Why would Lily be spared?

[Eustace_Scrubb]

No: HPFGUIDX 104873

Eustace_Scrubb:
> > My take on this is that in Voldemort's mind there is no reason for
> > anyone to sacrifice their own life to save someone else...I think
> > he means Lily could have escaped while James was putting up his
> > courageous fight, since Voldemort was after Harry, not her.  She 
> > could have apparated right out of there, without Harry, in 
> > Voldemort's mind.  

GEO: 
> I do believe he was pointing to the incident when he told her 
> to stand aside so that he could AK Harry and instead she refused.

Eustace_Scrubb again:
Sure, because he couldn't see why she was hanging around at that
point.  She could have been gone.  Then she annoyed Voldemort by
getting in between him and his quarry.  

GEO continued:
> Yet it makes little sense that he actually tried to go around 
> her instead of going through her when she was one of Dumbledore's 
> followers who had managed to defy him three times thus making her 
> his enemy and also a mudblood. For Voldemort to do something like 
> that imo is extremely uncharacteristic especially when he had
> Cedric killed just for being in the graveyard.

Eustace_Scrubb again:
At Godric's Hollow, I think Voldemort was completely focused on one
thing, killing Harry.  I don't think he was worried that either James
or Lily could actually harm him (they'd defied him, but they couldn't
vanquish him), so their resistance--their very presence--was nothing
more than a nuisance.  

As I see it, he finished off James, who annoyingly and quite futilely
attempted to resist with his wand.  Then Voldemort ran to the baby's
room, eager to complete the mission, only to find Lily standing in his
way.  So he told her to get out of the way, not out of mercy, not
because of some deal he'd made, but out of exasperation.  

And then he _did_ kill her.  I don't think he stood there and said,
"If you're not out of here in 5 minutes you're toast!"  I think it was
a matter of seconds.  It didn't take much longer than having Wormtail
kill Cedric did and it certainly was no more merciful.  But to
Voldemort's way of thinking, what he told Harry at the end of PS/SS
was the truth:  she needn't have died; it was her own fault she stayed
when she could have apparated and then it was her fault that she
wouldn't get out of the way.  To one unfamiliar with love, who
believes there's nothing worse than death, this would have made
perfect sense.

Cheers,

Eustace_Scrubb