Snape's Psychology: WAS: More thoughts on the Elder Wand subplot - Owner?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187520

zanooda wrote:
> Maybe "in exchange for the son" means something like "in exchange for the information about the son" here? Meaning that LV agreed to spare Lily as a thanks for Snape's information about the prophecy baby? If it wasn't Snape who brought this information to LV, he wouldn't dare to ask for a favor, I guess ... :-).
> 
Jen replied: 
That sounds plausible.  It rubs me the wrong way that LV would grant Snape a favor after getting the information he needed from Snape; it doesn't fit Voldemort's psychological profile -  too altruistic.  The proof is in the story though, when he asks Lily to step aside.  I suppose Snape going to Dumbledore proves his master's altruistic moments are unreliable at best.

Carol responds to both:
I agree that it's odd wording given that Snape doesn't have Harry, so it must mean "information about the son." I can't think of anything else that makes sense. Either JKR isn't being careful with her wording (which happens on occasion), or Snape is too distraught to hear what DD is saying.

But I wouldn't call LV's agreeing to spare Lily "altruistic." Generous, maybe, for Voldemort--he's "giving" Lily to Snape as a reward to the young DE for providing him with what appears to be extremely valuable information, and LV and the DEs (even quasi-DE Snape) are always mouthing that phrase about rewarding some loyal DE "above all others." He's probably relieved that Snape asks so little. Why not let the "Mud-Blood" girl live if Snape wants her? It's her son that he wants dead.

Anyway, I agree with Alla that Snape is thinking only of Lily and that Harry and James are afterthoughts, but I don't think that's terrible. At least he's concerned about *somebody,* and he has to start somewhere. He can't go from loyal DE to "lately, only those whom I could not save" in an instant. It starts with Lily, then moves to "her--them," then becomes a kind of mission to protect Harry despite hating him because he looks like James (whom he hated but didn't want to die, just as he didn't want Harry to die in SS/PS), and eventually, to saving people he doesn't know or dislikes, if he can, when he can.

I think it's quite human (not to be confused with "humane") of him to think only of the girl he loves. He reminds me of a mother whose daughter is trapped in a fire at a school. The mother is going to beg the firemen to save her child, and if the fireman is callous enough to remind her that other children are also in danger, she'll beg him to save "her--them" just as Snape does. Of course, she doesn't want the other children to die, but her main concern, her desperate fear, is for her own child. And that's the way it was for Snape, IMO. He feared desperately for Lily's life and was only dimly aware that Harry and James were also in danger. (And, of course, he couldn't and wouldn't have asked LV to save *them* even if it had occurred to him. The one person he cares about is also the one person that LV, if he's in a generous mood, might actually agree to spare. And LV *would* be in a generous mood (with regard to Snape, at least) after Wormtail betrayed their secret. Let the silly girl live! All that mattered was killing the Prophecy Boy--and his blood traitor Order member father into the bargain. (Sure, Lily was an Order member, too, but he doesn't seem to have had any kind of respect for her abilities.)

Carol, who thinks that Snape keeps his focus on one thing here, Lily, just as in the Shrieking Shack with LV he's focused on finding "the boy," and isn't thinking clearly about anything else