Why didn't Lily have to die?

[eloise_herisson]

No: HPFGUIDX 93412

greatelderone: 
>>why does a ruthless Dark Lord actually show an ounce
>> of mercy to Lily 

> Tyler:
> I don't think it was about mercy.  IMO,  LV gets off
> on the idea of having people cower before him;  he
> enjoys seeing fear in his victims.  He enjoys the
> feeling of dominance.  I think he warned Lily to stand
> aside because he expected her to comply out of fear. 
> When she didn't,  I think he decided to kill her as a
> way to try and maintain in his mind this belief that
> he can intimidate anyone.

While this may also be true, what greatelderone says is, I believe,  
correct:

>Lily (needn't) have died on the night 
> when Voldemort attacks the Potter residence. Voldemort himself 
> mentions it first in PS/SS and then later in POA we hear him tell 
> Lily to stand aside.




In PS/SS Voldemort does indeed say,

"I killed your father first and he put up a courageous fight...but 
your mother needn't have died...she was trying to protect you."

I think he *does* expect her to comply out of fear at this stage, but 
he also suggests that her death was unnecessary in a way that James' 
death wasn't. After all, you'd expect a mother to fight for her 
baby's life, so to suggest that there was any question that she might 
have got away with her life is strange. Perhaps Voldemort has some 
strange sense of chivalry, or perhaps this is a concrete example of 
Dumbledore's statement that the one thing he doesn't understand is 
love. We know her death was inevitable; Voldemort doesn't understand 
why she would do anything other than save her own skin. 

At the same time, he does *not* say that he killed James because he 
was trying to protect his family; he simply says that he killed James 
first, that James put up a brave fight. It is only when Harry relives 
the scene under the influence of the Dementors that we hear James is 
trying to field Voldemort whilst Lily gets Harry away. Voldemort's 
statement makes it sound on the contrary as if James, as well as 
Harry, was an intended victim, Lily merely a casualty of war, one who 
had to die because she got in the way.

I cannot imagine how she could have been allowed to get away with 
having witnessed Voldmort murdering her husband and son, though. I 
can't really imagine Voldemort taking the trouble to spare her and 
modify her memory when he was apparently AKing people all over the 
place and she was so strongly associated with two people he wanted 
dead. In fact the more I think about it, the more mystifying this 
statement of his that she needn't have died is.

~Eloise