What triggered ancient magic? WAS: Re: James and Intent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187001

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> > Carol responds:
> > I agree with Montavilla47. In fact, I thought it was canon that Snape's request to Voldemort to spare Lily's life followed by Voldemort's broken word was what distinguished her sacrifice from any other mother's--and from James's. As Dumbledore insists to Harry and Voldemort also tells him, Lily could have lived. <SNIP>But then Voldemort, who could have kept his word and merely Stunned her, decides to kill her as well. And that decision, as I understand it, triggered the ancient magic that made her sacrifice, her exchange of her own life for Harry's, into ancient magic. <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Well, what can I say it is news for me, but I will happily eat my words if this is indeed what triggered the magic. Again, what happened as you described, factual circumstances of Lily's death, I am aware of them of course. But my point is that I do not remember that this is what triggered the magic, I thought it was left vague and I thought it was done on purpose, because Voldemort could never understand that Love could be so powerful, etc. I thought she did not want to give us how magic happened, what there the reasons besides it.
> 
> But if you say that Snape's bargain and Voldemort's agreement are what triggered the ancient magic, I would certainly appreciate some canon about it.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Alla
>
Carol responds:

You're welcome. I hope no one minds if I start with what JKR said in her interviews as background, not as solid evidence. I've already stated that an author's stated intentions are only important insofar as they show what he or she was trying to do and insofar as they're successfully realized (carried out). But here's what JKR said after HBP in the  interview:

# Why did Voldemort offer Lily so many chances to live? JKR: "Can't tell you." [Carol comments, now we know why. Because he promised Snape that he would do so.]
# If Lily had stood aside and let Voldemort kill Harry, she would have been allowed to live. She had a very clear choice and very consciously lay down her life.
# Why didn't James's death didn't protect Lily and Harry? "Because [Lily] could have lived and chose to die. James was going to be killed anyway." James "wasn't given a choice [whereas Lily] could have saved herself."
# Did Lily know anything about the possible effect of standing in front of Harry? JKR: No ... it never happened before. No one ever survived before. And no one, therefore, knew that could happen."

There's probably more canon evidence than I'm remembering now (maybe zanooda or someone will help me out!), but here's what I've found so far.

In HBP, Harry says, "But she [Merope] had a choice, not like my mother--" and Dumbledore cuts him off with the seemingly unimportant point, "Your mother had a choice too" on which he doesn't elaborate (HBP Am. ed. 262). It seems to me to be the sort of detail that JKR likes to throw in because it will be important later, rather like Harry's passing by the Vanishing Cabinet in which Montague got stuck the year before as he's trying to hide the HBP's Potions book.

Earlier in HBP, Harry (who has learned about the Prophecy only a few months before) thinks about Neville and what might have happened if Voldemort had chosen to go after him instead of Harry. "Had Voldemort chosen Neville, it would be Neville sitting opposite Harry bearing the lightning-shaped scar and the weight of the prophecy . . . . or would it? Would Neville's mother have died to save him, as Lily had died for Harry? Surely she would .... But what if she had been unable to stand between her son and Voldemort? would there then have been no 'Chosen One" at all? An empty seat where Neville now sat and a scarless Harry who would have been kissed good-bye by his own mother, not Ron's?" (140, ellipses in original).

Harry, of course, doesn't know what would have happened. He thinks that Lily's standing between him and Voldemort was what caused the ancient magic. But we see with the mother who spreads her arms to protect her children that no such spell was triggered. Mother love alone didn't do it. Nor did James's murder trigger it. As JKR says in the interview, he wasn't given a choice. LV intended to murder him all along.

There's the murder scene itself, played over and over in Harry's mind in PoA through the Dementors before we see the whole thing through Voldemort's and Harry's combined perspective in DH.

For example, in one of the Patronus lessons, Harry hears:
"Not Harry! Not Harry! Please--I'll do anything--"
"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"
"Harry!" (PoA Am. ed. 209). 

Few mothers would take the choice that he's giving her, but it *is* a choice. As Voldemort tells Harry in the graveyard (not that Voldemort is always truthful), that his mother died in an attempt to save him and that her "foolish" sacrifice caused the Killing Curse to rebound on him (GoF Am. ed. 652-53), but earlier, in SS/PS, he tells Harry "Your mother needn't have died . . . she was trying to protect you" (Am. ed. 294, ellipses in original). So from the very first book, James's death (supposedly a good fight but really just a murder) is distinguished from Lily's, not because James didn't love his wife and son and not because he didn't try to protect them (with or without a wand--at least he called out to Lily to warn her), but because, unlike Lily, he wasn't given a choice. He could not have lived, so his death created no ancient magic.

I'm not sure, but I think that Voldemort's word, "sacrifice," is the operative one. Lily gave up her life for the sake of Harry's, a sacrifice that LV violated by trying to kill Harry as well as Lily, but she would not have had that opportunity--she would not have been ordered at least twice to "stand aside"--had it not been for Snape's request. (James's death, though he also tried to protect his family, is not a sacrifice because he did not willingly give it up.)

In DH, we find out, of course, that Snape went to Voldemort to ask him to spare Lily (as Harry makes a point of reminding Voldemort before their final confrontation), and in the Godric's Hollow sequence, we see Voldemort giving Lily three chances or warnings before he decides that it would be "more prudent to finish them all off" (DH Am. ed. 344)--IOW, he decides to break his promise to Snape and kill her before killing Harry, which, of course, he fails to do.

That's all the canon I can find right now though maybe others can find more. And maybe this is another case of JKR's *intentions* not quite making it onto the page. (smile)

But, as I read it, it's Lily's choice to die for Harry that makes her sacrifice unique and enables Harry, alone in the WW, to survive a Killing Curse (twice). And, were it not for Snape asking Voldemort to spare her, she would not have had that choice.

Carol, wishing she could find a place where the narrator says straight out that Snape's request made the difference but thinking that all the pages devoted to him (in contrast to any other character besides Harry) are indirect testimony to his importance in Harry's story