Lily being spared

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 189864



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, June Ewing <doctorwhofan02 at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> Potioncat:
> > DD has a way of only telling a part of the truth. From his
> standpoint both boys fit the description. I'm not sure if DD
> really thinks Neville would fit the prophecy or if he just
> means both boys fit the description.
> 
> But what if LV had chosen Neville? Alice would have died.
> Neville would have died. LV would have been just fine. His
> soul would be a tad more ripped--and after a while (moments
> or weeks or years) he would begin to wonder if he had chosen
> wrong. He would have gone after the Potter boy too. <snip> <
> 
> 
> June:
> That doesn't add up because the prophecy stated that it would
> be one of two boys and Voldemort would mark the one it would be
> himself. Dumbledore did not say that, he only told Harry who the
> other boy was (Neville). It is the last or second last chapter
> in Goblet of Fire.
>
Carol responds:

The Prophecy did not state that it would be one of two boys. The part that Voldemort heard did not even state that "the one" would be a boy! You seem to be confusing DD's remark that the Prophecy seemed to fit two boys, both "born before the seventh month dies," with the Prophecy itself.

Once Voldemort had narrowed down the possible Prophecy children to Harry and Neville, he chose Harry as the more likely possibility (DD suggests that he did so because Harry, as a Half-Blood, was more like himself. Why he wouldn't have tried to kill both of them just to be safe, I don't know, but, of course, he couldn't kill Neville once he, LV, was vaporized.)

The point all of us are trying to make is that Lily's Love Magic was not simply a matter of her dying for Harry. What made it special (and inapplicable to Neville's mother) was that LV gave Lily the *choice* to step aside. Had she been Alice Longbottom, whom he had no reason not to kill (no DE was in love with her and he had made no promise to spare her), there would have been no Love Magic. He would simply have AK'd her and then AK'd the child. In other words, even though Neville fit the description of the "one with the power" in that he was born at the end of July and had parents who, as Order members, had (apparently) "thrice defied" Voldemort, he could not have been "the one with the power that the Dark Lord knows not" because the Love Magic would not have applied to him. He would simply have died as LV expected Harry to die. There would have been no backfiring AK, no scar, no accidental Horcrux, no story.

Snape's request starts the whole plot of the books. His arc is crucial to the story. And Lily's *choice,* that central motif of the stories, is crucial to the Love Magic. It isn't just that she loved him. Almost all the mothers (and some of the fathers) in the HP books love their children and would die for them. The Muggle mother in DH spreads her arms to protect her children, echoing Lily's gesture, but her effort is futile. Had she been a witch, it would have been equally futile because she had no choice to "stand aside." As LV keeps saying, Lily didn't *have* to die. What he doesn't understand is that her *choice* to die instead of Harry is what protected Harry when LV ignored "kill me *instead*" and tried to kill Harry, too.

Had she stepped aside, Harry would have died. Had LV killed her without giving her a chance to step aside, Harry would have died. It's the choice that makes the difference.

Carol, who would quote the whole Prophecy but knows that June can easily look it up herself