Why Peter became a DE, The night at Godric's Hollow (long)

[pigwidgeon37 at yahoo.it]

No: HPFGUIDX 21933

Jim Ray wrote:
"I'm wondering if perhaps Peter was in love (or thought he was in 
love) with Lily Potter.  Unrequited love has long been a staple for 
the most bitter of betrayals.  Naturally, there is no direct evidence 
within the text to make this assertion, but certain givens looked at 
from a more skewed perspective can lead to this interesting 
conclusion:

1.  Peter was a tagalong behind James, Sirius, and Remus:  Perhaps 
Wormtail was not at all truly interested in the other three.  There's 
no indication as to just how long James and Lily were an item (that 
I'm aware of), but perhaps Peter, feeling inadequate and insecure 
next to a "big shot" Quidditch player saw sticking around Lily's 
boyfriend as an opportunity to be close to her.
2.  His animagus status made him the ultimate voyeur:  Even more to 
the dark side of things, being a rat made Peter capable of getting to 
places he'd never have access to as a human inside Hogwarts (as long 
as he avoided the owlery anyways).  Given that James and Lily are 
generally portrayed as being a happy, loving couple, watching Lily 
every night, content in her relationship with James, would have only 
strengthened Peter's growing rage and jealousy.
3.  Voldemort's intent to not kill Lily: What could motivate 
Voldemort not to kill Lily?  At the very least her death would have 
created fear and chaos within the wizarding community, which 
Voldemort could have used to his advantage.  Perhaps this is what 
motivated Peter to betray the Potter's to Voldemort.  "I'll give you 
James Potter, and Harry in exchange for Lily."
4.  Voldemort's contempt of Peter:  Lots of reasons for this, but I 
would think that Voldemort would be utterly contemptuous of the 
concept of "love". As Hagrid says, there wasn't enough left in 
Voldemort to be human so such a base emotion would sicken him.  The 
fact that Peter would come grovelling back to him would only add to 
this disgust.
Of course, all of this is tremendously circumstantial, but it has been
gnawing at me all day for some strange reason, so I thought I'd 
mention it
here.
Jim Ray"

Welcome Jim, and lots of thanks for this analysis!
I don't know how everybody feels about it, but don't you think that 
the figure of Lily Potter is steadily becoming more interesting? How 
many of our male protagonists have we thought so far to have been in 
love with her? IIRC, Snape, Riddle/Voldemort, now Peter. That would 
make her a very intriguing sort of woman, considering that she would 
have fascinated men with very different personalities and driven them 
to do most astonishing things for unrequited love. Hmmm, I don't know 
whether that makes her very sympathetic. Anyway, it would account for 
Petunia's feelings towards her.


Danika wrote:

"Or maybe they used this time to discuss what was to be done with 
Harry? *I think i have sussed it blokes!!!*  What if all that time 
was spent in deep discussion and action about what was to be done 
with the boy. It couldnt have been an easy decision to decide to 
leave this amazing child who just defeated an ultimately powerful 
dark wizard with Muggles who knew nothing about magic. Sirius cant 
have been involved as he was chasing after Pettigrew at the time. But 
a bunch of people......perhaps the 'old crowd' were organising the 
spells to put in place at Privet drive, and ways in which they could 
protect Harry through the ten years he had to wait until he could be 
safe at Hogwarts. Hagrid could have either taken Harry to these 
discussions, or been instructed to take him somwhere safe and quiet 
to wait instructions. Then they could have told him to meet them at 
Privet drive at the appropriate time, allowing for the three people 
present to arrive at different times. McGonagall to unknowingly suss 
out the street ( ie in PS "And i dont suppose youre going to tell me 
why here, of all places?..............you cant find two people who 
are less like us." Hagrid to bring Harry, and DUmbledore to oversee.
What do we think about that???
Danika Longbottom."

Hmmm, don't know. Because Hagrid knew about Privet Drive rightaway, 
as he told McGonagall where to go already in the morning. So the 
discussions where to leave Harry must have been previous to that. And 
then it doesn't sound to me as if Hagrid had met anybody but Sirius 
in the meantime. Otherwise Dumbledore wouldn't have asked him at his 
arrival whether there had been any problems in getting Harry.

I'm turning this round and round in my head, but nothing I can think 
of does make any sense: If maybe Godric's Hollow *was* a cottage or 
manor instead of a village (as has already been ventured) and very 
isolated, at least there wouldn't be the problem of "who could send 
the news to Dumbledore so quickly that Hagrid was able to get the 
baby before police came up?". Because nobody would have heard or seen 
anything during the night, there would have plenty of time between 
the murder and the police arriving. You could even stretch time so 
much as to come to the conclusion that the murder took place round 
midnight, Dumbledore got the news of it in the morning (because he 
had sent the Potters an owl and it returned without having delivered 
the letter) and the news about Voldemort's downfall spread out from 
Hogwarts! That would also explain their vagueness, as nobody knew 
exactly what had happened, only Dumbledore had drawn his own 
conclusions. He knows why Voldemort was after Harry ( he says so at 
the end of PS, but doesn't tell Harry), so he could easily conclude 
that probably Lily and James were dead, but Harry had a chance of 
having survived.

What about that?

Susanna