it pushes the “lovers” to become bad, sexual jealousy fucking works. But we know that’s not how true love works in real life.

We know that sexual jealousy is in reality rather a sign of lust, possessiveness and, you know, jealousy, than genuine love (You should accept your love interest’ choices!). It implies that James didn’t love Lily for her own person; but that he obsessed over her just because he saw a boy friends with a pretty girl and he was so jealous of that boy he despised, whom he saw as inferior because he beared a prejudice against him,

« With James as your father […] you have inherited an old prejudice.”

that he decided he must do anything to get that girl for himself; it’s not a matter of marrying Lily, it’s a matter of breaking Severus down. It implies that if Severus hadn’t been friends with Lily, James would never have been interested in her.

Now I just want to develop an idea we hinted at in “Love, not desire!”.

In Rowling’s heteronormative views, James’ sexual jealousy is well incarnated by his Animagus form: a stag.

A stag is thought to represent romantic love and to be a perfect soulmate for Lily’s doe. Yet as explained in the essay, and that’s probably the most ironic thing of all: a stag doesn’t mate with does but with hinds; does mate with bucks. Stags and does are different species of deers, meaning that there is no true complementarity between James and Lily. This is not a soulmates case, rather it means that they got together based on appearances when they shouldn’t ever have. Yes, there is such a thing as animal husbandry.

Let alone that stags and does are different species, the symbolism is still… odd.

A stag only meets females during mating seasons — and is indeed very horny. The rest of the time he doesn’t care about them. The stags’ main purpose in life is to give their semen to the greatest number of females as possible. When they are in rut, they become extremely competitive and literally fight over who will mate the most.

It is the females who remain in packs the rest of the year to protect themselves and raise their babies.

So if James’ Animagus form as a stag is supposed to have any symbolism, you could say it represents romantic love… but a very sex-oriented one. 

Severus’ doe Patronus, on the other hand, would rather represent true unconditional love; at the very least a more platonic type. Severus having a doe would then mean that he truly loves Lily as a Best Friend or a Spiritual Sister and is her Soulmate in those regards, whereas James’ stag means that he takes her primarily as a walking uterus. 

In a way, James the stag was obsessed with two does: Lily, the one he “couldn’t stop” wanting to mate, and Severus, the one he “couldn’t stop” bullying. 

Sexual Jealousy

Using Severus as a bargaining chip might also be a way for James to take revenge against the person he sees as a menace to his plans to marry Lily. 

James hurt people Lily loved. If he had truly loved Lily and wanted the maximum of good for her, then he never would have bullied Severus; in fact, he could have helped and befriended him, or just left him alone. But in canon, he does the exact opposite and Lily is distressed about it. That is not normal.

However, I think I know where all this romanticized toxicity comes from: it partly takes roots in Rowling’s boomer ideals, which are somewhat perceived but not recognized as such by the fans. She says this in an interview:

It was known that they were friendly and then stopped being friends. Nothing more than that would be widely known. James always suspected Snape harboured deeper feelings for Lily, which was a factor in James’ behaviour to Snape.

James’ bullying behaviour to Snape at least partly came from how he suspected Severus loved Lily more than he let on. You don’t have to twist it around much to see it: Rowling has just said that James’s motive to bully Severus was sexual jealousy. 

Then again, I don’t think we even need an interview to see what is at play in the books. A guy who torments the male friend of the girl he fancies… yeah, we’ve seen it enough in real-life to recognize the signs.

So, James wasn’t Lily’s boyfriend at this point, and neither was young Severus, he was just her friend and making sure they were still best friends, and yet James was so obsessively possessive and jealous that he resented the idea of Lily even talking to another male, saw her as his property whether she liked it or not, just because he fancied her, and punished a classmate for years for daring to be her friend.

When James says his problem is that Severus exists, we also get the message: “The problem is that he exists in the vicinity of the girl I fancy and he hasn’t gotten the hint that I don’t want any male around her that could defy my position as a pretender”.

