Why didn't Lily have to die?

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 93557

I have been reading this conversation with great interest--it seems to get at the central 
dilemma of the series.

I have two thoughts that have occurred to me:<ul>
<li> LV may have intended the statement, "she needn't have died", to have exactly the 
effect on Harry that it has had on us--torture
<li> It may be that AK takes a lot out of even a powerful dark wizard like Lord Thingy. 
You'll notice, in the MoM battle in OotP, the Death Eaters don't simply blast away with 
green flashes. Why not? Well, clearly the magic is both difficult and draining. Perhaps LV 
wanted to make sure he could achieve his primary objective for coming to Godric's 
Hollow--Harry's destruction--and didn't want to run the risk of shooting his bolt by killing 
Lily. As it turns out, he is forced to do so. Perhaps (too many suppositions here, sorry) this 
is part of the reason that the curse rebounds on him when he is finally able to turn on 
Harry? (Just watched the first movie again last night with my kids, and the scene where 
toddler!Harry is gazing up at LV's wand really gave me the heebyjeebies...)
</ul>

Antosha, who is absolutely certain we're going to get yet another Rashomon-like view of 
the scene at Godric's Hollow in Book 7

- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "greatelderone" <greatelderone at y...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Kimberly" <ekrbdg at m...> wrote:
> > (Kimberly's comments)
> > I can't even imagine what we could find out about her that would 
> make Voldemort reluctant to kill her.   Clearly being a blood 
> relative won't have mattered because he's already proved that won't 
> even stop him.    I wonder what it could be ?    
> 
> Greatelderone:
> Thats the one million dollar question here. Whatever it could be 
> could be the same reason why she was able to defy Voldemort three 
> times before.
>  
>  
> > (Kimberly's comments)
> > It is quite uncharacteristic but, looking at it from a flip side... 
> in order for Harry to have the protective bond of Lily's sacrifice, 
> she had to die to protect him.   Now, naturally Lily didn't know this 
> and certainly Voldemort didn't but JKR did.    Perhaps she wrote it 
> like that simply to add the element of Lily's sacrifice and the 
> affect of it on Harry as well as the long term affect it could have 
> on the entire plot line.    IMO, that's why Lily had to die in the 
> book.    As to why Voldemort stated it later on, perhaps he was just 
> remarking that it wasn't necessary.     
> 
> Greatelderone:
> I agree her sacfice is one of the keypoints of the book. However if 
> Voldemort was just going to kill her after her son then I don't 
> really see how it's a sacrifice.