GoF CH 27-29 Post DH look/ Snape and Harry redux

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182196

Alla:
Alla wrote:
<snip> 
> without Snape,  two 21 year olds are **possibly** alive, their baby
 **possibly** has normal life, with his interference – they are not
**for a fact**. <snip>

Carol responds:

Not that it matters, but Severus was also 21. :-) I agree with you
that Snape changed everything, but some of the unintended consequences
of his eavesdropping and even of Voldemort's murder of the Potters
were good. As I said before, without the events at Godric's Hollow
(and without Peter's betrayal of the Potters, which I didn't mention),
there would have been no Chosen One, no one with the particular powers
required to gain insight into Voldemort's mind, find his Horcruxes,
and ultimately defeat him. Without those events, Voldemort would have
continued his reign of terror, and the state of affairs in the WW
would have continued to deteriorate. As it was, the unintended
consequences of Voldemort's actions, in combination with those of
Snape, Wormtail, Black (the SK switch), the Potters themselves
(trusting Wormtail and accepting the switch), and possibly,
Dumbledore, caused a fourteen-year respite that none of them expected,
along with the creation of the Chosen One (about whom only DD could
have had a clue; the part of the Prophecy that Snape didn't hear and
consequently didn't report was known only to DD).

To return to Snape: Once he found out how Voldemort interpreted the
Prophecy, he asked Voldemort not to kill Lily and then went to
Dumbledore for further help, promising to do "anything" to keep
"her--them" alive. The Secret Keeper idea was put in place because of
Snape's information that LV was targeting the Potters. Had the Potters
accepted Dumbledore as their Secret Keeper, they could not have been
betrayed by Wormtail.

So Snape alone is not responsible for the Potters' deaths, though he
did begin the chain of events that led to it. Those deaths could still
have been prevented had other people (Black, Pettigrew, and the
Potters themselves) not chosen to act as they did. And Snape's
repentance and lifelong atonement (in contrast to Wormtail's continued
service to the Dark Lord) are as important as his sin.

I agree that it's possible, though unlikely, that the Potters could
have survived without Snape's interference. (VW1 would simply have
been the ongoing Voldie War.) But Snape also "interfered" in a futile
attempt to keep Lily (and, by extension, her son and her hated
husband) alive by going to DD and turning spy for him. If Snape had
had his way, the Potters would not have died at Godric's Hollow. But
the Prophecy Boy would never have existed, either.

Carol, who likes to see events as the result of more than one cause,
the coming together of various people's actions, with consequences
unintended by any of them