Did Harry Notice?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182929

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.
> 
> zgirnius:
> No, they do not. Who said James had to die? That was Voldemort's 
choice, just as it was his choice not to kill Lily (initially). 
Voldemort had no particular reason to kill James *or* Lily, their 
deaths did not serve any particuaor purpose of which we ever leran, 
he just decided he would kill the whole family. 

Carol responds:
He was killing off the Order members one by one. Would he have killed
the McKinnons and left the Potters? I doubt it. In any case, Snape
tells DD that he's after the entire family. He wouldn't be in a panic
over Lily if LV hadn't made it clear that he intended to kill the
parents. (He could, of course, have Stunned them, but they're enemies
and he has no reason to spare them--*other than* Snape's request to
spare Lily and only Lily.

zgirnius:
> The only one he had any reason at all to kill, was Harry, because he
feared/believed the Prophecy. It said nothing about any threat posed
by Harry's parents.

Carol:
Aside from their having "defied him three times"? I'm sure he "deemed
it prudent" to prevent a fourth attempt.

zgirnius: 
> Now, once Voldemort decided to kill them all (a choice owing, it 
would seem, to his tendency to solve most problems that way, see e. 
g. "The Elder Wand"), it transpired that Snape asked him for Lily's 
life, and so Voldemort decided he might change his mind about killing
them all.

Carol responds:
Or, rather, he decided to give *Lily* a chance to live. That
chance--and choice--were never extended to James.

At any rate, I'm not sure that you understand my point. I was saying
that *if* Pippin is right--and I don't think that she is--Dumbledore
and Voldemort were wrong. I, however, think that they were right.

"Who said James had to die?" By my count, Voldemort himself, Snape and
Dumbledore.

Here's the canon for their statements to that effect.

Voldemort tells Harry:

"I killed your father first, and he put up a courageous fight . . .
but your mother needn't have died . . . . she was trying to protect
you" (SS Am. ed. 294, ellipses in original).

Harry repeats this information to DD: "Voldemort said that he only
killed my mother because she tried to stop him from killing me. But
why would he want to kill me in the first place?"

DD of course doesn't answer that question but he repeats that Harry's
mother died to save him and that it was *her* love that protected
Harry. (Why hers? Because she, unlike James, had a choice to live and
didn't take it. James, in contrast, had to die because LV had deciede
that he would.)

Snape tells Dumbledore that Voldemort plans to "hunt her [Lily]
down--kill them all--"

DD reminds him that the Prophecy refers to a boy born at the end of
July and asks if Snape could not ask LV for mercy for the mother in
exchange for the son; Snape says that he's done so. DD contempptuously
says, "you do not care, then about the deaths of her husband and child?"

Snape asks him to "hide them all, then. Keep her--them--safe. Please"
(678).

It's clear from Snape's panic and SS's response that the parents are
in as much danger as their child and that he plans to dispatch the
whole family. (James and Lily are, after all, Order members, and the
DEs are killing off the Order one by one.) As Hagrid says, "nobody
lived once he [Voldemort] decided to kill 'em." (Doesn't Sirius say
something similar?)

At any rate, LV clearly intends to kill all the Potters until Snape
gives him a reason to spare Lily. That's why she, but not James, is
given the all-important chance to live, making possible the choice to
live or die that activates the ancient magic. DD's response makes
clear that he, too, believes (despite knowing the entire Prophecy)
that LV will kill the whole family.

Voldemort again:

"My curse was deflected by the woman's foolish sacrifice" (GoF Am. ed.
653)--nothing about James's death being a sacrifice or having the
power of ancient magic. (That, of course, is why LV wants to have
harry's blood in his veins. DD on this occasion is not much help--all
we get in the infamous gleam in his eye.)

Harry's Dementor memories show, again and again, that it's Lily and
only Lily, who has a chance to live: "Stand aside, silly girl!" The
scenario is repeated in detail in "Bathilda's Secret" in DH:

James attempts to hold LV off without a wand and drops like a
marionette as LV kills him. Had he fought (as LV's own words led
readers to believe), he would still have died. If he's in the house
with Harry, he has to die. And Lily, too, is wandless. "How stupid
they were. How trusting, thinking that their safety lay in their
friends" (344). Clearly, had it not been for his promise to Snape, she
would have died like her husband on the spot despite her cries to kill
her rather than Harry. But "as long as she was sensible, she, at
least, had nothing to fear." If she doesn't fight or get in his way,
he'll let her live. He tells her to stand aside four times, twice
after he's said that it's his last warning. He considers forcing her
away from the crib and decides to kill her instead.

But the whole point I'm trying to make is that Lily could have lived
but made the choice to die. That's the only reason that her death has
the power of ancient magic and James's does not. And had it not been
for Snape's request, she wouldn't have had that choice, either.

FWIW, and I'm no fan of JKR's interviews, here's her take on the topic:

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. [IOW, yes.]

ES: Why?

JKR: [silence] Can't tell you. But he did offer, you're absolutely
right. Don't you want to ask me why James's death didn't protect Lily
and Harry? There's your answer, you've just answered your own
question, because she could have lived and chose to die. James was
going to be killed anyway. Do you see what I mean? I'm not saying
James wasn't ready to; he died trying to protect his family but he was
going to be murdered anyway. He had no - he wasn't given a choice, so
he rushed into it in a kind of animal way, <snip>

The complete excerpt can be found at 

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2005/0705-tlc_mugglenet-anelli-1.htm

So, if we take JKR at her word, and I think that canon shows that we
can in this instance, James *did* have to die. He had no choice.
Unlike Lily, he was going to die no matter what, whether he fought or
ran to the door wandless. Lily, however, had a choice. And that made
all the difference.

With Snape's request, Voldemort's offering Lily a chance to live, and
Lily's sacrifice, we get Vapor!mort and the Chosen One. Take away any
one of those components (the second and third depend on the first) and
we get three dead Potters (and no story).

Carol, who was sure that there were more Dumbledore quotes to this
effect but didn't find them in her rather hurried search