Why did LV kill JP? (WAS: Why is everyone so convinced the prophecy is correct?)

[adsong16]

No: HPFGUIDX 82302

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "arrowsmithbt" <
arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:

Laura:
> I'm also wondering if James's death had any protective power for 
> Harry. After all, James also died protecting his child, as well as 
> his wife. But I still don't agree that LV's reaction to the 
> prophecy (or the part he knew) would lead him to kill Lily and 
> James. 


Kneasy:
Did he have any choice? He gets a message from Igor!Peter - "Hey,
Boss! That idiot Black has just told me where the Potters are!"
Yippee! It's let's play at Herod time!
Off he goes. James dies, details not known; Lily gets in the way,
so she has to die. They were collateral damage (what a phrase).
He did not set out specifically to kill them, but was quite prepared
to do so.


Now me (Gorda):

OK, perhaps this has been covered already, and maybe someone can point 
me to the right posts.

I have been wondering for a long time, even before OoP and all the prophecy 
business, why LV killed James Potter.

Now, it seems like a straightforward question, right? "well, duh" you say, "to 
kill Harry." BUT...

I don't have my book with me but I remember clearly that in GoF during the 
graveyard scene LV mentions that he went to the Potters' house and met 
James, and killed him. and then he says something like "But your mother 
need not have died, she died to protect you..." 

Then in the flashbacks that Harry has in PoA he actually hears confirmation of 
this story, he hears LV saying to Lily to stand aside.

Now, if LV had set out to kill the entire family, why would he be telling Lily to 
stand aside? And if he went there to kill Harry, and the parents got in the way, 
why would he have been willing to kill one but not the other outright?

Before OoP I figured that LV had some reason to want to kill all the remaining 
*male* Potters for some unknown reason. I had figured, like most of us, that a 
prophecy of some kind might be involved. But now that we know what the 
prophecy is, this doesn't make sense, because the prophecy, even in its 
incomplete form, would not have pointed towards James being any kind of 
threat, only Harry.

Now, the conspiracy theorists claim that DD was banking on Lily's sacrifice to 
protect Harry, and some people have argued against that, because there 
would have been no way for DD to be sure that LV wasn't going to kill Lily first. 
UNLESS DD knows that there is a reason BEYOND the prophecy for LV to 
want the Potter line destroyed, in which case he would have been able to 
prepare a protective charm that would be activated with Lily's sacrifice, 
knowing full well that Lily wasn't a target of LV.

Another alternative is that DD knows that LV would be reluctant to kill Lily for 
some unknown (to the reader) reason. I can't see LV having a soft spot for 
anyone, least of all a Mudblood, so it puzzles me that he wouldn't have just 
killed Lily and gotten on with it, rather than give her the chance to stand aside.

Does this make sense? Am I reading too much into this?

*nursing a twitching eye*

Gorda