James and Lily
J.K. Rowling answered a lot of questions in The Deathly Hallows. Namely, is Snape good or evil and is Harry a Horcrux.
But she left a number of questions unanswered. Why did Percy have a sudden change of heart? How did Hagrid end up with Sirius's motorcycle? When did Harry become so self-less? And why would any wizard ever need to wear glasses?
But there is one question in particular I am still looking for an answer to. Maybe I missed it. Or maybe it's one of those unimportant details Rowling decided to gloss over, like how Hagrid got the motorcycle.
I want to know why Voldemort killed James and Lily. Maybe I missed it, but all I can discern is that James and Lily were in hiding, Voldemort found them and killed them. The answer couldn't be as easy as James and Lily were in the Order of the Phoenix. There were lots of people in the Order and Voldemort didn't hunt them down and kill them personally.
In fact, he only personally attacked select wizards and witches, those he felt his death eaters were unqualified or unable to kill themselves.
Was it that simple: James and Lily were too powerful for his death eaters to kill. Nothing suggests that James or Lily had extraordinary talents. They were skilled and brave, but not in the same league as Dumbledore or Moody or even among the aurors of the time. The Longbottoms probably had more impressive skills than the Potters given the fact that the Longbottoms were aurors and the Potters weren't.
That was one question I wish Harry would have asked Dumbledore when Harry was in limbo. It would have been simple too: Why did Voldemort kill my parents?
It would not have been easy for Dumbledore to answer, but it's an answer the readers deserve to know.
Comments
I agree. The book left more questions open than it answered. Like, why did Dumbldore say he saw socks when he looked in the Mirror of Erised? Obviously he was lying, because he probably saw his family, but why socks? What could that mean?
I'm starting to realize that some things that seemed important probably were just ... nothing, meaningless. And that makes me sad.
And I agree, the Percy resolution was far too brief.
As for Lily and James, I would change the question from "Why did Voldemort kill my parents?" to "Why was he after them and how did they defy him three different times?" The prophecy states that the child would be born to parents who would thrice defy him. That could have been Neville's parents too, so the fact that both couples did this seems highly significant.
James and Lily weren't aurors like Frank and Alice. Frank and Alice probably would have gotten into a lot of scrapes with death eaters and LV himself, but what about James and Lily?
Why was the Order created in the first place? Was it created before of after the prophecy was made to Dumbledore? Was it created for them? Was it created for something else?
These are some of the questions I'd hoped to get answers to and didn't.
Posted by: Sharon Kaplan | July 27, 2007 2:33 PM