[HPforGrownups] Voldemort kills James and Lilly-why not send the Death-eaters to do it?

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 58414

I realize this thread is getting a bit cold at this point, but I was 
thinking about this earlier today and wanted to respond.

On Sun, 18 May 2003, iamscabberstherat wrote:

> Does anyone else find it curious that Voldemort went to kill the
> Potters himself? Why didn't he send the Death-eaters to do it? 

I figure there were two reasons: 

1) It was too important to trust to anyone else.  We know from LV's
comments to the elder Crabbe and Goyle in GoF that his underlings have
screwed up royally in the past.  Better to let the all-powerful (in his
own mind, at least) and immortal Dark Lord do it himself than to risk
failure at the hands of one of his flunkies.  As the cliche says, 'If you
want something done right, do it yourself.'

2) He wasn't sure which of his Death Eaters he could trust.  He must have
known there was a spy among his ranks, someone who tipped off the Potters
that he was after them, sending them into hiding.  Sirius and Remus both
knew about the spy, so presumably Pettigrew, LV's inside man, knew as
well.  Given that, if LV had turned the Potter murders over to one or more
DEs, he could have inadvertently been giving the spy the opportunity to
save their lives.


----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"