Lily's protection for Harry

[inkling_rg]

No: HPFGUIDX 151858

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

> Regarding the confusion, if you take Snape out of the picture, 
there
> isn't any, or at least, not much. As you say, Harry is the threat, 
the
> Prophecy Boy who can vanquish LV at some future point and must
> therefore, in his view, be destroyed. What other motive does 
Voldemort
> need (except perhaps the additional intention of creating a Horcrux
> with the soul bit from this highly significant murder)? James 
comes at
> him, armed and dangerous, and "has" to die, but Lily, apparently
> unarmed, merely stands in his way. Rather than waste time and 
energy
> fighting her, he orders her out of his way. The "silly girl" 
doesn't
> get it; all she has to do is allow him to accomplish his objective 
and
> she can live. (Why doesn't she stop screaming and sobbing and just
> move? he wonders. Doesn't she value her own life?)


Inkling:
I always love your posts, Carol, but this time I have to disagree. 
Look at what you've just written: She was an unarmed woman. How 
would he be wasting his time "fighting" her? An AK takes one and 
half seconds, significantly less than it takes to try to reason a 
weeping and hysterical mother into giving a maniac a clear shot at 
her son.

Also, re: Tom Riddle's 'stand aside' to Hagrid as a parallel to what 
happened in Godric's Hollow. Interesting observation, but let's 
remember that at that stage in Tom's life, he hadn't personally 
killed *anyone* yet--it's no surprise that he didn't AK Hagrid in 
the middle of Hogwarts. But Lord Voldemort at the height of his 
reign of terror, giving a known Order member the chance to live, for 
no good reason?  

To see how likely *that* is, I think it's more helpful to look at 
that *other* example of how a fully grown, fully evil LV treats 
people who get in the way of his mission to kill Harry Potter--
Cedric. Cedric's also no threat, certainly as irrelevant as you 
believe Lily is (moreso, actually, since she was a skilled Order 
member who had already defied him three times)-- and what does LV 
do? He doesn't bumble around with offering Cedric any chances to run 
away or take the cup and go home--he kills him. Simple and 
efficient. And more or less instinctual by this point, I think. 

I actually think the Cedric scene was put in partly to show that 
offering to spare Lily did not come naturally to LV. Quite the 
contrary. LV's a pragmatist at heart, I think, and there was nothing 
pragmatic about offering Lily chance after chance to step aside--
unless there was something else in it for him.

Also, there's this little interview snippet from last year:

ES:This is one of my burning questions since the third book - why 
did Voldemort offer Lily so many chances to live? Would he actually 
have let her live?

JKR: Mmhm.

ES: Why?

JKR: [silence] Can't tell you. 


In other words: Bangs imminent. And while your scenario is pretty 
coherent and sensible, it is not bangy. Now, for what it's worth, I 
do agree that this will probably be one bang that Snape has very 
little to do with. (I love the idea of Snape/Lily, but even I find 
the theory that LV offered to spare Lily as a reward for Snape to be 
rather boring, and too distasteful for JKR to write into the books 
anyway.)

The more I think about it, the more I like the theory that LV wanted 
Lily for some unique talent or knowledge of her own-- possibly 
something related to her job (which we still know nothing about). 
But as fond as I'm getting of that theory, I have to admit that it 
raises the question of why LV didn't just stupify her, kill Harry, 
and take her back to Dark Lord Headquarters with him....

Inkling
(That was an awkwardly morbid last line...)