Voldemort's Intentions & Snape's Expectations

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189848


> Carol responds:
> 
> I completely agree that when Snape goes to DD, he has just found out that LV is targeting children, in particular Harry Potter, and their families. His desperation is evident, as you say, and had he known earlier what LV was doing, he would have gone to DD earlier. (Why LV took so long to decide on a course of action is unclear, but that's JKR for you.)
> 
> But my point was simply that we keep hearing about Voldemort rewarding some especially loyal follower "above all others." Surely, he would have asked Severus to name his reward at the time he performed the service (reporting the partial prophecy)--at a time when Harry was not yet born and probably neither Snape nor Voldemort even knew that she was pregnant). I can't see young Snape going to LV and belatedly asking for a reward a year or even two after the Prophecy, hiding his anxiety for Lily's life through Occlumency. (Had he even mastered Occlumency--and his acting abilities--at that point?) It seems to me more likely (though, as you say, we're speculating) that he asked that she be spared when she was in the same (grave)danger as the Order members but was not being specifically targeted.

Pippin:

First, Snape must have mastered both acting and occlumency at that point, because he'd have needed them to convince Dumbledore  that he hadn't overheard the prophecy and make his escape. We have to contend with the possibility that Dumbledore was only pretending to be deceived, but clearly Voldemort believed that Snape got away with it, and he knows all about Dumbledore's powers of legilimency. 

 I adore the possibility that Snape was specifically seeking to claim the reward of Lily's life when he spied on Dumbledore and brought the prophecy to LV. And so Snape instigated the very tragedy he was trying to prevent... (shiver!)

But I just can't reconcile that interpretation with Snape's desperation on the hilltop. Voldemort's reputation is that he never spares anyone once he's decided to kill them. (Of course like most reputations, this one is inflated, or Snape would have died when he returned in GoF.)  But if Snape had realized that Voldemort meant to kill Lily before, wouldn't he have thought she was in intolerable peril, even if she was "only" going to die as an Order member?

Like it or not, if both Hagrid and JKR think it's credible that Voldemort wanted James and Lily to join him, (and so allowed them to defy him repeatedly), we have to assume that Snape would think it was credible too. After all, Voldemort's assessment of Lily's powers is not consistent. Sure he sneers at her and calls her a Muggle, but OTOH, he accepts immediately and without a doubt that it was her "powerful counter-curse" that kept him from killing Harry. Voldemort is as opportunist in his choice of philosophies as he is in everything else: he espouses fanatical pureblood superiority only when it suits him. 

Young Snape had experience of people making exceptions for Lily, the way Slughorn did, and I'm sure he simply and naively couldn't imagine  that anyone ever meant "Undesirable"   to apply to her.

Pippin