Why did Voldemort offer to spare Lily?

[Judy]

No: HPFGUIDX 175840

Thanks for the many replies to my question of why Voldemort offered 
to spare Lily.  Basically, When I posted that question, my thoughts 
were, "When Snape goes to Dumbledore and asks him to save Lily, Snape 
seems awfully desperate for a guy just setting up a back-up plan. So, 
does anyone think there was some different reason, not Snape's love 
for Lily, that would have caused Voldemort to give Lily the chance to 
step aside?" 

>From the answers so far, it seems that everyone thinks Snape's 
feelings for Lily were the reason Voldemort offered Lily a chance to 
live. So, the question becomes, "If Voldemort was willing to spare 
Lily, why did Snape run frantically to Dumbledore, desperately 
begging his to save Lily?"  The options seem to be that Voldemort 
either refused to spare Lily, or Voldemort did say he'd spare Lily, 
but Snape really, really didn't trust him at all. 
 

Alla said:
> I remember so many preDH arguments that Snape came to Dumbledore
> because he could not bear to see Voldemort killing the baby.
> Looks like he could bear it quite well to me.And Mim said:
> 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.

I think I was the first person who argued that Snape turned to the 
side of good because he couldn't bear Harry dying. However, I 
proposed this theory back in February 2002, and at that point, Book 5 
wasn't out yet and we hadn't been told that there was a prophecy 
about Harry; we also didn't know until Book 6 that Snape was the one 
who revealed it. At any rate, I think it would be possible for a 
person to not care about some random baby dying, but still want to 
save the child of the woman he loved.  So, it wouldn't be ridiculous 
for Snape to reveal the prophecy, and yet freak out when he learns 
that it's LILY'S baby who will die. 

But why did I think, way back in 2002, that Snape couldn't bear to 
have Harry die? My reasoning was that I believed Voldemort told Snape 
that he would spare Lily, so Snape would need some reason (other than 
Lily's safety) to go to Dumbledore and tell him that the Potters were 
in danger.  But what we learn in DH is that even if Voldemort 
promised to spare Lily, Snape couldn't trust him. In DH we see that 
Voldemort has very, very little regard for his followers: He kills 
Snape to try to get control of the Elder Wand; he kills a whole room 
full of DEs simply because he's ticked off that the Horcrux Cup has 
been stolen. But prior to DH, we had no idea that Voldemort was 
willing to simply throw his supporters away like that.  (We did see 
him abandon Quirrell in Book 1, but Voldemort was in a pretty 
desperate way at the time, so he didn't have a lot of other options.) 

So, maybe the answer here is that Voldemort DID tell Snape he would 
spare Lily, but Snape was still frantic and desperate because he knew 
how untrustworthy Voldemort was.

zgirnius said:
> Brava! Brava!!
> Wow, I thought (politely!) that you folks were all nuts when I 
joined
> the fandom about a month before HBP came out. That book converted me
> to LOLLIPOPS, but people who saw LOLLIPOPS and TOO EWWW back after
> PoA/GoF - wow, you folks have some Seer credentials!

Thank you! I think I have to agree with the idea that I must be nuts, 
though -- I did (and DO) spent entirely too much time hypothesizing 
about the Harry Potter stories!

I wish I was a Seer -- I'd know what stocks to pick!  The way I came 
to the conclusion about TEWW EWWW, though, was mostly by thinking 
about where JKR was probably planning to take her story:
1) Snape has to be good.  Otherwise, Voldemort would be right and 
Dumbledore would really be a "muggle-loving old fool." JKR can't 
intend that; Voldemort can't be right about human nature, and 
Dumbledore wrong.
2) Since Snape is good, he is trying to protect Harry.
3) We therefore need a reason for Snape to hate James, despise Harry, 
and yet protect Harry. The simplest answer is that Snape loved Lily; 
he despises Harry because Harry reminds him of James and of the fact 
that Lily married James, yet protects Harry because he is Lily's 
child. 
4) In PoA, we learn that Dumbledore's spy told Dumbledore that 
Voldemort was after the Potters. The only spy for Dumbledore that we 
know of is Snape. Therefore, the Snape is likely to be the person who 
warned Dumbledore that the Potters were in danger.
5) We need a reason for Snape to start working for Dumbledore; it has 
to be something that Dumbledore would consider sincere enough to 
trust Snape. Since Snape loved Lily, and was probably the one who 
warned Dumbledore that she was in danger, that is probably why Snape 
worked for Dumbledore.  This also has the advantage of explaining why 
Dumbledore would keep Snape's reason a secret; Snape wouldn't want 
Harry to know that he had lost Lily to James.

Goddlefrood said:
> Possibly the last person many here would ever expect to jump in 
> uninvited on a Snape thread. There is one matter relative to Snape 
> / Lily that I would like to put forward for further discussion. The 
> view I formed of Harry's initial survivial is that it had something 
> to do with Lily's sacrifice, which was in many ways a condition 
> precedent for his survival, or so we have always believed. As far 
> as I can ascertain it also has a good deal to do with Lord 
Voldemort 
> not honouring his promise to Severus to not kill Lily. That really 
> came back to bite him.

This is always how I envisioned it, prior to DH and the scene where 
Snape is frantic to find a way to spare Lily -- Voldemort promised 
Snape that he would spare Lily, but Voldemort went back on his word.  
Boy, would he have been better off keeping his word.

Goddlefrood also said:
> My question for discussion is this: "Did Snape's request to 
> Voldemort play a larger or a smaller role in Harry's initial 
> survival because Voldemort failed to abide the terms of the 
> contract?"

Very interesting question -- so what you are saying was that maybe it 
wasn't just Lily's willing sacrifice that gave Harry his protection, 
but also the fact that Voldemort broke his promise to Snape?  Could 
be, although there is nothing in canon to support this that I can 
think of.  We've always been told that Lily's willing sacrifice was 
what protected Harry.

-- JudySerenity, spending WAY too much time posting