On Human Sacrfice and Dark Magic

[annoni_no]

I've spent some time archive binging recently and got to thinking about what the new conclusions meant for old issues that weren't directly addressed.  In particular, I was reminded of all the old complaints about Lily's sacrifice being held up as exceptional even though most parents would die for their children.  And if sacrificial magic is as

Comments

[mary_j_59]

This is interesting, and does seem to hang together. But I thought the whole point about Lily, and what rendered her death different from that of the brave German mother, was that Voldemort genuinely intended to let her live. The other woman was not given a chance to reject her life and sacrifice herself; Voldemort just killed her.

And the fact that Lily had a choice at all is Snape's doing.

But, as I said, this idea of how sacrifice seems to work in the Potterverse does hang together, and your ending is quite chilling -- and, I'd say, consistent with canon.

[annoni_no]

I am 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% positive that information about how Lily having a genuine choice was the deciding factor was from an interview, not canon. Thus, I feel it really doesn't matter. At all. Especially since I think this hangs together much better. Besides, the German woman did have a choice! She could have tried to run and save herself, but instead tried to protect her children.

I do think that the 3 offers made a big difference in amplifying the *power* of her sacrifice to the absurd levels we see in canon, so she can thank Severus for that. But I think that the reasons they amplified her power was because 3 is an arithmatically powerful number, it ritualized the sacrifice, giving it more structure (if rituals didn't matter at all, wizardry wouldn't be any easier than Dark magic, would it?) and, possibly, because it increased Lily's pain by tempting her away from her chosen path thus intensifying her sacrifice.

[jana_ch]

I suspect the business about Lily having a choice because Severus begged for her life, thus making her death a True Sacrifice, is pure fan interpretation, not anything from JKR. I have certainly put it forward often enough that if there was no Man Who Loved, there would have been no Boy Who Lived. As far as I can tell, JKR has never explicitly made the connexion. Her idea seems to be that Lily’s mother love is just that special. Can anyone cite a genuine semi-canon source (interviews, Pottermore, etc.) on this issue?

I agree with you that JKR probably intended the three offers to step aside to imply some sort of ritual meaning, but the whole scene was so chaotic (Voldemort snarling like an impatient traffic cop, Lily bawling like an hysterical five-year-old) that it gives no impression of having deeper significance. I would expect Ancient Deep Magic to involve a bit more sense of drama.

[annoni_no]

I don't think the 3 offers acted like a true ritual in any way; it was more of a proto-ritual than anything. But it did add pressure to Lily's resolve making her sacrifice more difficult. It called to mind the blood-letting practices in Meso-America where it wasn't enough to simply pierce an organ and let the blood flow out naturally: a string with thorns or bits of obsidian or something else would often be pulled through the wound to increase the blood and the pain and thus intensify the power in the offering

[oryx_leucoryx]

WE know from Tom's internal monologue that he did not think it was necessary for Lily to die, as long as she acted sensibly. So in his own mind he was genuinely offering her a choice.

[annoni_no]

But how do we know it was *the* deciding factor? What in the text itself supports that? If there's something I'm forgetting I'd really like to know, but I don't particularly care about what Rowling says outside of the books themselves. If I like it I'll adopt it as head-canon, but it's not that important to me in the grand scheme of things.