Did Harry Notice?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182926

Pippin wrote:
> 

<snip> As usual, Voldemort got it backwards, it was James who didn't
have to die.

Carol responds:
In that case, JKR and Dumbledore have it wrong, too.

Pippin:
 If he hadn't rushed headlong to defend his wife and child, if he'd
let them face Voldemort alone, then both James and Harry would have
lived. <snip>

Carol responds:
If Lily had fought as James did, *she* wouldn't have been given the
choice to die. But James would not have been given the choice. You're
taking away the significance of Snape's going to Voldemort to ask him
to spare Lily, which resulted in LV's actually ordering Lily two or
three times to step aside. So it's not just choosing to die, as Lily
did; it's having the opportunity to make the choice in the first
place. Had Snape not made that request, all three Potters would have
died: no chance to live for Lily; no choice to die on her part; no
mistaken decision to break his word and "prudently" kill them all on
Voldemort's. If he had either killed just her and left Harry alone,
honoring *her* choice (which, of course, would not have happened) or
honored his word to Snape and let Lily live, perhaps just Stunning
her, and then killed Harry, his plan to thwart the Prophecy would have
worked--no Vapor!mort; no Chosen One.

But, again, just stepping in front of your child and choosing to die
(like the German woman in DH) is not enough. You have to be given a
chance to live in the first place and forfeit that chance.

That's why it doesn't matter, in terms of Harry's survival (as opposed
to our view of James), whether James (who also, in effect, chose to
die by confronting Voldemort wandless) had a wand or not and whether
he fought a futile but courageous battle with Voldemort or foolishly
left his wand on the sofa. His death had no effect on Harry's survival
or the ancient magic, which only worked because Voldemort gave Lily a
choice. His killing her after giving her a chance to live *and* her
choice to die *together* turned her death into a self-sacrifice with
the power of ancient love magic, in contrast to James's, which was an
ordinary death like that of the McKinnons, who no doubt fought bravely
to save their family and failed.

Lily's death is different from all the rest because she, unlike them,
had a chance to live and chose not to take it, asking Voldemort to
kill her instead of him. Her death activated the magical protection so
that when Voldemort tried to kill Harry, the spell backfired and would
have killed him had it not been for the Horcruxes. No one else's
death, sacrifice or not, has that power because no one else was given
a chance to live and chose to die.

In Voldemort's mind and in Dumbledore's, James had to die. Voldemort
was not going to leave him alive, nor did he have any reason to do so.
And had it not been for Snape, he would have felt exactly the same way
about Lily, who would no more have been given a chance to live than
Marlene McKinnon or the German mother were.

Carol, whose Internet connection has been acting up, crossing her
fingers that the problem is now solved