Why was Lily given a chance to survive?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161462

KathyO wrote:
<snip> Harry hates Snape enough already and Dumbledore 
> knows it. He doesn't want Harry to know the truth...that Snape was 
> at Godrics Hollow when everything happened and that the Dark Lord 
> had used Legilimens to see that Snape had a soft spot for Lily.  He 
> decided to give her a chance to stay alive because he could use her 
> later against Snape if he got out of hand.  Unfortunately Voldemort 
> is not a patient man, so he ended up killing Lily because she 
> wouldn't get out of the way.
> 
> Another thought I have - which is even worse - is that Voldemort 
> didn't know which child to choose, only once he used Legilimens, he 
> could see that if he chose the Potter boy he might have a stronger 
> hold over Snape because of his feelings towards Lily.  So, in 
> essence, Snape may be the true reason Harry was chosen as the one to 
> defeat the Dark Lord.
> 
> Dumbledore couldn't tell this to Harry...it would mar his years at 
> Hogwarts, and quite possibly turn him into someone who only sought 
> revenge.  Obviously there's more to the story...and a big part of 
> Snape's forcing Harry harder than he would any other student to 
> learn Occlumency would be because Snape knows more than anyone that 
> if you have to be around the Dark Lord...your Occlumency skills must 
> be excellent...which is why he improved his own after Lily's death.  
> He wanted no one else to suffer.

Carol responds:

I understand the persistent idea that Snape loved Lily, for which
there is at least a shred of evidence, but I don't understand why
people think that Snape was present at Godric's Hollow. He had been
teaching at Hogwarts for two months and could not have been spending
tiem with the Death Eaters. His DE assignment was to spy on
Dumbledore, not to accompany Voldemort on murder missions. 

Since (according to PoA), Snape didn't know that PP had been made the
Secret Keeper the week before, we have no reason to believe that he
knew that the Potters were at Godric's Hollow. (Yes, it's possible
that he could have seen a note written to Dumbledore by PP in a
disguised hand, but that's a pretty far-fetched explanation for his
knowledge, and JKR would have to find some roundabout way to bring it
into the plot. And why would PP have told anybody [except LV] when the
whole idea was to keep the Potters' whereabouts secret?)

There's evidence that PP (who could hide in rat form) was at Godric's
Hollow (he later retrieved Voldemort's wand, and would have needed to
show him the house in any case), but no evidence of anyone else's
presence. James calls out to Lily that *he* is here--not *they*. No
indication of anyone else's presence, and JKR has informed us that
Snape wasn't there under the Invisibility Cloak.

Nor do I see how Snape could be present as a DE without being noticed
by James or as his usual self without being killed by Voldemort. How
could he have known that Voldemort was going to kill the Potters that
night unless Peter Pettigrew told him, and why on earth would PP do
that? It wasn't in his best interest for anyone to know, especially
not his old enemy Severus Snape, and according to PoA, Snape didn't
know that PP was the Secret Keeper. Instead, he believed for all those
years, as DD did, that Sirius Black was the traitor.

Voldemort's order to Lily to stand aside can be explained in a number
of ways (the "silly girl" was unarmed and in his way; he expected her
to value her life over her son's and do as he said; and, if need be,
he didn't want to split his soul by murdering her because he wanted to
use the soul fragment from Harry's murder to create his last Horcrux).
I see absolutely no reason for a request by Snape to spare Lily to be
necessary and no reason to believe that LV would honor such a request.

It's quite possible that Snape's remorse for informing Voldemort of
the Prophecy relates primarily to Lily (with the life debt to James as
a secondary motive--how dare he die without letting me save him?), but
there's no need for Snape to be at Godric's Hollow and no need for LV
to know about Snape's feelings on the matter. He's not a superb
Occlumens for nothing.

Carol, sure that Snape was at Hogwarts and knew nothing about Godric's
Hollow until his Dark Mark began to fade and it was too late to help
the Potters