Did Harry Notice?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182933

Carol earlier: 
> > 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.
> >
> 
> Pippin:
> I guess I didn't put that very clearly. James did not have to die
because if Voldemort had met Lily first and everything had then
happened as it did in canon, she would have chosen to die as a shield,
the curse would have rebounded, Voldemort would have lost his powers,
and both Harry *and* James might have lived.
> 
> Voldemort does not give Harry a choice to stand aside in the forest,
it's enough that Harry knows he is there by choice. I was thinking, if
James had had a chance to escape and didn't use it, it would have been
enough to activate the magic if he had thought of it, but I could be
wrong. 

Carol responds:
My monitor screen just went black and I lost my response to you. And
here I just got a new network card. My computer is being very
temperamental today. Scarier than Voldmort, I'll tell you!

Anyway, I think what matters is not James's own decisions. As long as
he was in that house, he was going to die. I suppose it's possible
that he could have survived if Voldemort had met Harry and Lily first,
but I doubt it. He'd have fought and died then, surely. And whatever
he did, his choice could not have set off the ancient magic that
protected Harry and vaporized Voldemort because, unlike Lily, he would
not have been given a choice.

Suppose that Lily had been downstairs and James had run upstairs to
Harry. LV had promised Snape not to hurt Lily if she was "sensible,"
so he might have spared her without giving her the choice that
triggered the ancient magic, or he might have killed her if she tried
to fight him, violating his promise to Snape but still not triggering
the ancient magic because he hadn't given her the choice. And then, if
he met James, whom he'd made no promise to spare, he'd have killed
him, wand or no wand, whether he put up a fight or stood in front of
Harry. Even if he'd pleaded, like Lily, "Kill me instead!" (not very
Jameslike, I realize), there would have been no ancient magic because
Voldemort would not have offered to spare him. ("Stand aside! Stand
aside, silly boy!")--unless the eavesdropper had been a young female
DE who had begged him to spare James as Snape begged him to spare Lily.

Carol, sure that her lost post was better but too worried about that
screen going suddenly black (it had to be the monitor, not the
computer, because I could hear the Windows XP theme when I turned the
computer on and off) to compose a coherent message