Lily's eyelashes fluttered. She understood the meaning behind Harry's words, and her expression grew complicated. "Yes, my Patronus is a doe."
"Severus's Corporeal Patronus is a doe. I truly hadn't expected that. Back then, I thought... there would never be any connection between us again."
"Severus..." Harry froze, not even reacting at first.
He had always remembered only Snape's surname and usually addressed him that way. He had little impression of Snape's given name.
With a long sigh, Lily told Harry about her past with James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Snape.
After listening to Lily's account, Harry felt stifled, as though something was lodged in his chest that he could not breathe out no matter what.
He truly had not expected that the gloomy, acerbic old bat would be such a complicated person in his mother Lily's telling.
It also made him realize something else. "Mum, Dad and the others used to... like picking on Snape... Professor Snape?"
"The circumstances were complicated at the time. But James and the others were indeed wrong about this." Lily sighed. "There is no excuse for that kind of behavior."
"But in that environment, with Voldemort's external influence, the relationship between Slytherin and us... well... was more than just bad."
"Everyone wanted to cause trouble for the other side, and the Slytherin students were also extremely unfriendly toward everyone else... I once tried to persuade Severus not to get too involved with Dark Magic, and not to become too close to the other Slytherins."
"But... but..." Harry cried out in frustration a few times. "Dad and Sirius and the others still... still ganged up on Professor Snape, didn't they?"
As if worried that he had not made himself clear enough, he added an example. "Like the way Dudley used to pick on