To the Extreme

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 164857

snow15145:
> What if Voldy's Mom gave her powers away so that she could die? 
What if she gave her powers away to a very young child named Lily?  
Merope's powers would no longer save her from death and allow her to 
die. Lil' Lily would acquire Merope's power and become the first 
witch in the family.

Ceridwen:
The problem with this is, Lily wasn't born yet.  The various 
timelines place Tom Riddle's birth in the 1920s, while Lily, like the 
Marauders and Snape, were born in the late 1950s or in 1960.  He was 
old enough to have gone through Hogwarts and effected his changes to 
become Lord Voldemort instead of Tom Riddle before Lily started 
Hogwarts.  If Lily was old enough to have received Merope's powers 
this way, she would be older than Tom Riddle by at least a few days, 
and would not have been in school during the first Voldemort war.

Also, how does one give away one's powers?  She apparently lost the 
will to live, and the ability to do magic.  But this was more of an 
emotional response to losing the love of her life, as well as years 
of constant degredation from her father.  Maybe JKR could come up 
with some way for a witch or wizard to donate their powers to someone 
else, but at this time, it seems more to me that magical powers are 
like any other trait, and can't be passed to someone else any more 
than sight or hearing.

Ceridwen.