Why Voldemort Would Have Spared Lily

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 112528

Asian_lovr2 (Steve) wrote:
> > 
> > As a matter of fact, I do have a theory, I don't think Voldemort 
> would have spared Lily. I think at that moment, he had his main 
> objective in sight, and everything else was just a distraction. So,
when Voldemort told Lily to stand aside, he was really say, stand
aside I've got more important things to do than bother with you,
rather than saying, stand aside because you don't /have/ to die. 
> > 
> > At that point in time, Lily was inconsequential, but she became so
much of an annoyance and distraction from his real objective that
Voldemort killed her just to simplify things. 
> > 
> 
> GEO: Then why did he tell her to stand aside? So far the Voldemort 
> we've seen also tries and takes care of the messy details such as 
> those standing in front or alongside his target such as in the 
> instance of Cedric and probably Lily and James imo. Yet in this 
> instance he told her to stand aside instead of just using the 
> killing curse on her. 
> 
> Second if he was going to kill her anyways, why exactly would it be 
> a sacrifice on Lily's part if she was going to die anyways? Most 
> sacrifices usually entail you relinquish something of value and I 
> hardly see her few more minutes of life after Voldemort kills Harry 
> as something to be sacrificed. And why hasn't this sort of love 
> sacrifice happened more often. The WW is again a violent world and 
> putting children and parents to the wand it seems is a common 
> enought practice even during Voldemort's reign and seeing how 
> parents being parents wouldn't there have been a more regular 
> occurance of such a thing if all it entailed was the parents 
> standing in front of their children and protecting them by dying 
> first?
> 
> And lets not forget if he was going to kill her anyways why was this 
> detail repeatedly put in three of the HP books(PS, POA, GOF) and why 
> has Rowling herself said that we were going to learn something 
> important about Lily in the finale unless.
> 
Steve:
> > Had Lily stepped aside, Voldemort may or may not have killed her
on his way out based on nothing more than his mood at the moment.
> 
> GEO: Why? Aside from being a potential victim, she was one of his 
> major enemies in the Order who survived three encounters against him 
> and aside from that she was a muggle born which Voldemort seem to 
> have a special place in his heart for.
>
Steve: 
> > I also have this theory that Voldemort and the DE's like to leave 
at least one person standing to bear witness and tell the chilling
horrific tale of the mighty Voldemort and his clan of spineless but
ruthless toadies.
> 
> GEO: So far the evidence seems to point out that the DEs guts the 
> entire household or at least in the instances of OOTP members. He 
> seems to have killed Edgar Bone's family and also the McKinnons it 
> seems without leaving survivors.

Carol responds:
Granted that the DEs generally destroy whole households, but this is
no ordinary circumstance (and it's Voldemort himself, not one of his
henchmen, if that matters). *In this instance* Voldemort was trying to
thwart the Prophecy--ALL that mattered to him was killing Harry, the
only one who could potentially destroy him. Lily didn't matter because
she wasn't the One. (James *had* to be fought because he was armed
with his wand and offering resistance. Lily was just in the way,
unarmed, as far as we can tell, and was merely blocking his path to
Harry--a nuisance and an obstacle but not a threat (a "foolish girl,"
to use his own words.) Maybe at some other time he would have thought
it necessary or desirable to kill her as a member of the Order who had
previously defied him (whatever that may involve). Certainly he would
have done so had she attempted to duel with him as James did. But
there was, in this instance, no need to kill Lily. He just wanted to
get to Harry to kill *him*. Then he could have considered what to do
with the weeping and hysterical Lily. Kill her, too, or leave her to
suffer, lamenting her irreparable losses as he flouted his
invincibility? I think he'd prefer the second option because it's
crueler and more arrogant.

What he didn't know, of course, is that Lily *had* to die *before*
Harry, offering her life for his, for the "ancient magic" to work.
(Obviously if Harry died first, her death would no longer be a
self-sacrifice. It would just be a second murder that would not
restore the life of her dead child.) And I agree that more was
involved than the sacrifice itself since such sacrifices must be
fairly common, probably some charm previously placed on Harry by Lily
herself that would be triggered by the combination of her own
self-sacrifice and an AK aimed at Harry. (The charm would have created
the scar at the moment of impact and deflected the curse onto
Voldemort. Whether it will provide additional protection in the
future, I can't say.)

To return to Voldemort, who most certainly did not hesitate to kill
Lily out of benevolence or affection or respect, none of which he's
capable of feeling: Maybe, just maybe, he was vaguely suspicious of
Lily's urgent pleas to kill her instead of Harry. Maybe he had heard
of her skill with charms and some instinct at first held him back from
killing her. But two things (IMO)--his contempt for her as a
Muggleborn and his obsession with killing Harry--prevented him from
acting on this instinct. His underestimation of Lily very nearly
destroyed him. Even though she was not the One who could destroy him,
she enabled Harry to become that One--by saving him in his infancy and
giving him time to gain the strength and skill to confront Voldemort
when the time finally came, and meanwhile hindering Voldemort by
deflecting the curse onto him.

I think Lily knew exactly what she was doing (except that she didn't
intend a transfer of powers to Harry or a bond of communication
created by the scar), whereas Voldemort understood nothing--neither
the power of love that would never allow any mother to "stand aside"
so her child could be murdered, nor her courage, which seemed to him
like hysteria and folly, nor the extent of Lily's skill with
protective charms.

Carol, who apologizes for the three typos in her previous post, which
she didn't have time to proofread because someone was at the door