Why didn't Lily run? (Was: James, a paragon of virtue?)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 123808


Tammy wrote:
> > Voldemort seems to be saying that he wouldn't have harmed her
[Lily], but what mother would have walked away from her child? 
>  
LegacyLady responded:
> Excellent point, Tammy!  But, could the answer to your question
about what mother would have "walked away" been ... Voldemort's
mother?!?  Do we know enough about HOW he ended up in the Muggle
orphanage to know that he wasn't abandoned?  
>  
> Voldemort seems to have not known love of any kind and has developed
a lifetime of resentment/hatred (toward Muggles) because of his father
"abandoning his mother when he discovered she was a witch".  But do we
know what ACTUALLY happened to HER?  Perhaps he truly believed that
Lily would leave Harry to him (as an infant) and just walk away.  
>  


Carol notes:
We do know what happened to her because Diary!Tom explains it to Harry
in SS/PS. Assuming that the Muggle orphanage told Tom the truth, and I
don't see why they wouldn't, his mother died immediately after he was
born, living just long enough to name him after his father and
grandfather. My thought is that she still loved the husband who
deserted her or she wouldn't have named her son for him, and I'm
guessing that she loved her father, too, or gave Tom the name Marvolo
as a clue to his wizard heritage. IMO, the names she gave him with her
dying breath were her last gift to him, along with his life.

But why a witch would die in childbirth or how her child could end up
in a Muggle orphanage has never been clear to me. I would guess,
though, that her own parents were already dead since Tom is the last
descendant of Slytherin and that descent comes through his mother. So
maybe, poor and ill and desperate, she went to a Muggle hospital to
give birth, knowing that her child would at least be taken care of if
not loved.

Carol, who believes that Tom's mother loved him but he never learned
to appreciate that love, in part because he never knew her and in part
because, in his view, his father's callous desertion outweighed his
mother's dying gift