THEORY: Phoenixes, Potters and You

[Heather Moore]

No: HPFGUIDX 30217

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Heather Moore" <heathernmoore at y...> wrote:

I've noticed a distinct lack of clarity which slipped into parts of this post - urk! I will try to amplify a little;

>  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.
> 

 -- Here, I meant to also offer that the OotP may have been working from a hypothesis that the standard "Heir of" interpretation of direct descent, while the most obvious, was not necessarily correct. John(?) pointed out earlier that if you get down to it, it's difficult to believe that each generation includes only one person descended from each of the Founders. 

The Order could well have had a more open approach. They could have been asking a number of questions: Does the "Heir" have to be cultivated? Could it be a more spiritual or symbolic Heir? Yes, Tom Riddle himself does appear to be the predicted Heir of Slytherin, but does it necessarily follow that he fulfills that role for the reasons *HE* accept? Is the whole prophecy cyclical? (As in, was Grindelwald the HS for his day, with Dumbledore as his HG nemesis - so that Dumbledore is *not* the person destined to bring down Voldemort?)

As workers within (and coordinators of?) the resistance against Voldemort, they always were concentrating on the Phoenix within a broader context of activity. 


>   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. 


  And here, I should insert that would seem to have been pursuing a stricter interpretation of "Heir of Gryffendor," but within the context that Godric has left more blood descendants than Salazar. As the Gryffendor line would very likely have been more "dilute" over the generations (whereas Tom probably believed his own descent to be "dilute" only in his parents' generation), it would be in character for LV to look to find an HG uniting multiple threats of the Gryffendor descent. 

 I can imagine that megalomaniac LV wasn't terribly keyed up about the prophecy -- after all, he's VOLDEMORT, the smartest and the biggest and the mostest; how could a trashy Gryffendor possibly bring him down?  BUT he had minions working on this project just in case (being Voldemort, he's also paranoid - goes with the territory), they hit upon some previously unknown factoid about Lily Evans Potter and her descent which puts a bee in his bonnet to go ahead and get rid of the rest of the Potters. Possibly herein, by coincidence, James Potter accomplishes something which Makes Voldemort Angry, or alternatively, Voldemort or his minions turn over some overlooked piece of prophecy which they reinterpret in light of the new info, and Bob's your uncle, James and Harry Potter Must Die NOW.

>  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.  
> 

 Who Knew What, and When Did They Know It, and Whom Did They Tell?


> Any way you figure it, one would 
> think that they all also miscal- 
> culated 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.  

 Ah, the sad case of the generic pronouns.  Let me try to make amends:

  The OotP are given information that Voldemort is actively gunning for the Potters. We surmise that this was a tip from Snape. It is possible that everyone assumes LV's primary target is James, but that LV will of course not shudder at wiping out the whole family.

  The Potters go into hiding. They and the OotP believe they have bought themselves adequate breathing space. The Potters, Sirius, and Peter secretly make the SK Switch, believing within their own group that they have added an extra "lock," so to speak.

 The OotP may get an inkling that LV is especially interested in killing Lily's infant son, as they frantically try to understand V's newly focused attention. *At the same time,* Snape is withdrawing from the Death Eaters in what may be a "routine" meeting to convey information in person or may be a final defection. (I speculate this timeframe because of the below.)

  Peter leaks the location of the Godric Hollow safehouse to the Death Eaters. Snape definitely does not know the source of the leak (as he later assumes it was Sirius Black); its unclear to me whether to believe he is physically still with the Death Eaters during the day before the raid, and knows about it but is unable to get the word out in time, or whether he has already gone into hiding and was not aware that the raid was going down. Or some combination of the two.  

 The attack(s?) happens, Voldemort unexpectedly (to *everyone*) is struck down by a reflection of his own curse. The senior members of the OotP bug out to the Potters' safehouse, see the bodies, immediately realize "Shit, Voldemort was spot on! Grab the kid before any more DEs get here!" And wouldn't you know, up pops Sirius.

And the rest we know...  sorta.