Doing it for Lily? was Re: Snape and Harry and expulsion LONG

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 188908

Alla wrote:
> > 
> > Well, your hypothetical scenario  is one of the possibilities that could have occurred I suppose, but my scenario would be quite different. Where is canon evidence that Harry would have entertained a scenario, where he needs to die, or I should say where he needs to die not fighting without pushing from Dumbledore.
> 
Pippin responded:
> It was on the table from the moment Riddle confirmed that Lily's death was the countercurse. Dumbledore didn't give him that information. Harry figured it out for himself, under pressure from Riddle in the Chamber.  
> 
> "But I know why you couldn't *kill* me. Because my mother died to save me." 
> 
> We thought, silly us, that it was the magic of mother love. But it was the magic of willing sacrifice. IMO, Harry had that worked out a long time before we did.
<snip>

Carol responds:

Not to get into an extended discussion, but I agree with Alla on this one. In OoP, for example, when Harry finds out about the Prophecy, he thinks that one of them has to kill the other--or, in his somewhat exaggerated terms, he either has to murder or be murdered. He also hopes in DH (for awhile) to obtain the Elder Wand to defeat (meaning kill) Voldemort now that he no longer has the protection of his wand's core against Voldemort's.

You make Snape's dying message into something trivial, or at least no more than telling Harry that he *has* to die, and die willingly, because of the soul bit--a decision which, you seem to think, he would have made anyway. But it seems to me that he intended to fight to the death, as the Prophecy implies, until he learned that he had to sacrifice himself to destroy the soul bit.

IMO. he doesn't realize the full importance of his sacrifice until after his talk with Dead!DD in King's Cross.

Carol, wishing she had time to develop her argument more fully