Snape and Marauders WAS :Draco and Intent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186912

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> Just to stress it one more time,  – NO, I do not think that Lily and James' souls or spirits or whatever will be holding grudges against Snape. I think they will grant him forgiveness. It is the **gratefulness** I am disagreeing with.
> 
> As to various people responsible for Lily and James' death and Harry being left alone, the way I see it, each of those people are responsible for their **own** choices. To me the thing is – it is a possibility that without Snape making his choice first none of those people MAY have had a reason to exercise his.
<snip>
> 
> Sirius is responsible for suggesting that plan, sure, but sorry, I cannot put him high on the list for wanting his friends safer. Although, before you say anything, say he is very responsible for that – again, without Snape's reporting Prophecy, they may not have NEED to go into hiding, accordingly such suggestion may have not been needed at all.
> 
> And then we have Voldemort and Wormtail. And I will still say that even though one of them is a murderous maniac and another one is stinking traitor, I will still say that without Snape starting all that, there is  a chance that they would not have made their choices. Now of course with Voldemort it is highly likely that he would have gone after Potters anyway, but I remain convinced that such encounter would not have HAD TO end in their deaths. After all three of the previous ones did not.
> 
> All that I am saying that Snape's actions decreased the possible scenarios very very significantly and increased the death one a lot.
> 
> I think that Wormtail is actually the one who would have acted anyway, if Sirius' claim that he was passing the information for the year was true, so I guess I hold Snape less responsible for Wormtail than for Voldemort, if that makes sense.
> Alla:
> 
> Yes, Lily and James signed up for the risk and the possibility of being killed by Voldemort. I do not  believe that they signed up for being grateful to Snape for helping this certain death of them to happen.

>
Carol responds:
But, again, if any other DE had reported the Prophecy to Voldemort, all three would have died because there would have been no chance for Lily to live and consequently, no love magic. (As I said, I don't think that Lily and James should be grateful to Snape for that. The gratitude I think they should feel is for his saving Harry later.) 
But, still, it's better than all three being dead, as would have happened if any other DE had been the spy.

And, of course, the Potters wouldn't have gone into hiding at all if Snape hadn't gone to Dumbledore and begged him to hide "her/them," It's not Snape's fault that the Potters didn't accept Dumbledore's offer to become Secret Keeper (which would have saved all three but left no Prophecy Boy), nor is it Snape's fault that they switched to an untrustworthy Secret Keeper rather than Sirius Black (who would have died rather than reveal their Secret--though given what happened with the 12 GP Secret, they might have been discovered and killed after his death). It's Wormtails' fault, and Wormtail's only, that Wormtail betrayed the Potters, all three of whom would have died thanks to him had it not been for Voldemort's broken promise to Snape and the consequent love magic of Lily's sacrifice. And it's Voldemort's fault, and Voldemort's only, that he chose to kill the Prophecy family in the first place. He could have waited until the Prophecy Boy showed himself and posed a threat. Instead, he chose (to his own detriment) to try to nip the Prophecy in the bud through a triple murder.

Had there been no Prophecy, the Potters might have died, anyway, perhaps Harry along with them as Marlene McKinnons children died along with her. Certainly, there would have been nothing to prevent Voldemort's rise to power, and he would not have become Vapor!mort. Instead, the Prophecy allowed good to come out of evil; yes, the Potters were killed, but that didn't prevent the whole WW (except McGonagall, to her credit) from celebrating the downfall of Voldemort. His foolish attempt to thwart the Prophecy (instead of ignoring it or letting it fulfill itself over time) gave the WW fourteen years of peace. (Just to be clear, I'm not talking about reasons for the Potters to be grateful here. I'm sure they would much rather he had not killed them!) And that would not have happened had it not been for Voldemort's broken promise to Snape. Had Voldemort not acted to thwart the Prophecy (and killed Lily despite his promise to Snape), he would not have fulfilled another portion of the Prophecy, marking Harry as the one with the power to destroy him and (to paraphrase Snape under different circumstances), handing him weapons.

So it's true that had Snape not reported the Prophecy, matters would have been very different. But they would have been even worse if he had not asked Voldemort not to kill Lily. Because he did, and because Voldemort broke his promise to Snape, Harry, not Lily, survived. And Harry, it turns out (no credit to Snape, much less Voldemort, who could not foresee the consequences of their actions), Harry acquired a scar with a soul bit in it and a link to Voldemort that made his defeat possible.

But it's also true that reporting the Prophecy alone was not sufficient to bring about the Potters' deaths, even setting aside the possibility that LV might have interpreted it differently. Snape went to Dumbledore for help, and had the Potters accepted DD as their SK, they would have lived. If they had accepted Sirius Black as their SK, they might also have lived; at any rate, he would not have betrayed them, whatever happened after LV or the DEs found and killed him. If Wormtail had not betrayed their trust, they might also have been safe. (Why they didn't ship him off to Egypt or China, I don't know.) But the combination of circumstances caused Snape's and DD's combined efforts to protect them to fail--and the Prophecy to come true, at least as far as making Harry "the one with the power," despite their efforts and despite DD's ostensible disbelief in prophecies.

I'm sorry if it seems that I'm going around in circles and not responding directly to your post. My point is that Snape's reporting the Prophecy did *not* result in certain death. James, to be sure, was always marked for death, but Lily might have survived and Harry *did* survive, as he would not have had the DE been anyone other than Snape. And one Snape went to Dumbledore, *all three* Potters had a chance to survive, and might well have done so had the Potters not switched to an unworthy Secret Keeper, who betrayed to their deaths *despite* Snape's and DD's best efforts to protect them.

Imagine what might have happened if Snape had not gone first to Voldemort to ask him to spare Lily and then to DD--if, that is, he had acted like any other DE. Voldemort would have killed all three Potters with no obstacles and there would have been no one to fulfill the Prophecy--no vaporization, no scar, no respite for the WW, no DDM!Snape, no Chosen One, no story.

Carol, who thinks that's what's important here, besides forgiveness and redemption through atonement, is the unintended consequences of the characters' actions and, specifically, good coming out of evil