Snape's Request gave Harry a second chance? (Was: Snape/Dumbledore thingummy)

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 175817

Mim:
> 
> Like Dumbledore is some paragon if virtue himself and he should 
have 
> any business making moral judgments on others... 
> 
> And for the last time, yes, Snape didn't give a damn about James 
and 
> Harry. I know that, I'm ok with that as a Snapefan. I don't know 
who 
> said that he turned because he couldn't bear the thought of a baby 
> dying. That's ridiculous. If he couldn't bear the thought of a baby 
> dying he wouldn't have given the Prophecy to Voldemort in the first 
> place.

Ceridwen:
I'm one of the people who speculated that this was perhaps Snape's 
motives for returning to DD.  The prophecy does not state that 
the "one with the power//born as the seventh month dies" (skewing the 
wording here, hence the double //) is an infant.  It doesn't say that 
an infant must be killed.  LV can take the prophecy any way he wishes 
when he hears it.  If he takes the "one with the power etc." to be an 
infant when he hears the prophecy, or not even born yet since perhaps 
it isn't July when he hears this, this doesn't mean he has to kill an 
infant.  With the mock sincerity LV displays to Harry in the 
graveyard, insisting on the proper etiquette of duelling, why believe 
he'll drop that to target a child?  How does this enhance his creds 
among his followers?

A person who would not naturally target an infant may very well not 
believe someone else might.  Snape was a Death Eater, a loyal 
follower, and quite young, possibly impressionable as Regulus Black 
was, idealistic as teens and young twenty-somethings are.  Delusion 
is a part of this idealism, and projecting one's own values onto the 
object of one's idealizing is common.  Why would Snape automatically 
believe LV would kill an infant?  Given what we had to work with at 
this time, the argument could go either way.

Mim: 
> I kinda doubt that. He still didn't just incapacitate her and kill 
> Harry anyway. He didn't truly keep his word as Snape suspected.
> 
> But he did value Snape and seemed to take an interest in Snape's 
> love life... After all, once Lily was gone he asked Snape and was 
> reassured that there were plenty of worthier witches for him. I'm 
> just wondering about the time frame of that conversation since once 
> Lily was dead, Voldie got hit with that rebounding AK. Since he 
> didn't reveal himself to Snape when he was on the back of Quirrel's 
> head and he wasn't really in CoS and PoA... I can only assume that 
> once Snape appeared back in the fray at the end of GoF Voldie was 
> eager to ask him how his love life had been...

Ceridwen:
While it does seem that LV was interested in Snape's love life, 
giving me entertaining mental images of his playing matchmaker to the 
Lestranges and Malfoys as well, I don't know why he would be.  At age 
twenty-one or thereabouts, Snape was probably not in the top tier of 
DEs.  If he was, my estimation of LV drops again, not in respect, 
because I don't respect him, but with more contempt.

I'd place this scene at the end of GoF, too, since it's the first 
time they're together again.  And it would be in LV's interest to 
find out if Snape was carrying a grudge over Lily's death.  Snape is 
now a more mature, more powerful, wizard; LV doesn't need his 
opposition.

I still don't see why Snape would be more valuable to LV at the age 
of twenty-one or so, than any of his other DEs.  He was useful for 
bringing the prophecy, but to that point, that's all we know he ever 
did to prove himself to LV.

Ceridwen.