Lily & Sirius

Lily’s friendship with Sirius remains rather opaque in the books. Rowling focuses much more heavily on Sirius’s close friendship with James, but it is often implied that he and Lily also shared a friendship that was not one of convenience or reliant on her marriage to James, but a personal relationship valued by both. Harry, at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, points to the fact that Sirius was not only his father’s best friend but his mother’s as well when he describes Sirius to Uncle Vernon as “my mum and dad’s best friend” (PoA 435). 

That Sirius was actually Lily’s best friend at the time of her death seems dubious, but not wholly implausible. We know little of Lily’s friendships at Hogwarts other than that with Snape. It is clear that she was not an outcast or a loner; she is described as popular and charming and mentioned to be sitting with a group of girls by the lake in Snape’s Worst Memory.  Yet these friends are never named and Rowling does not offer a closer look at these friendships. Likewise, nothing is said of any relationships Lily may have maintained after graduation, outside of her marriage to James and implied friendship with Sirius, Remus, and Peter. Other women around Lily’s age such as Mary MacDonald and Marlene McKinnon are mentioned, and fan-created works have often attempted to elucidate the dynamics between these women, but in Rowling’s text it is not made clear whether these women were close friends of Lily’s or merely acquaintances whose fates affected her as a compassionate bystander.

Even without knowing how Lily’s friendship with Sirius compared to her relationships with other classmates and members of the Order of the Phoenix, though, it is clear that the friendship became central. As far as readers know, Sirius was Lily’s closest friend aside from James and Snape.

Interestingly enough, their relationship starts with Sirius making an offer of integration and acceptance, and Lily refusing it:

“Harry saw Sirius move up the bench to make room for her. She took one look at him, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms, and firmly turned her back on him” (DH 672)

This refusal to integrate, out of character as it seems for Lily, stems not from an Othering of Sirius, but from her previous defense of Snape when James and Sirius harassed him on the train. In that instance, when Lily stepped in and offered herself as a target, she took on the role of the victim and thus took on Sirius as an adversary.

Yet by fifth year she seems to have risen above such an antagonistic relationship with Sirius. In Snape’s Worst Memory, while Lily engages in verbal battle with James, she and Sirius do not interact. Both Sirius and James attack Snape, and while Lily’s castigation and threat of retaliation seem directed at both, she only directly engages with James.

“‘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!'” (OotP 648)

Lily does not directly give Sirius so much as a look. What is more, when she leaves, after telling James he was just as bad as Snape, Sirius does not play into James’s furious question of “What is it with her?” (OotP 649) by criticizing or diminishing Lily’s judgment or faculties. Instead, he reiterates her critique of James, saying, “Reading between the lines, I’d say she thinks you’re a bit conceited, mate” (OotP 649).

The relationship between Sirius and Lily at this point, while not a friendship, has firmly left the realm of rivalry; they appear indifferent toward one another in a positive way, refusing to engage in a verbal or physical duel or to disrespect one another even when called upon to do so by friends.

As the reader discovers in Deathly Hallows, just a few years later the two were close enough for Lily to write to Sirius while she and James were in hiding. The letter, it should be noted, was not written jointly by Lily and James, but by Lily herself specifically to Sirius; it is proof that between the two existed a bond. The depth of this friendship can be found in the fact she addresses the letter with Sirius’s nickname Padfoot (DH 180) and that it does not carry urgent news or a simple polite thank you for Harry’s birthday present, but goes on to detail the banalities of life in hiding and extraordinary information regarding Dumbledore gleaned from Bathilda Bagshot. What is more, the letter shows that Lily and Sirius resist a mimetic rivalry that could easily erupt, with each vying for the attention of James. In her letter, Lily easily suggests that Sirius come and visit as James has been “getting a bit frustrated shut up here” (DH 180) without any apparent envy or resentment of Sirius’s friendship with her husband. In fact, that dynamic is never mentioned to have entered into their friendship.

In Lily and Sirius’s friendship we find an example of the integration of a third; Lily integrates Sirius into her friendship with James, as shown by her letter, and Sirius integrates her into his as well. This much is made clear at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban. As Sirius reveals that it was Peter Pettigrew, not himself, who betrayed the Potters, he consistently refers to “Lily and James,” when discussing his grief, his guilt, and his loss. It suggests that not only was their friendship a triadic one like Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s, but that his connection to Lily ran as deep as his with James. Sirius says during this scene:

“I never betrayed James and Lily. I would have died before I betrayed them” (PoA 372, emphasis mine).

In this particular friendship, we find an example of integration, with Lily acting as both integrator and integrated. She is shown to somehow resist the early rivalry with Sirius that she enters because of Snape, and later she is shown to resist the potential envy and rivalry that could accompany a friendship with her husband’s best friend.