Lily: Why Didn't She Have to Die?

secret seeker said:
You misunderstand me, Sir cadogan.
Harry wasn't bothered if Wormtail died, he just didn't want his friends to become murderers as you said, but, Harry didn't want to spare Wormtails life FOR Wormtail, but for his friends, and to prove Sirius's innocence.
I'm not saying all the circumstances are IDENTICAL, but SIMILAR. Doh!.
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You're right - but still: Harry *thinks* about whether Wormtail's life should be taken, whereas LV doesn't care in the least.
secret seeker said:
You say Lily hadn't done anything wrong, but, you are just seeing it from the perspective J.K.R. wants you to see!. Ask Voldemort if she had done anything wrong and he would say " She gave birth to my future doom ".
So, from Voldemorts point of view, she had done wrong, hadn't she?.
Try to stay open-minded, please.
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I beg to differ. Being open-minded does not mean accepting evil arguments at the same value as reasonable arguments. Additionally, LV did not act against Lily to punish her for "doing wrong", but in order to defend himself in his usual, ruthless manner. LV doesn't know any "right" or "wrong", he just distinguishes between what suits his purposes and what doesn't.
There is a fundamental difference between people with moral principles and people without. To call LV's contempt for human values *his* morals is inappropriate and hasn't got anything to do with open-mindedness.

No offence meant, secret seeker - I'm not attacking you personally, I just don't agree with your views here (if I understood you correctly).
 
Thankyou for pointing that out, Sir cadogan, and I am man enough to admit when I am wrong.
You make a valid point and manage to systematicaly tear my argument apart, at the same time. Well done.
There is no point me even trying to argue any furthur, because it would be il-logical.
I have been bested Noble sir, but live to fight another day! ...

I love this site!!!!;)
 
Oh-ho, secret seeker: such nobleness shining through, sir ;-)
I'm looking forward to our fight "another day" :))
 
I can only think of one reason why Lily didn't HAVE to die.
Lily alive was worth more to Voldemort than Lily dead.
So what, or who, would Lily alive gain him, that Lily dead would not?
Or what would killing Lily lose him, that Lily alive would not?
And why might that be?
 
This is a hard one! I think that someone would have had to beg Voldemort and promise him something else in return that he wanted more, in order to spare Lily. We know he wouldn't do it selflessly only to gain something and when Lily refused he simply killed her to get her out of the way of his goal. of course this theory only adds more questions like who begged and what would Voldemort want that he couldn't get for himself.
 
Lily had to have the choice because that invoked the protection for Harry. After the event both the Diary Tom Riddle and the reborn Voldemort remember this as a Countercurse and as Old Magic respectively. My guess is that Dumbledore also knew this and somehow, probably through Snape but possibly through Wormtail, got Voldemort to offer to spare Lily in return for the information that they gave him.
Lily was never going to stand aside, as no mother would, so Dumbledore could be sure that once Voldemort had made the offer of life Lily would turn it down.
 
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As far as Lily not having to die...if you remember, Voldemort does not always go around killing every single person in existence. At the end of book 5 when he tried to get the prophecy, you didn't see him go out on a determined quest to kill every single member of the Ministry that was there; when Voldemort is on a mission, he goes for just that.

I think that, had Lily stepped aside, Voldemort would have killed Harry and then left, and that would have been the end of it. I don't think any mother would consider doing this of course, but it definitely set up the scenario where she did not have to die, but made a willing choice to stand in front of Harry and defend him.

I think that love is not the only power that Voldemort is defeated by: Choice is another: Lily's choice to die for Harry, Harry's choice to fight Voldemort. It was choice that caused Harry to participate in the prophecy, and I believe choice that will bring Voldemort down in the end.

I don't think that there was any special reason why Voldemort would have let Lily live...I just don't think that he had a real motivation to kill her at the time. Dumbledore, on the other hand, knew that James and Lily would choose to fight, and as a result acted to hide them in Godric's Hollow.
 
secret seeker said:
Voldemort didn't want to split his soul more than was neccesary, but that would mean he has / had an 8 part soul, because he also murdered Frank Bryce in the Riddle manor, wouldn't it? ...
The books state that Voldemort killed Frank, whereas Dumbledore believed Nagini did it.
The " killing " rips the soul, not the Horcrux construction.

SiriusPotterFan, just read your previous post, and it is excellent, and does make perfect sense, to me at least. Sounds just like a J.K.R. twist.

I don't think Voldemort wanted to spare her life, he just didn't want to kill her. Similar to Harry and Wormtail in the Shrieking shack in P.o.A. .
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Actually this come back to a thread I discussed restricted killing.
Given all the people he killed - you have to assume that the only time a horcrux becomes a horcrux is when he does what he has to do seal it. The killings taking place in between just serve to rip his soul many time but the act of creating the horcrux is what makes the difference.
What I mean to say - he may use a specific killing to seal a horcrux - but I think he didnt just kill 5 times before the thwarted attempt on Harry.
We know he killed James and Lily - so that would not become a 1 to 1 relationship between killing and horcruxes.
Phew - does that make any sense?
 
