Lily's protection for Harry

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 151791

Chrustoxos wrote:
> <snip> James had no choice because, as JKR said, LV wanted to
> kill him. He wanted him dead. So James could not flee, and could not
> offer his life for a bargain. As we see in the courtyard scene, book
> 4, and from real life, when we're offered something we already have
> (in this case, James' life) we give nothing back. It's ours.
> 
> Lily, on the other hand, was not just standing there: LV wanted her
> alive. She chose her death, and thence the protection for Harry.
<snip>

Carol responds:
But do we really have any evidence that LV wanted Lily alive? (Yes,
I've read the interview in which JKR picks up the questioner's word
"offers" and concedes that LV "offered" to let Lily live.) What we
have, IMO, is evidence that he wanted her to get out of his way:
"Stand aside, silly girl!" (He says much the same to Teen!Hagrid when
Hagrid tries to protect Aragog.) Essentially, as far as I can tell,
that's the extent of his "offer." ("Get out of the way and let me do
what I came to do and I won't kill you.")

James, as we know, received no such offer. He was armed and ready to
put up a fight; therefore he "had" to die. (LV was not going to tell
someone who was holding out a wand and ready to hex him to "stand
aside." that would be both futile and stupid.) Lily, as far as we can
determine, was unarmed and certainly *didn't* put up a fight (except
for blocking LV's path), and she offered her life for Harry's, so in a
sense, unlike James (who chose to fight but didn't offer his life in
exchange for Harry's), she *chose* to die. And, unlikely as it would
be for any mother in her position to make such such a choice, she
*could* have stood aside and let LV kill Harry, in which case,
according to JKR, she would have lived, presumably because LV would
have accomplished his objective. (Survivor!Lily, unarmed,
guilt-ridden, and distraught, would not have been worth killing in his
view. He would have been quite happy, IMO, to let her suffer.)

It is, of course, possible that Voldemort had some ulterior motive for
sparing her (in which case he violated his own interest by killing
her, a very unVoldemortish thing to do), but I see no need for such a
motive. She has a chance to move; she doesn't take it; he kills her.
But IMO, Voldemort's motive doesn't really matter. What I want to know
is how her sacrifice differs from that of any other WW parent who dies
protecting his or her child (without actually fighting, as James did,
because fighting apparently necessitates that parent's death in the
mind of LV or a DE). 

Certainly, parents protecting their children could not in itself be a
rare occurrence in the WW any more than it is in the RL, but according
to JKR, the specific circumstances of Lily's sacrifice had never
happened before. So the problem (for me) becomes how her sacrifice
differs from that of any mother in the same situation, regardless of
the would-be murderer's motive. I'm guessing that either 

1) LV and the DEs generally came after adults, killing children only
if they got in the way or caused trouble by trying to fight alongside
their parents, in which case there would be either no need or no
opportunity for a parent to step unarmed in front of a child (at least
not with any chance of survival)

or 

2) In those rare instances when LV and the DEs specifically intended
to kill children (and why would they do so, if no Prophecy was
involved, except possibly for sadistic pleasure?), the parents
generally either fought back as James did or used Side-Along
Apparition to get the children out of harm's way, as James seems to
have suggested to Lily ("Take Harry and run!"), instead of offering
their lives for their child's, as Lily did.

*Something* makes her sacrifice unique. Somehow, against what seems to
be common sense and human nature and the normal state of affairs
(i.e., any mother except the fortunately childless Bellatrix Lestrange
would have done what Lily did), Lily's specific action had never
occurred before. Is it *just* the fact that she stood in LV's way and
refused his "offer" (more like an order) to "stand aside," and the
ancient magic worked simply because she could have because she could
have chosen to obey him and lived but chose not to do so? Or is her
offer to trade her life for Harry's ("Kill me instead!") what's really
important? Or, as others on this list have suggested, does Voldemort's
violation of this "agreement" (by trying to kill Harry when he's
already accepted Lily's death as a substitute for Harry's) set off a
magical reaction, the ancient magic, as a consequence of attempting to
violate an inviolable magical contract (one life for another)?

Carol, who has no answers but thinks that Voldemort's motives are less
important than whatever activated the ancient magic