James’ male friends cannot be pretenders, since he’s the leader. He has blackmail material over Lupin, Peter would follow the bigger bully anyway, and Sirius is an utterly devoted dog to James. They’re all loyal to him. As previously said:

Lupin was very fond of Lily, we’ll put it like that, but I wouldn’t want anyone to run around thinking that he competed with James for her.

But Severus exists in Lily’s circle of friends and he can’t simply die without putting them all at risk. So then, he has to submit. James makes it impossible for Severus and Lily’s relationship to continue and becomes the catalyst in their separation.

When Lily finally leaves the scene to escape his violence and his flirting, James proceeds to report his sexual frustration on his victim, hollering at the crowd to try and cover his hurt ego by stripping Severus naked, in total public humiliation. Because he is sexually jealous of the male friend of his love interest, he symbolically emasculates him. 

And yes, in British English, “pants” means “underwear”. The book also takes care to reveal that we can see Snape’s bare legs and his underpants before James removes them.

Snape was hanging upside-down in the air, his robes falling over his head to reveal skinny, pallid legs and a pair of graying underpants.  

The movies have softened it to “trousers” so it can keep its family-friendly rating. (Even then, it’s also sexual assault.)

It is clear that now, James isn’t acting on behalf of Lily, since she has just rejected his intervention and told him he was just as bad. So now he attacks Severus for his own pleasure; stripping him naked, destroying his dignity as well as forcing total control over his body, down to his most intimate parts. By removing Severus’ underwear after a threat that’s already condemnable by itself, James pushes right into a crime.

I guess we now have our answer: when James truly gets angry as he doesn’t obtain what he wants, the kind of hexing he does consists in stripping his victim naked, upside down… just like the Death Eaters do. Did they take an example from what James did to Severus?

One of the marchers below flipped Mrs. Roberts upside down with his wand; her nightdress fell down to reveal voluminous drawers and she struggled to cover herself up as the crowd below her screeched and hooted with glee. 

“That’s sick,” Ron muttered, watching the smallest Muggle child, who had begun to spin like a top, sixty feet above the ground, his head flopping limply from side to side. “That is really sick…” 

Changing to get a shag

Remember when some argue that Snape only changed because he wanted to shag Lily and thus his redemption arc sucks? Well we know it’s not coherent at all because he keeps fighting for the Light side and Lily’s cause, for decades after her death, and because he never expressed explicitly romantic or sexual desire regarding her. Rather, the symbol of his love for Lily is an incarnation of visually platonic and spiritual love: a doe for a doe.

You could, however, make the argument for James Potter, who clearly had an object of interest in sight. 

Just as some fans say, James is supposed to be good and romantic because he changed for the love of his life. And let alone that the first statement is yet to prove, the logic applied is exactly the problem: “changing” just so James can get a woman he sexually desires will never be a true redemption arc.

It’s problematic that a guy’s reason to become better is based on the fact that the girl he fancies imposes a condition so he can get her. Lily seems to exist as a character to make James “grow up” and she’s the prize he gets if he succeeds – at least on the surface. This is a trope that stains a character’s morality. It implies that when James finally gets what he wants, there’s nothing to stop him from becoming violent again. 

James Potter is glorified for his supposed love for Lily, but it doesn’t seem to have pushed him to do lots of goodness. If anything, his “love” for Lily brought out the worst in him. 

As a child, James doesn’t care about Lily (unlike Severus who established a friendship with her from the start). He only cares later, and his intention is clear: he desires Lily romantically and/or sexually. So the implication is that James wants Lily primarily because testosterone hit at some point and otherwise he wouldn’t have cared about her as a person. James’ motive to change was selfish, and as far as we know, he “changed” a bit just so he could get to fuck her.

Who knows what would have happened if Lily had stood her ground and never bent to James’ desires? 

Dating a girl after years of unatoned sexual harassment instead of respecting her choices, does not erase your sins to make you a feminist. Impregnating a woman you abused, however Rowling might twist it as the pinnacle of romantic love, cannot ever be a redemption arc for James Potter.

Rowling and her books seem to glorify the message, through the James-Lily couple, that you can endure all of which makes a man twisted and predatory, because eventually, he might change for you, for love. This message is toxic and dangerous.