Curious idea here though Alz (welcome back btw) Killing rips the soul . . . every time you kill . . . but deciding to make and seal a Horcrux, does it use just the last bit from the last killing? can you choose which bit? or does it just take all the torn bits present? My guess is just the last bit. I think that over time, if the bit's aren't used to make a horcrux they rejoin and the soul can become whole again. Otherwise you could have a DE running around who doesn't know about Horcruxes with his soul in 15 pieces floating around inside . . . but . . . hmmmm . . . that doesn't quite float in my mind. It makes more sense now that I think about it, that the torn bit if unused dies. That is why those who kill again and again seem "souless".
 
I have proposed before, maybe even in this thread, that that when the soul fragment is not encapsulated there is some form of reunion of the two fragments, otherwise you are right SPF, there would be many Death Eaters, in addition to Voldemort, wandering around with 10's, if not 100's or 1000's of soul fragments floating all over the place.
The only logical process is a reuniting of the soul, and I think that this explains why the Aurors, and Dumbledore himself, do not have fragmented souls. They may well have damaged souls even if they believed that the killing they committed was just.
 
I have a question that this thread's title inspired: how long was it in between the time James died that Lily died? In other words, JKR said that Harry was sitting in a cot when his parents died. It had been a week since they'd gone into hiding at least (see book 3: the discussion about the Fidelius curse with Rosemerta, macgonagall, hagrid, etc.)...why was Harry in a cot instead of in a crib or basonet?

We know from Book 3 as well (see the dementor attack on Harry when he hears his father telling his wife to hurry because LV was coming) that they saw LV coming...what if they knew he was on his way, James went hunting LV to catch him before he came near Godric's Hollow, he was killed, Dumbledore found his body, took the invisibility cloak, and arrived at the Potters' location just a bit too late.

I know, I know, seems a bit farfetched. But think about it: You had a multitude of spies working for LV, and the Fidelius charm was used to ensure that only one person knew the whereabouts of the Potters...but Hagrid, DD and Sirius all happen upon the exploded house where they are located?

Personally, I theorize that the Potters were taken to a hidden location different from the Hollow. They found out that Wormtail had gone bad somehow, and escaped to Godric's Hollow hoping they could send an owl to DD from there alerting him of their need. LV had already been to the Hollow, and destroyed the house in his frustration. James realized that LV was coming and attacked lv under cover of the Cloak so as to be able to better dodge the AK curse, but eventually was overpowered. His body was then found by DD, who took his body back to the Hollow where he found Lily dead and the house exploded. This would of course explain how DD came across James' cloak...he quite possibly pocketed it to keep it from being stolen by the onlookers at the Hollow.

Now you see why my wife normally takes the computer away after midnight...I get just a bit too loopy and start seeing more conspiracies than Moody when the sun goes down :p . But before you refute all of it, I bet nobody else can tell me how when only one Secret Keeper existed, DD, Hagrid and Sirius all happened upon the place where the Potters were hiding within minutes or hours after their death?

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot...notice how surprised Lupin was that James' voice was heard by Harry? Perhaps someone else was there as a protector, and James had already been killed earlier? We know he didn't murder anyone else between the two due to the priori incantatem scene, but it certainly does change the scene just a little bit.
 
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I did a bit of research before I went to sleep last night and found that as well. It still doesn't disprove it, though.

It's just that...well JKR has made it pretty clear that there's something she hadn't told us about the Potters' death; when she talks about why his mom's sacrifice saved him, not his dad's, she says it is because of his mindset...but she also says that this is only part of the answer.

There *has* to be something here we're not seeing. Could his father have been killed already and an auror or someone else been sent to help protect her? We don't know for sure that the male voice Harry heard was James; could have been anyone he hasn't met yet (or even someone he has met before but that might sound different now). Could DD have been there, somehow got disarmed early, and tried to get Lily to run, and that is why he said what he did when he drank the potion? Could it have been Wormtail, who according to the third book has a kinda weird voice since he hasn't spoken in awhile? Could it have been Snape? A younger Moody or Lupin?
 
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this had been speculated in another forum, but it is my belief that voldemort gave lily the opportunity to live (even for a few minutes) just to see if she would give up her son, as his mum had given up on him, so he probably wondered if all mothers were like his
 
Kingsley said:
Ok I just thought about this for awhile and it came to me
Voldemort doesnt understand anything worse than death--Lily gave her life for Harry
Well what if Voldemort was not understanding her sacrifice--she didnt have to die because all she had to do was let harry get killed--his life instead of hers---Voldemort would never ever sacrifice his life for anyone's --so a sacrifice seems downright stupid to him
Maybe thats why he was saying she didnt have to die :rolleyes:
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For that matter, James didn't have to die. He stayed at the door while yelling that Lily should get Harry and run. Therefore, he also sacrificed himself.
 
JKR has said that LV was planning on killing both James and Harry. That's why James death didn't protect Harry. Because he had todie anyway. LV offered Lilly the chance to live, but she chose to shield Harry. That's why her death protected him.
 
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