Ooh More About The Subtext Around James/Sirius? I’ve Always Read The Text This Way Too!

Ooh more about the subtext around James/Sirius? I’ve always read the text this way too!

thank you for the ask anon!

this question could have been prompted by any number of posts i’ve made, because i am a great proponent of the idea that unrequited prongsfoot is canon. 

why?

i’m so glad you asked…

let’s begin with a small caveat which - regrettably - involves some engagement with discourse.

the things created within fan-fiction aren’t real - an individual fic can’t cause actual, material harm to a reader, even if it contains tropes that would be harmful or distressing if they happened in that reader’s real life; an author’s use of certain tropes or interest in certain characters is not indicative of their actual morals and values in real life; thought crimes are not real crimes - but fan-fiction is produced by human beings who are themselves products of the societies and communities in which we all live, and these societies and communities all have flaws and failings.

which is to say, those of us who prefer to read male friendships like james and sirius’ as romantic do need to be aware that, no matter how enlightened on gender and its foibles we think ourselves to be, we are nonetheless influenced as modern humans by a modern tendency to discourage platonic physical and emotional closeness between men, especially straight men, on the grounds that two men having this sort of relationship is inherently queer and, in being queer, implicitly sexual - another powerful societal influence on our thought, even if we know we don’t agree with it. we should also be aware that reading a friendship as defining and life-altering as james and sirius’ as romantic gives weight to a modern tendency to prioritise romantic love - and one of its expected outcomes, the love of parents for their biological children -  over platonic love, and to regard people for whom romantic love is not a priority as not properly having achieved the milestones of adulthood, nor as properly fulfilled, adored, or satisfied.

everything which follows here, then, can be taken to refer just as validly to a purely platonic relationship between james and sirius if the reader prefers. and, indeed, my view is that this is how the canon narrative wants the reader to understand james saw the relationship. 

but i also think that the canonical text wants us to infer that, for sirius, his relationship with james was one of unrequited romantic love.

it must be said, however, that the narrative doesn’t show this explicitly. of course, it emphasises sirius and james’ compatibility, their similar personalities, their shared affection for each other, and a certain element of codependency (the thought of these two boys unable to be apart even for a detention without talking through their mirrors! my heart breaks!), but it also sets up these shared elements as - in some senses - fraternal: sirius is quasi-adopted by the potters; harry thinks of him and james as like fred and george, at least until he sees snape’s memories in order of the phoenix. when sirius speaks to harry about james, the profundity of his love for him is obvious, and on the two occasions when we see them physically together (snape’s worst memory and the prince’s tale) it’s clear that each is the primary driving force behind the other’s decisions. but we have nothing which indicates unambiguously that sirius’ feelings for james were romantic.

until we dive into a bit of narratology. because the text does do something to suggest that its intention is for sirius’ relationship with james to be read as non-platonic, and that something is its use of narrative mirrors. the harry potter series loves assigning its characters to narrative pairs - harry and voldemort are the obvious one; ron and draco malfoy are the one which deserves more attention - and it assigns to sirius a narrative mirror whose own story is one of unrequited romantic love.

severus snape.

sirius and snape are incredibly similar, personality-wise. they also serve identical narrative roles, in that they function as the guides who lead harry through an emotional arc which begins in earnest in prisoner of azkaban and concludes in deathly hallows, in which he sheds his childish, black-and-white view of his parents and comes to regard them as real, flawed, and complex people. harry does this with james in order of the phoenix - after the realisation that he was a bully stops the hero-worshipping which has defined his earlier attitude towards his father - with sirius as his guide (sirius is then killed off the second this narrative sub-arc is complete). he then does it with lily - who spends the earlier books as secondary in importance to james in her son’s mind - in half-blood prince and deathly hallows, in which snape (via the proxies of slughorn, the discipline of potions, his textbook, his patronus, and his memories) serves as his guide, until the fact that lily is the key to the whole mystery is revealed just before harry sacrifices himself to save the world.

in the course of this, it comes to be revealed that each of them considers their life to be defined by their relationship with and love for one half of the pair of james and lily (although the series hides this in snape’s case - making it look as though he is also motivated purely by his antagonistic relationship with james - right up until the last moment). their mirrored relationships with harry - while the idea that sirius is incapable of distinguishing him from his father is an invention of the films - is also driven fundamentally by their relationship with one of the two halves of his parents.

sirius and snape’s mirrored motivation-by-love is shown most clearly in their identical approach to guilt and grief, the two things which overarchingly drive their individual character arcs across the seven-book canon (or three, if you’re sirius - rip king).

both sirius and snape indirectly trigger the death of the person they love - and, let’s be frank, if we’re going to excoriate snape for reporting the prophecy to voldemort, exactly the same level of ire needs to be reserved for sirius and his plan to switch secret keepers (what we could do instead, of course, is recognise the life-altering tragedy of making this kind of mistake, which we all have to hope we never experience ourselves, and treat the lads with compassion) - but it’s clear in canon that neither accepts the idea that their involvement was, in fact, indirect. sirius openly tells harry that he considers himself to have ‘as good as’ cast the killing curse on james and lily; snape rejects dumbledore’s (back-handed) comfort that james and lily’s deaths were caused by ‘putting their trust in the wrong person’ by wishing to die himself.

wracked by guilt and hollowed out by grief, both of them then decide to punish themselves in an effort - one which, i think, they both consider futile, since they clearly regard their sins as too great to be redeemed - to atone for causing james and lily’s deaths. both of them do this by subjecting themselves to the pain and humiliation of imprisonment.

in sirius’ case, obviously, this is literal. we know from canon that he refuses to profess his innocence at any point during his show trial - and why would he, when he considers himself to be guilty? - and that he remains in azkaban for twelve years, despite possessing the means to escape before then. he leaves the prison only to attempt the one action which he thinks will redeem him in james’ eyes: murdering peter pettigrew.

in snape’s case, the prison is a metaphor (foucault just sat up). snape entombs himself both at hogwarts - not a place he seems to have been particularly happy - and in spinner’s end, allows dumbledore to repeatedly humiliate him, and risks his life as a spy as a means of self-flagellation. like sirius, he fails to profess his innocence - through ordering dumbledore to tell nobody of his true allegiance - because he considers himself to be guilty. he leaves the self-constructed cell in which he is skulking only when dead - when harry, who has taken on the burden of fulfilling snape’s atonement himself by preparing to kill voldemort, starts screaming his true motivations in the dark lord’s face - although there is some implication in canon that dumbledore’s intention was for snape to end the series by attempting himself the one action which he thinks will redeem him in lily’s eyes: murdering voldemort.

[after all, why does dumbledore say to harry at king’s cross that his intention was for snape to control the elder wand if he wasn’t hoping he’d use it to give the dark lord his death blow?]

snape and sirius mirror each other exactly in their response to the death of the person they love. we can justifiably assume, then, that we are intended by the text to read that love as identical in type. 

jkr has been very clear that snape’s relationship with lily is one of unrequited romantic love. we obviously don’t have to accept this in our own readings or in the way we write the characters in our own work - i love a queer snape sacrificing everything for his platonic best friend as much as the next girl - but we do have to acknowledge it as the doylist text’s stated intention. it stands to reason, then, that the text’s intention is for us to regard the mirror-image of snape’s love for lily - sirius’ love for james - as romantic as well.

or, unrequited prongsfoot is canon.