FAQs: Lily died before James?

[Rebecca]

No: HPFGUIDX 103463

Bren <Agent_Maxine_is at h...> wrote:

> But why did the traitor use VM's wand? It's more powerful? But it's
> not his own wand... But the wand chooses the wizard... Dunno, too
> many questions...


*delurking*

I've thought about this. (Please forgive me if anyone else has had
the same thoughts and has already in effect posted this message.)
Let's suppose that there was at least one extra party, besides
Pettigrew, on hand at GH, and let us further suppose that that extra
party was on LV's side. It seems to me that JKR has recently as good
as told us that Lily died before James died. That part at least looks
as though it's been settled, though I'm aware that other people have
thought as much before and have turned out to be wrong.

Canon depicts James Potter as a fierce contender, and one imagines
that he would prove scarcely less fierce in defense of his wife and
child. So I assume that while LV is giving Lily the "stand aside
silly girl" speech and preparing to kill Harry, James Potter isn't
busy fixing snacks in the kitchen--if he's not there defending his
wife and his kid it's because he's been disabled/knocked out. Either
that, or he's being kept occupied with an ongoing fight elsewhere in
the house or in the yard. We know what happens upstairs: LV kills
Lily, tries to kill Harry, and gets transformed into Vapomort. Here's
what I think happens after the transformation takes place: at the
point of the transformation, LV's wand falls to the floor. Voldemort
had a substantial physical form and could hold onto a wand, but
Vapomort doesn't, and can't. (LV complains about this retrospectively
in GoF.) 

LV's ally, being a DE and bound to LV, feels it when LV is
transformed and diminished. James Potter, extraordinary wizard that
he is, has put up a stupendous fight. The DE/LV minion who has been
battling Potter Senior has gotten the better of him by a bare margin,
and possibly through the use of an untoward trick or two, but has
done so at the cost of the destruction of his own wand. When LV turns
into El Vape and his wand bites the dust, his minion has every reason
to try to retrieve it and fast. First, he has no wand of his own.
Next, he realizes that something horrible has happened to his master
and that every scrap of malign power which can be rescued from the GH
wreckage may be needed by his fellow DE's in the future. (We know
that there are DE's who've made a habit of collecting LV
memorabilia--why would Lucius Malfoy be walking around with Tom
Riddle's diary at the beginning of CoS?)

So LV's DE servitor and ally, the fifth person on the scene, goes
after the dropped wand immediately. Apparates, probably. He zaps
himself upstairs, sees the dead Lily and the scarred Harry, refrains
from attacking Harry because he deduces (correctly) that Harry has
been in some manner responsible for the virtual destruction of his
master, and because he realizes that Harry, as an infant, will not be
able to identify him after the fact. James, on the other hand, is an
adult, and will be able to identify the Fifth Man, so the Fifth Man
must destroy him. The Fifth Man goes back downstairs and does so.
This leaves us with James dead, Lily dead, the Potter house in ruins,
and the scarred Harry waiting to be scooped up by The OOP Cavalry
from Hogwarts. El Vape thins out and whines upon the winds. Pettigrew
flees. This leaves the unknown DE (who may or may not also have been
a member of OOP) holding LV's wand and either preparing to flee
himself or waiting for his befooled fellow-members of the OOP to show
up. BTW, I don't think this guy *is* a member, past or future, of the
OOP. I think he did flee the GH scene along with Pettigrew, though
not necessarily in Pettigrew's company. I think this fifth party is a
unipolar DE because he's got LV's wand (he's lost his own) and such
an aquisition would certainly be noted and commented upon within the
OOP ranks. It would be kind of hard to explain. But it would be a
perfect accessory for an upwardly-mobile DE.

Why do I need five people, not four, to be present at GH? I'd suppose
that this extra party to be the same person who ratted out the
Potters to LV, because that supposition accounts for the greatest
number of known facts with the least amount of fuss, were it not that
we already know who betrayed the Potters' hiding place--it was Peter
Pettigrew. When Pettigrew killed the Muggles whom he murdered in
order to provide him with his cover story, he did not do it with the
wand which LV wielded at GH, and which LV later wields during the
cemetary scene in GoF. That wand, when subjected to the Priori
Incantatem, yields up a record of the deaths it has caused, and the
Muggles Pettigrew killed are not among the specters which emerge from
it. Pettigrew committed his murders with his own wand. My notion is
that James was killed with LV's wand but not by LV himself. 

Which is likely to provide Harry with still more vengeance work... 

Sincerely,
A. A. A.

*relurking*