Who was involved in James and Lily's death? was Re: Were Dumbledore & Snape

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 90301

 Irina:
>> No, I don't think it was overheard after the fact, I don't think
it was overheard at all. I think that someone who LV trusted, but 
who  was really playing for the other side (probably Snape) 
reported only  the first part to LV on purpose - to make sure that 
LV took the steps necessary for his own downfall, but without 
knowing their significance.<<

In that case, Dumbledore lied to Harry. "My -- our-- one stroke of 
good fortune was that the eavesdropper was detected only a 
short way into the prophecy and was thrown from the building." 
This is a flat statement, very different from the equivocations and 
evasions Dumbledore has employed when  skating on the thin 
ice of truth...and why bother with  verbal acrobatics if he's willing 
to lie outright anyway? 

Dumbledore doesn't seem to know in PS/SS exactly how Harry 
survived. It could be that he was acting on a guess rather than a 
certainty when he decided that the blood of Harry's mother would 
have a special potency.  Harry himself at the end of first year told 
Dumbledore that his mother had died to save him, and it may 
have been only then that Dumbledore learned for certain that his 
guess was right. But it is canon that Lily was gifted in Charms. 
Possibly  she had an interest in ancient magic, and discussed 
with Dumbledore, or with Nicholas Flammel, the making   of a 
charm of protection on Harry which would be activated if she 
gave her life for him.

As for how Dumbledore knew so quickly that the Potters had 
been attacked,  perhaps  Godric's Hollow  was being monitored 
by  magical portrait (Bowman Wright?) or by Floo powder. This 
could explain Lupin's "You heard James?" comment

The delay between the time of the prophecy and the birth of Harry 
makes it possible that James and Lily had not yet defied 
Voldemort three times when it was given and this opens some  
interesting possibilities. 

Perhaps Voldemort didn't think Lily had defied him the requisite 
number of times when he confronted her, and this is why he 
wanted her to stand aside. It is also possible that the person 
who turned the Prophecy over to Voldemort thought it would 
apply to the Longbottoms and *not* James and Lily. Perhaps the 
eavesdropper thought he was *shielding* James and Lily, not 
betraying them. Ah, irony! But who was it?

It would be interesting if all three of James's best friends had 
betrayed him in some way. Elkins posted once that if so,  this 
was the fateful consequence of the  habits of secrecy and 
deception that they had developed to hide their lawlessness in 
their Marauder days. And, I would add, the same sort of denial 
that Dumbledore engaged in when he decided to keep the truth 
from Harry.

When Dumbledore says, "What did I care if numbers of 
nameless and faceless people and creatures were 
slaughtered..."  he is confessing that he  knew he wasn't living 
up to his principles. But the werewolf adventures could not have 
happened had James and his friends not put Lupin's welfare 
and happiness above the lives of others. 

What if Lupin felt that he needed to repay this? What if he was 
the one who overheard part of the Prophecy, and turned it over to 
Voldemort believing it would protect James and Lily, not seal 
their fate? James and Lily's luck in eluding the Dark Lord doesn't 
seem to have been common knowledge even in the Order. In 
PS/SS, Hagrid says that Voldemort killed everyone who stood up 
to him but.. "Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who never 
tried to get [James and Lily] on his side before." And yet 
Dumbledore tells us in OOP that by the time of Harry's birth they 
had narrowly escaped Voldemort three times! 

If the eavesdropper was Lupin, that would explain both the 
resemblance of his boggart to a prophecy orb, his 
representation of it as the full moon, and his reluctance to have 
anything to do with Sybil Trelawney.

.
Pippin