Lily's Sacrifice, Perseus Evans (WAS Snape & Godric's Hollow)

[Devika <devika@sas.upenn.edu>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52991

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, GulPlum <hp at p...> wrote:
> There is one thing at the back of my mind at all times, though: how 
on 
> earth does Dumbledore know that James was killed first and that it 
was 
> *Lily's* sacrifice which saved Harry, rather than the other way 
around? 
>  From the very beginning, he is very sure of this. Harry was there 
and he 
> as his vague memories, but he is not the source of Dumbledore's 
> information. Of course, Voldemort was there as well, so did 
Voldemort tell 
> Dumbledore in what order he'd killed the Potters? I think not... So 
if the 
> Potter parents are dead, Harry is a baby and Voldemort is the 
enemy, how 
> did Dumbledore find out? (Other characters share this knowledge, 
but I 
> assume they know it from Dumbledore.)
> 
> We're up against that dratted Fidelius Charm again.
> 

Haha, you beat me to it.  I've actually been thinking about this for 
some time, and I was just getting ready to post a question about it.  
Here are some thoughts that I've had:

I can only assume that when the Potters' bodies were found, Lily's 
body was found next to Harry, while James's body was in another room 
of the house, thus leading Dumbledore to believe that Lily, rather 
than James, had sacrificed herself for Harry.  No, I don't believe 
that James was somewhere else that night.  I think that the voice 
Harry hears when the dementors come close to him actually does belong 
to James, although we don't have canon to prove that necessarily.  
However, we don't have canon to disprove it, either.

The question I have is this, though:  how does Dumbledore know for 
sure that Lily sacrificed herself for Harry and that it was her 
sacrifice that stopped Voldemort?  He seems to be right; Voldemort 
says so in GoF (Chapter 33), but how did Dumbledore reach this 
conclusion?

Dumbledore knows that Lily sacrificed herself to save Harry.  He 
seems to be one of very few people who know this, as far as I can 
remember.  I don't have PS with me, but I seem to recall that when 
Hagrid is telling Harry about his parents, he says something 
like, "Something about you stopped him [Voldemort] that night." 

 IIRC, Hagrid doesn't say anything to demonstrate that he knows that 
what stopped Voldemort was specifically Lily's sacrifice.  Actually, 
I'm not sure if Harry finds this out until the end of PS, when 
Dumbledore says, "Your mother died to save you, Harry," or something 
to that effect.  

(If someone has a copy of PS and can disprove this, please do.  I 
have the other three books here, but of course I don't have the one I 
need.)  

Lupin knows that Harry's parents died to save him;  in PoA, chapter 
14, he tells Harry, "Your parents gave their lives to keep you alive, 
Harry." 
Even then, Lupin doesn't say specifically that it was Lily's 
sacrifice that saved Harry.  I think I may just be nitpicking here, 
though.  I do think that Dumbledore gave Lupin some idea of what 
happened that night.  Again, though, how does Dumbledore know at all?

One possibility I can offer is that Dumbledore knew that the "ancient 
magic" invoked in Lily's sacrifice was the only way to defeat 
Voldemort.  I have no idea how he could know this, but let's assume 
that he did.  When Voldemort was defeated, and Lily's body was found 
next to Harry, Dumbledore assumed that Lily must have sacrificed 
herself for Harry.  OK, well, that makes some sense, but then why 
couldn't anyone else reach this conclusion?  Why is there such an air 
of mystery in the WW surrounding what happened that night?  It 
wouldn't have been difficult to publicize the fact that a mother had 
died to save her child, thus defeating Voldemort.  

Tom Riddle himself didn't know what had defeated him.  Ginny had 
probably told him the details of what happened as far as she knew, 
and she probably had the same information that the general public 
had.  However, Riddle still needed Harry to say that Lily had died 
for him.  Only then did he figure out what had happened.

The point is that Lily's sacrifice is not public knowledge, although 
we are led to believe that this is a simple conclusion to reach from 
the information given.

Here are the other possibilities that I can see for Dumbledore's 
knowledge:

1.  Dumbledore could somehow monitor the situation at the Potters' 
house, and he actually saw what happened.

2.  Someone else was in the house and somehow escaped to inform 
Dumbledore of what happened.

3.  Lily and Dumbledore had a plan worked out beforehand because she 
someknew had the means to defeat Voldemort and was willing to do it, 
but only as a last resort since it involved her death.  When no one 
was able to defeat Voldemort any other way, and then Voldemort found 
the Potters, Lily had no other choice.

I suppose any of these possibilities could work (although I don't buy 
number 2, but that's just me).


Also, I find it hard to believe that Lily was the first one to 
sacrifice her own life for that of her child.  Voldemort and his 
Death Eaters had been killing people for quite some time.  Had no one 
died trying to protect his or her loved ones?  

I think that there must have been something else involved in Godric's 
Hollow that night that gave more power to Lily's sacrifice.  I think 
that both Dumbledore and Voldemort know what that was, but neither is 
telling. 

We can only wait for OoP.


 
> Re: Severus Snape=Perseus Evans anagram.
> 
> >could someone send me the specifics on this?  (If this has been
> >discussed ad nauseum and you don't want to waste board space on it,
> >you can email me a link or summation.  Thanks!)
> 
> Someone else asked about this. It is NOT a JKR quote, and nobody 
has ever 
> claimed it to be (at least I've never seen anyone claim that). Over 
the 
> years and months, several people have independently generated that 
anagram, 
> and it has never been put forward as anything more than a curiosity 
and a 
> speculation as a basis for speculation. There is no evidence from 
JKR that 
> there is anything to this anagram and AFAIK the subject has never 
been 
> raised with her.
> 


Personally, I don't think there's anything to this.  I'm sure that 
JKR has never said anything about it.  Actually, she has said that 
the name Snape comes from the name of a town.  I think there's enough 
mystery surrounding Lily Potter and Severus Snape without making them 
related to each other.  That's just a bit too much like a soap opera 
for me.

Sorry if I rambled a bit.  I needed to get this all typed up and 
posted as quickly as possible so I could go back to studying :(

Devika, who would much rather be reading Harry Potter than physical 
chemistry