A man who is cruel and violent, who displays a startling lack of genuine remorse, who bullies anyone he wants, no matter the social category they belong to, is a bad person who can and will be bad to anyone, including you. Remember: He’s done it once, he can do it again. Being a man’s exception is just a fantasy.

And as we saw, even Lily failed to make a better man out of him. Not that this was her responsibility anyway.

Marrying Lily can’t be used as a standard to judge who’s the better man; because she’s not a trophy to give to the one who “deserves” her the most, and simply because she’s not a saint. She’s a simple human being with her very human flaws. 

What Lupin says about Lily being able to see someone’s goodness inside them even if they don’t see it themselves doesn’t actually exist in the books; he never said that, it was merely added in the movies. 

Consider, again, that canonically, Lily was friends with Peter Pettigrew, trusted him to be the Secret Keeper for her husband and baby; considered a dear friend the man who tried to kill her best friend as a prank; and would rather call Bathilda crazy rather than envisage that Dumbledore had once been friends with Grindelwald. She might be one of the worst judges in character you could ever meet in the books!

And this is where I’ll get the final another point:

James’ Prejudices

We have seen a lot of problems on James Potter’s part, which are, mainly, his bullying of people, most of all Severus Snape, and his sexual harassment of Lily Evans. But then, there’s always someone to say that James at least did better, since unlike Severus, he didn’t use a slur. (I don’t know, I’d prefer to be called slurs rather than get what he did to Severus, but anyway…) Don’t get your hopes up. 

Lots of people compare blood status to race when it comes to SWM. This is an incredibly flawed comparison. But by all means, if it’s an analogy we must make, then let’s do it. And do it well.

I wonder what all of this means, when you consider this: 

It was I who invented them — I, the Half-Blood Prince!

James Potter is a pureblood, Severus Snape is a halfblood, Lily Evans is a muggleborn.

If mudblood really is a “slur” and purism is to be taken as racism, then James Potter is a rich white man, while Severus Snape… is a biracial boy coming from the English slums. 

Making all of what James Potter did to Severus and Lily actually even worse, because stained with racism on his part.

If purism is racism, we’re looking at a scene where a rich white man and his mates are sexually harassing a black girl and bullying the hell out of her black-biracial best friend without an ounce of regret for 7 years straight, which makes him James Potter… racist.

If purism is antisemitism, the principle remains. “Aryan” James Potter basically considers that “Jewish” Snape’s existence is a crime and says that he relentlessly bullies him with his fellow “Aryan” best friend because he simply exists. We look at a scene where two “Aryan” rich boys threaten to hit and then blackmail the “Jewish” girl, etc, as we discussed earlier. Which makes James antisemitic. 

I think we don’t even need the analogies anyway to realize there’s a problem if you see wealthy, upper-social class purebloods treat a Muggle-Born the way they did. 

I’m also pretty sure James’ upper social class made it all even easier to harass Lily. More: to harass her… and have it accepted by everybody. After all, it is so easy to excuse sexual harassment when it comes from “the right sort”. That makes James benefit from classism and using that on those inferior to him makes him complicit in that kind of bigotry.

Pile that up with the sexism we have studied earlier, and we end up with one of the most bigoted members of the Order.

Here come the usual comments given to excuse the obvious bigotry at play.

First, that James didn’t bully people or harass Lily Evans because of a matter of blood status.

So I would like you all to imagine a rich white person and his white mate, both upper-class, being abusive to a Black girl and bullying the hell out of her biracial best friend for years – and then they throw the argument, “I’m not doing it because I’m racist! I bully the mixed-race boy because he exists” and “he’s ‘making a fool of himself’ over the black girl because he can’t control himself whenever he’s near her.” Still racist.

Second, the argument that since James was attracted to Muggle-Born Lily Evans, he’s not racist. Basically, it follows the logic: “I’m friends with Mixed Race people and I married a Black woman, so I can’t possibly be racist (or sexist)”.

We’re in the 2020ies, I think we have long learned better. It does not matter whether James had a half-blood friend, or married a muggle born, or fought against Voldemort; it only emulates those guys who “deign” befriending mixed race and black people just to get an excuse at being racist and makes themselves look “woke” to cover their bigotry. 

