[HPforGrownups] Re: Lily Potter's Name/Evans is Welsh

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 44070

At 11:04 16/09/02 -0400, ~Katey wrote:

>Richard said:
>
> > As I read things, and as we know the situation at present, Lily didn't
> > "invoke" any kind of magic. What overcame Voldermort's attack was her
> > Mother love per se, which didn't need to be invoked in the way that spells
> > and charms are. If anything, it was her act of sacrifice which "invoked"
> > the ancient magic, not some kind of deliberate strictly magical action or
> > incantation on her part.
> >
> > Again, as I read the canon (and the moral it tries to impart), it's not 
> the
> > fact that Lily was a witch which saved Harry, but the fact that she
> > sacrificed herself for him: "love" is in itself magical.

(before I comment, I just wanted to clarify that I closed the quotation 
marks in the wrong place there; they were meant to be closed after 'magical'.)

>I think Lily's saving Harry has much more than just her love going for 
>it.  Voldemort supposedly killed a *lot* of people when he was in power, 
>and I'm sure he killed some kids/babies of the parents he killed.  No 
>doubt some of those parents tried to protect their kids, but Voldemort 
>managed to kill them; only Harry stopped him.

Sorry, but what makes you so "sure"? I have no doubt that Voldemort and his 
followers have wiped out entire families, but this could well be a unique 
situation in which the child was the target rather than the parent or the 
family en masse.  As far as we know from canon (and I find no reason to 
extrapolate anything different), Harry is the only case in which Voldemort 
*specifically* targetted the child, while *specifically* not intending to 
harm his/her parent. IOW, no other parent had has the opportunity to make 
the bargain, to offer their life *instead of* their child's. In other 
cases, the child may have been a "bonus" kill or one of many to silence or 
wipe out a family, but in this case, canon is specific in that Voldemort 
offered to let Lily escape scot-free.

>In my opinion, the whole purpose of the series is to find out why Harry 
>didn't die.

Oh, I disagree. Most strongly. :-) The whole purpose of the series is why 
Voldemort wanted to kill Harry *while sparing Lily*. How Harry survived is 
secondary to that, though perhaps the reason why Voldemort wanted him in 
the first place contains the answer (which I strongly suspect to be the case).

>It is directly connected to Lil's love, of course, but there must be 
>something else we'll find out at the end of the series.

Right now, I don't see any need for any additional action or intent on 
Lily's part to explain what happened (given what we know thus far).

>Okay, does anyone understand what I just said?  I tried to word it so it 
>makes some sense.  =)

Well, it made sense to me, even if I disagreed with just about every word. 
:-) Unless, of course, I *completely* misunderstood what it was *meant* to 
mean!