GH again (was Re: Why Voldemort Would Have Spared Lily)

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 112046

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "gelite67" <gelite67 at y...> wrote:
> Angie is deeply puzzled:
> 
> How could she not pose a threat?  At that point she would have 
> concluded that he had just killed her husband and he was clearly 
> trying to kill her son.  If the prophecy is correct (don't get me 
> started on that), then she and James had defeated LV three times 
> already -- how could she not be a threat????

Well, she's hasn't defeated him him 3 times - she, either alone or in
conjunction with James, has *defied* him 3 times. 
A very different thing. Saying "No" is not the same as kicking the
crap out of someone.

Godric's Hollow is a problem. A key event that is outside the time-
line of the books. All we have been given are memories/visions from
Harry (invariably when under extreme mental/emotional stress),
and a couple of sneering rants by Voldy. Frustrating.

As such it provides an opportunity for posters to indulge in all
kinds of assumptions, suppositions, guesses, wishful-thinking
or devious hypotheses. No prizes for fingering which category
is Kneasys not-so-happy hunting ground.

Let's go over what we have been told, remembering that there 
are hints that all may not be as it seems.

James and Lily are in hiding.
They have a Secret Keeper and they are betrayed.
Voldy turns up one dark night.
James is killed.
Voldy bursts into the house, tries to brush Lily aside, then kills her.
Harry gets a scar, Voldy dis-corporates, the house is a ruin.

Seems fairly straight-forward -  but is it?
James and Lily are young - early 20s is the best guess, and though 
they might be pretty competent with their wands, they're no match
for Voldy. No-one is, except DD. This is a situation where discretion
is probably the better part of valour, and this is apparently what a
memory voice (James - or assumed to be so by Harry, but Lupin's 
reaction might indicate otherwise) has in mind:-

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off -"
The sounds of someone stumbling from a room - a door bursting
open - a cackle of high-pitched laughter -  (PoA chap. 12)

For whatever reason (lack of time, choice, confusion) she doesn't.
We've been told by JKR that Harry was in his cot, and again, for
whatever reason (fear, not having her wand to hand) Lily does not 
try to fight Voldy. Instead we have:-

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"
"Stand aside, you silly girl...stand aside now..."
"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead -"
.
.
"Not Harry!  Please...have mercy....have mercy..."
(PoA chap. 9)

Add the memory of a green flash and a high cold laugh that Harry
recalls in PS/SS chap 4 and we can make a fair guess about the
sequence of events that night without having to believe anything
Voldy tells us.  But for many of us there are still gaps that need to
be filled - and since JKR has hasn't, we try doing it ourselves.

Questions:
Was there someone else there that night? Was it James' voice that
called to Lily? Was it James that stumbled from the room?

Well, it's quite possible that someone else was there - who raised
the alarm and spread news of the event all over the WW by dawn?
And a number of characters seem to be pretty sure how Harry got
his scar - despite the fact that a) nobody had ever survived an AK
before, so scars from one are no more than an educated guess 
based on what they believe occured, b) we have been told that
there is *no* protection against an AK and c) DD says "we may
never know what happened."

Why didn't Lily run, why didn't Lily fight?

All sorts of ideas here. There's the "ancient magic" protective spell
which won't work *unless* Lily dies, of course. Still, that seems
vaguely unattractive - if she ran she might escape, or even be
killed as she runs. No, it could be that she's forcing Voldy's hand.
As a final act of defiance she's tricking Voldy into triggering the
protective spell. Harry will now be safe. 

James died because he fought. Lily could have done the same
but didn't. It just might be that fighting is not enough; a totally
unambiguous sacrifice is needed to trigger the spell - unarmed, 
unresisting, voluntary. And Voldy  played his part. He didn't have
to kill Lily, she wasn't his target, she wasn't fighting, she was merely
an inconvenient obstruction. In Voldy's mind she brought it on 
herself - which was exactly her intention.
 
I've never believed that Lily came up with the idea of this protection
on her own. "Ancient magic"  sounds more like DD's doing to me, not
something a young witch not long out of school would be competent
with. He more  or less tells us so in the explication at the end of OoP:

"And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient
magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has
always, therefore, underestimated -  to  his cost. I am speaking, of
course, of the fact that your mother died to save you." 

He then goes on about 'blood protection', placing Harry with the 
Dursleys, but I think it's clear that the 'sacrifice gambit' was his idea. 
Incidentally, it also indicates that either he didn't trust the security 
arrangements or *knew* that they would fail - in advance. 

Her words - "Not Harry, take me.." in combination with Harry's recall
of *one* green flash (with the intriguing possibility that he hears the
"high, cold laughter" *after* the flash) is significant to some. Because
that would mean he saw the flash that killed Lily, but not the one
aimed at himself (Voldy wouldn't be laughing after it'd rebounded 
and hit him.) 

A small dedicated band of posters wonder if Voldy did come with the
intention of AKing Harry. Maybe he had something else in mind...that
"take me" -  very interesting phrase, especially if you've already been
promoting 'Possession' theories to explain how Tom became Voldy.
Some posit that in offering herself Lily ensnares Voldy in a magical
contract by offering her own life in exchange for Harry's, a contract
which causes his AK against Harry to backfire when he tries to break
the terms and conditions, but that doesn't explain why there only 
seems to be one flash. Or why there was a transfer of powers.

And then JKR pops up with a question she says we should be 
considering- "Why didn't Voldy die?" 
Many suggested that it was because Voldy wasn't truly alive, but there 
is another possible answer: it wasn't an AK that bounced -  it was 
something else. Voldy sees Harry as a future contender, a wizard as
powerful as himself ("his equal") -  why not take those powers, why
not combine those powers with his own? There is, after all, no reason
why Voldy's own powers should be transferred to Harry by an AK. It's
a killing curse, not a mind transfer spell.

Just what  spell was  involved is open to question. Would it have still
killed Harry  after emptying his mind of anything useful -  or did
Voldy intend to take over Harry's body and combine it with his own?
Whatever - it didn't work properly - Voldy vanishes (and just what 
happened to his body, I'd like to know) and Harry gets a transplant.

What happened to the house is also interesting. It's been pointed
out that AKs can cause damage (the fountain in the MoM; headstones)
but these are AKs  that *missed*. If there was one that bounced off 
Harry and hit Voldy it didn't touch the house at all. The house should
be undamaged. Maybe the force of Voldy dis-corporating did it.
And maybe it wasn't an AK after all.

Kneasy