I also find it incredibly disturbing that amongst pro-James arguments, Lily is taken as a trophy for James to show off so he can prove he’s not racist; so he can be applauded for being so willing to shag the Muggle-Born girl. As if Lily is now just an object and a tool for James to prove he’s superior to all because he’s “so not racist” that he forced his way to marry the most potable Muggle-Born in the school, and somehow, that makes him a hero. It does not.

When Lily says “you’re as bad as he is” – meaning that James is as bad as someone who used a slur, very telling – he answers  “I’d never call you a You-Know-What”. So his only limit is not saying those insults to Lily, but he allows himself other kinds of abuse, as we saw above, which are arguably worse, and they still make James racist. 

Besides, not saying “you-know-what” doesn’t mean anything. There exist some very racist families that won’t ever say the common slurs, because it looks like they have bad tastes: when you are already so superior, you don’t need to use slurs. No, you don’t even need to make your self-righteous racism public, since you already benefit from privilege and you’re very well okay with that. 

Besides, you must have seen how racist people don’t say the slurs because they know that if they do, they will be called out. They use “I wouldn’t ever say you-know-what” as another excuse to get away with obvious bigotry. Befriending Mixed race and Black people also goes in that twisted direction.

Racism doesn’t stop at not saying slurs and not joining bigoted extremists, there are many other ways to perpetrate supremacy. Racism takes many forms.

Remember when we talked about James’ misogyny? When he steps forth to make Severus “apologize”? He doesn’t say “Do not use that word” [DH], he only asks to apologize because it seems that for him, hurting Lily is hurting his pride since, you know, she’s already his wife whether she likes it or not. And the problem is that it doesn’t mean he’s against the use of the word in itself. For all we know, for James, the problem isn’t so much insulting and hurting Lily, it’s the fact that he’s not the one doing it – the only one allowed to do it.

In the semi-official prequel, we learn that James Potter doesn’t mind baiting and bullying Muggles, breaking their safety rules and leaving them not only in shock but in danger. If you are willing to take Pottermore as extra canon, you realize that he has no qualms about mocking Vernon, to the point he’s the reason Lily and Petunia’s sisterhood was definitely broken, and he barely feels guilty nor does he ever repair the damage:

The first meeting between Lily, her boyfriend James Potter, and the engaged couple, went badly, and the relationship nose-dived from there. James was amused by Vernon, and made the mistake of showing it. Vernon tried to patronise James, asking what car he drove. James described his racing broom. Vernon supposed out loud that wizards had to live on unemployment benefits. James explained about Gringotts, and the fortune his parents had saved there, in solid gold. Vernon could not tell whether he was being made fun of or not, and grew angry. The evening ended with Vernon and Petunia storming out of the restaurant, while Lily burst into tears and James (a little ashamed of himself) promised to make things up with Vernon at the earliest opportunity.

This never happened.

https://www.harrypotter.com/fr/writing-by-jk-rowling/vernon-and-petunia-dursley

Look there again: James promises redemption to Lily, it never happens.

But perhaps the most telling of all is what Lupin tells us in HBP:

“You are determined to hate him, Harry,” said Lupin with a faint smile. “And I understand; with James as your father, with Sirius as your godfather, you have inherited an old prejudice.”

If James is able to hate and torment Snape for years because of prejudice, despite the obvious imbalance in blood status and social class, then perhaps it explains how he treats Lily – before, during, and after Snape’s Worst Memory.

Would James Potter ever have been able to do what he did to Lily and her friend if they had been purebloods, notably wealthy ones? Would James’ behaviour be acceptable if it fell onto a Pureblood girl who refused his advances and had other plans in mind? Perhaps not: we never see James measuring up against Death Eater wannabes such as Mulciber or Avery. Instead he is the type of guy who picks up on the easy target, apparently unable to do so unless he well outnumbers his scapegoat:

“Coward, did you call me, Potter?” shouted Snape. “Your father would never attack me unless it was four on one, what would you call him, I wonder?”

