[HPforGrownups] Re: Why NOT Lily?

[Jacqueline Hendries]

No: HPFGUIDX 42000

Richelle writes:

> He had to kill both James and Harry to eliminate the Potter line.  Or
perhaps the Gryffindor line?  If James was the Heir of Gryffindor than
any child of his would be.  Not just Harry.  He had to kill both or
James could just have another son (with Lily). <

Now me: 
I agree that eliminating the Potter line was probably one of
Voldemort's main goals, and I also think it's definitely possible that
James and Harry are the heirs of Gryffindor (I actually speculate
something like this in my fanfic, which you should definitely read
sometime :) - it's on Schnoogle, and my pen name is Aloha Moira. But
enough shameless self promotion).  
 
Richelle continues:
> Now, speculate with me for a moment, if the whole reason that made
him go after James and Harry was that Harry was the combined heir of
Gryffindor and Slytherin, he had to kill James to prevent him from
producing another  heir. If in fact Lily is somehow the heir of
Slytherin or carries the line  some way, she was no danger to him. 
Only her procreating with James to produce a combined heir would be a
threat.  I could be totally off base here, but it does make sense. 
It's just that Lily is supposedly muggle born.  But then, there are
cases of adoption etc. if JKR wanted she could make it possible for her
to be an heir of Slytherin or whatever. <

But I think:
There's no way that Lily can possibly be an heir of Slytherin. In CoS
(at least, I think it's CoS) it is definitely said that Tom Riddle is
the LAST SURVIVING ANCESTOR (whoops, no, sorry, we meant descendant) of
Salazar Slytherin. Now, I know that at this point Lily isn't still
alive, but if she was an Heir, so is Harry, and from Dumbledore's
lengthy explanation at the end of CoS, he isn't. The whole
Pareseltongue thing seemed to be used as more of a red herring
throughout CoS, to make the reader wonder whether Harry *could* be the
Heir. That was the whole plot of that particular book, and in the end,
it's resolved - the Parseltongue and other Slytherin traits are
ascribed by Dumbledore to the tremendous shock of magical power that
was exchanged when Voldemort tried to AK him as a baby. I think it's
possible, even probable, that this and other parallels between Harry
and Voldie will be important to the plot of later books, but I
definitely don't think that Harry is in any way related to Voldemort or
Salazar Slytherin.

A theory that I think makes more sense canonically is that Harry (and
James) are the heirs of Gryffindor, and there had been some prophecy,
maybe a long time ago, maybe Sibyll Trelawney's "First Prediction,"
that an heir of Gryffindor would be responsible for the final downfall
of the line of Slytherin (again, a theory that makes an appearance in
my fic <winks>). As Voldemort obviously knows he's *an* heir of
Slytherin by the time he's out of Hogwarts, he probably figured out
that he's the *last* heir well before 1981. And you know how people who
want to be immortal and all-powerful just can't *stand* the idea of
having had their downfall predicted... so he goes after the Potters
(and possibly others who were descended from the Gryffindor line? There
could be more!) in an attempt to prevent the prediction from coming to
fruition.

So, why *not* Lily? This is a good question. Perhaps he didn't kill her
outright because he had other plans for her - we've all heard how good
she is with Charms, I bet she could probably manage a stunning Crucio,
if she could have been recruited to the Dark Side. Or perhaps she knew
something that he needed to get out of her. Or something like that. But
more pressing to V was that the Potter males died, so after a little
while he decided not to bother with her; surely at this point there
were others that could have been recruited. Or maybe he was just so
involved with the task at hand that he didn't want to be distracted by
having to kill her. Or, maybe it was just that JKR wanted to emphasize
the importance of the Potter blood (I feel like someone else suggested
this, but I can't remember who, oh well, thanks, whoever you are). Or
maybe something else entirely.

I do know that we're supposed to find out something absolutely
jaw-dropping about Lily Evans-Potter, but I have no idea what it could
be. My only guess is that it may have something to do with her eyes, as
they get mentioned all over the place in the first four books. Or her
family. It's been suggested that Lily's parents were really wizarding
(whether they'd been hiding it for some reason, or whether she'd been
adopted), but I doubt that very much. Lily, much like Hermione, is
JKR's way of expressing that Muggle-borns are often really really good
at magic and thus should not be discriminated against. I think it would
be taking away from that major point too much to suddenly decide that
Lily was really a pure-blood, or even a half-blood. Even a daughter of
a couple Squibs. I think it's more likely that she had a really
important job in the Ministry... who knows, maybe JKR's trying to throw
us off again, and the "big thing" about Lily is that she was a
Quidditch player for England. You never know. ;)

~ Aloha

=====
jackie04 at brandeis.edu

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