THEORY: Phoenixes, Potters and You

[Heather Moore]

No: HPFGUIDX 30179

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., CB <eleri at a...> wrote:
> 
> >
> >This take on the Order of the Phoenix is very intriguing and sounds
> >entirely possible, but it makes one wonder -- if they were so sure that
> >it was Harry who was the "Phoenix," why didn't they, for example, get
> >Lily and James to give Harry to them so they could hide him or something
> >to that effect?  And where were they when James was getting Avada
> >Kedavra'ed?
> 
> My take on it was a bit like the Mentat breeding program from Dune, that 
> the combination of James and Lily produced the wizard who would defeat the 
> biggest baddie of all time. Pulling the OotP into this thought, perhaps 
> they were the ones keeping track of the bloodlines, and knew that James was 
> the last living Heir for Gryffindor. 

 Well, my idea would be that the OotP was unaware of Lily's actual heritage, and so they had never strongly considered the Potters as candidates. Not to mention that James may not have been the only scion of the only Gryffendor bloodline.  Everyone assumed that Lily Evans was muggle-born, and that was the end of the story.

  But Voldemort was trickier, and he figured out first that *both* Lily and James were from the bloodline, *and* that the line which produced the Evans girls (or just Lily, if you favor the idea that she was adoped by the Evanses) had been dormant for a few generations. And thus baby Harry was the first Heir during Voldemort's lifetime to have that heritage from both parents.  He kills James, who is pureblood, and Harry, the double heir, and figures that itself neutralizes Lily as a threat because her blood is dilute. 

 The theory might work better that the only info that Snape (??) was able to get out to the OotP was just that LV was gunning for the Potters, and the Order (and possibly also Snape; we don't know how intimately he had LV's ear) assumed that primarily meant James.  

Any way you figure it, one would think that they all also miscalculated how much time they had to get the Potters under protection. As far as I recall, once the Ps went into hiding, nobody anticipated their Secret Keeper betraying them, after all. With the last minute switch between Sirius and Peter, not shared with the Order, they must have felt doubly safer.  I can imagine that, believing they had bought themselves some time, they were focused on smuggling Snape out; perhaps he was scheduled to pass some information in person. Then Peter ratted the Potters out and everything went down so abruptly that it took them by surprise.