We have seen that James is well able to bully Lily along with her friend. It doesn’t take much to imagine that Harry’s fear (“Whether James had forced her into it…”) might have been realized, partially or thoroughly, and Lily just… could not refuse.

Canon Jily is not the story of a privileged man respecting a woman from a marginalized community and forming a peaceful union. It is the story of a man using his privileges to torment that woman, isolate her and try to force her into dating him in a sickening display of violence, prejudice and bigotry. The story of a racist man who got what he wanted and could get away with everything because life is not fair, and he made sure that it remained so.

If James really did not want to perpetrate racist supremacy, or any kind of discrimination (classism, sexism, ableism, anti-Slytherin), if he really had been a good non-bigoted person, or even an activist, then he never would have bullied people around, let alone Severus, the working class Slytherin Half-Muggle, falling back on his social class, his privilege, his wealth, his popularity and favoritism, to ensure he wouldn’t be in any real trouble whatever he did. He certainly wouldn’t have put Lily under gross sexual harassment that flirted with abuse. No matter if it went unacknowledged, from most of the characters in Harry Potter, to a part of the readers and to the author herself.

Conclusion

Under the course of 5 minutes of interaction between James and Lily, and after some digging up right and left, we get to see a compilation of red flags and abusive behavior that visibly has carried out for years:

• extreme bullying
• sexual harassment and obsessive behaviour
• blackmail
• threat of physical assault 
• gaslighting
• sexual jealousy and toxic possessiveness
• social isolation
• many forms of bigotry such as misogynism, purism, classicism and likely a form of actual racism, ableism or xenophobia
• lies and at least two instances of gross manipulation.

The rest of the time, we hardly see any true love spared between the two of them.

James Potter would be a classic case of conduct disorder preceding an actual diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, formerly known as psychopathy, on top of being narcissistic (which usually goes hand-in-hand). While James isn’t evil for being eligible with a diagnosis of these mental disorders, the behavior and mindset he displays is extremely dangerous and has proven to have had dire consequences on the people around him. ASPD doesn’t give a pass to be a douchebag. 

It is unacceptable that his fans refuse to acknowledge the problems with this character when he is so obviously perverted. Speaking directly to those fans: If it starts with James Potter, and the arguments you use to defend him employ the same rhetorics that still cause and enable, to this day, violence against marginalized people (notably, sexual violence against women), who are you ready to defend next? What kind of violence are you going to enable in your daily life, when it comes from your friends, your colleagues, your family, people you look up to and celebrities? How can you claim to be a feminist, antiracist, anticlassist or an LGBT+ ally when you give a pass young man who’s so violent against the girl he wants to fuck that his own son thinks he might have raped her?

And if you want to indulge James Potter and try to excuse or lessen the gravity of all that he did, I have a very simple question for you: What if Snape had done all of this to Lily? 

James might have been perfectly kind and loving towards Lily during the time that they were dating and married. We can only hope that Lily was content with their relationship. That doesn’t change the fact that: 

1. Their relationship started out with James constantly harassing her to go out with him, resorting to abusive behavior that, as far as we know, was never atoned for;
2. Lily’s good opinion of James and thus their marriage is based in part on false pretenses. 

Lily’s choices are not reduced to “James or Severus », it’s also “somebody else or nobody at all”. She doesn’t ever need to be friends with Severus to object to that kind of dangerous toxicity on principle. 

Out of all the couples described in Harry Potter, Jily is, in my opinion, the most horribly written of all. Let alone that the books do not show any kind of true evolution that would lead to a healthy couple instead of a toxic one, it gives the implication that Lily lost her friends, her sister, and even her morals to completely warp her world around a bigoted abusive man who blackmailed her and threatened physical violence while asking her out, on top of his deception, driving her one best friend and one living family member away, and making her have to stay cooped up at home with a newborn while he goofed off with his bro and messed with Muggles. Harry inherits nothing from the Evans family while he gets countless tales and treasures from the Pureblood Potters. 

Lily the Muggle-Born is reduced to nothing but James’ wife and Harry’s mother. It’s only thanks to Severus that we finally get to see her as her own person. 

Sources

• http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2005/0705-tlc_mugglenet-anelli-3.htm