Why didn't Lily have to die?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 93487

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "tipgardner" <tipgardner at n...>
wrote:
> "justcarol67" wrote:
> > > Carol:
> > > <<<What *I* don't understand is how he could have thought that
> >>*any* mother would stand aside and let him kill her baby.>>>
> 
> Tip comments:
> I don't think he allows himself the capacity to understand such a love
> and despises what he does know of it.  I think he feels that
> self-interest and self-preservation are the two highest human instincts.
> 
> > Carol:
> > Yes, I'm very much aware that LV can't comprehend either love or
> > emotion in general and I'm familiar with the quotes you cited and
> > their implications. As I said in the part of my post that you
> >snipped: "Maybe all those years as a bodiless spirit possessing
> >snakes and rats robbed him of any knowledge of human psychology.
> 
> Tip points out:
> Except that the years of of bodiless spirit followed after Lily's
> sacrifice as a direct result of his work that night.  So he would not
> have lost human psychology if he knew it before that night, until
> after he killed Lily.


Oops. I must have been thinking of the years of wandering in which he
was transformed from the handsome boy, Tom Riddle, to the snake-faced
Lord Voldemort, seeker of immortality. At any rate, I do think he had
lost touch with human psychology, if he was ever familiar with it, or
he would have understood that, even with her husband presumably dead
(as Pippin pointed out in another post), a woman will protect her baby.

Carol