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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187003

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> Carol:
> <SNIP of canon, go UPTHREAD and you can read it there>
> 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
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Right, I think this basically the key point to me. I completely agree that but for Snape's request Lily would not have had a choice. I mean, who knows maybe Voldemort would have suddenly decided he wants her for himself, or something, but this is not our story.
> 
> Snape's request made her choice possible. My point is not where is the evidence of the fact why and how this choice was made possible, because this is what the canon you quoted to me seems to point to.
> 
> I know that Snape went to ask for Lily's life and Voldemort ordered her to step aside. What I do not see is how the fact that he made this choice possible transforms into him making the ancient magic possible if that makes sense.
> 
> What I am trying to say is that let's  speculate that Snape did not go to Voldemort and Voldemort would have no intention to spare Lily, however, something else I don't know, distracted Voldemort for a second or minute, or whatever and Lily still got that time.
> 
> I don't know about you, but I still know nothing about what happened, besides the fact that her love triggered the magic.
> 
> Not sure if that makes sense. To make a long story short, I know what Snape did, but this does not answer my question how he helped magic to work.
> 
> JMO,
> 
> Alla
>
Carol responds:

I'm not saying that Snape helped the magic to work, not even unintentionally. I'm just saying that his going to Voldemort gave Lily the choice to live, which Voldemort would not have given to Lily otherwise. He would just have killed her without thought as he killed James, in which case there would have been no ancient magic because Lily's death would not have been her choice and therefore a sacrifice.

We know that no one but Harry ever survived the Killing Curse and that he survived it because of his mother's accidental love magic. We know that James, who also died for Harry, didn't evoke the same magic through his death. We know that Lily, unlike James, was given a choice to live ("step aside") or die. We know that she chose to die. That choice was the difference between her death and James's.

And Lily would not have been given that choice had Snape not gone to Voldemort. what matters is not that she got a little extra time. What matters, according to Dumbledore and JKR (and even Voldemort in his perverse way), is that she *chose* to die. That's what made her death magically powerful in a way that James's was not. She could have lived, but she sacrificed herself for Harry.

If it weren't for Snape, she would not have been given that choice.

Of course, if Snape had had his way and Voldemort had merely Stunned Lily, Harry would have died because there would have been no Love magic. We'd have just had an angry, unhappy Lily and no story. But if Snape hadn't made his request because some other DE had reported the Prophecy and he didn't know about it, there would have been no Love magic, either, because Lily would just have been killed, like James, without being given the choice of living or dying. So all three Potters would have died and again there would be no story.

Snape's request results in a promise from Voldemort to spare Lily (which Snape doesn't put much faith in or he wouldn't have gone to Dumbledore). Voldemort, in turn, actually attempts to honor that promise, giving Lily three chances to stand aside--that is, to choose her own life over Harry's. By choosing not to stand aside and begging him to kill her, not Harry, she turns her death into a magical sacrifice. But it's only magical because she actually had the choice. JKR says that he really would have let her live if she had moved out of his way. And that's what makes the difference. Not the half minute more of life that the orders to stand aside gave her, but the choice to die to save her son.

Now Lily knows that Voldemort is not trustworthy, and, in theory, there's nothing to keep him from killing Harry. She doesn't know about the Love magic. In ordinary cases, it wouldn't be there. He would just have cold-bloodedly killed her like he killed the woman and (presumably) her children in DH. That woman also tried to save her children, but her action didn't create Love magic. But Voldemort didn't give her the chance to live that he gave Lily. She was no different from anyone else who got in his way, anyone else that he decided to kill.

Lily is the only one of Voldemort's victims who had a chance to live, a chance given to her by Snape's request. And that's what makes her death different from anyone else's.

Carol, who feels like she's just repeating the same point, but it's the choice that made her death magical, and she wouldn't have had that choice if it weren't for snape's request