The Evil of Voldemort; Lily's choice

[Tonks]

No: HPFGUIDX 146715

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Andrea Grevera" 
<agdisney at m...> wrote:
> 
>   Maybe Voldy wanted to see if all mothers were the same.  His 
mother, in his eyes, selfishly gave up her life and left Voldy to 
the orphanage.  LV expected Lily be selfish too and to stand aside 
and save her life.  Instead Lily did what Merope wouldn't or 
couldn't, she gave up her life so she could protect the life of her 
son and in doing so brought LV down with her.

Tonks:

I don't think that LV's mother "gave" her life. (JKR said that when 
Lily died for Harry, that no one had ever done that before.) LV's 
mother just died from the compactions of childbirth. At the time of 
Tom's birth women could still die in childbirth. She may have been 
weak from malnutrition and the stress of being homeless.  Just 
because she was a witch doesn't mean that she could beat death. This 
is, of course, what her son tries to do. No doubt his mother's death 
had an impact on him. Probably a "what if" sort of thing. I am sure 
that it contributed to his twisted mentality somehow.  But the point 
here is that Merope didn't "give" her life, she just died.

As to why Lily didn't have to die. There have been many ideas here. 
One is that she worked in the Department of Mysteries and LV needed 
to get information from her. Someone once said that since she was a 
Mudblood she wasn't worth the bother. Also he may have wanted to 
torture her with the memory of her son and husband's death so that 
she would give LV the secrets in the Department of Mysteries that 
would help him. Maybe he thought that she would want to join up with 
him to figure out how to bring them back??  Maybe he was going to 
have her work in his potions lab with Snape. OR it isn't anything 
really big and when we find out we will all say.. "huh?? that is all 
there was to it?!"

Tonks_op