Harry at the Dursleys

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 118393


Pippin wrote:
> > 
> > James instructed Lily to "Take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run!  
> I'll hold him off." Clearly he had some means of escape in mind. 
> > But Harry was in his cot when Lily died (per the website), so she 
> > wasn't fleeing the house with him when she died. Knowing that 
> > Voldemort would never stop hunting Harry, she  chose to give up 
> > her life,  and the love and the home she could have made for 
> > him, in order to give him the blood protection. Since this is 
> > ancient magic, it is something she could have known about. 
> > Dumbledore understood what she had done, and honored her 
> > sacrifice by taking Harry to live with the Dursleys. 
> > 
> 
Lupinlore responded:
> Well, IMO, and it is of course my opinion, a much more plausible 
> explanation is that Voldemort swept through James while Lily was 
> paralyzed with fear and before she could act on James' warning.  
> Thinking all that through in the few moments between James' warning 
> and Voldemort entering the room would be quite a trick.


Carol notes:
There's also the possibility that Lily, who was noted for her skill
with Charms, put some sort of protective charm on Harry that could
only be activated by her self-sacrifice. That, to me, is the only
explanation for her insistence on Voldemort killing her instead of
Harry. Self-sacrifice in itself seems insufficient to bring about the
ancient magic that both Voldemort and Dumbledore speak of. (I think
Dudmbledore may have taught her the Charm as a desperation measure, a
fallback in case the Fidelius Charm was insufficient.) If you're
interested, you can find a much more elaborate discussion of this idea
in back posts.

At any rate, I think Lily knew what she was going to do and didn't
tell James. There was no thinking it through at the last minute. She
was prepared to die saving her child. And she wasn't paralyzed with
fear or she wouldn't have blocke Voldemort's way or begged him to kill
 her, not Harry. She was, in her way, extremely courageous.

Carol, wondering if "cot" is British for what we Americans call a crib