"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl ... stand aside, now ..."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead -"
(PoA, 134)

'Janie' and 'Courtney L. Kathrys' have been wondering why Voldemort didn't want to kill Lily when he attacked Harry. I have a theory. It's based on the assumption that Dumbledore prepared Lily and Alice for the possibility that they might have to sacrifice themselves to save their sons.

My theory is that Dumbledore knew that if all else failed, a mother's loving sacrifice would save them, but for it to work, Voldemort couldn't just kill them in the first place, only if he spared their lives and then they offered their lives for their sons' lives. A way to manipulate Voldemort into sparing the mother of the boy he chose to attack would be to let him think there was something in the prophecy about it.

Dumbledore sits Lily and Alice down and tell them the plan. Lily pretends to be really worried about something. When her friends (the spy circle) ask her what's wrong, she doesn't at first tell them (to supposedly safeguard the information in the prophecy), but then she "gives up" and tells them the "truth".

She tells them that part of the prophecy says that if the Dark Lord kills the boy's mother, it will make the boy stronger, which will make it harder for the Dark Lord to kill the boy. She says she wants Harry to be strong but doesn't like the idea that she might have to die for that to happen.

The spy amongst her friends (Pettigrew) tells Voldemort what Lily has said. He warns Voldemort that killing the mother will make killing the boy more difficult. Then, when Voldemort goes off to kill Harry, he's fine with killing James, but prefers to spare Lily, just in case it creates difficulties for him. Lily begs and pleads that Voldemort kill her but not Harry. Voldemort "knows" this will make Harry stronger, and at first tries to get her to stand aside, but then decides he doesn't care and just kills her. He doesn't realize that it actually has made Harry stronger, because now Harry's protected by that ancient magic, the love of his mother's sacrifice. He probably just thought there would be some lesser difficulty.

Voldemort assumes this throughout his years of bodiless roaming. He begins to understand that Lily's sacrifice protected Harry. To this day, he still thinks that the prophecy warned about this, and therefore thinks that the prophecy must also contain something that will indicate how to kill this new, improved Harry.

And that, I believe, is my final word on the topic of the events leading up to Hallowe'en 1981.

Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading this far. I really appreciate it. I also appreciate feedback in the form of a Chamber of Secrets discussion (not so much emails), even if it's just a sentence to say what you thought of the editorial as a whole. Of course I also really appreciate critical (note: not negative, just thoughtful and reasoned, which may be negative) analysis of what I've written, and specific references to what you think I might have done right or wrong.

Anyway, keep the speculations coming, keep getting excited about HBP, and I should be back in a few weeks with Part Two: After Hallowe'en 1981! (And, eventually, Part Two of Poor Little Rich Boy.)

5/21/05

Posted by: Nicole

If you would like to contact Esther, you may do so at eskimoe_girl at hotmail dot com.