I thought about this for a while too, more than five whole minutes by the clock, and eventually I came up with a possible explanation.
It’s not that Lily sacrificed herself for her child. As you and uncountable other people pointed out, that must have happened innumerable times throughout history, even just among the witches and wizards. It’s that she sacrificed herself for her child when she could have lived.
Think of the oddness of the situation. The murderer arrives to kill the child, but not the mother. How often is that the case, historically? Then the murderer offers the mother a chance to live when she gets in his way, which is still stranger. When she rejects the offer to try to save her child, he does not bother to subdue her, but then chooses to kill her, which invalidates basically all of the explanations that I could think of that fit the above two criteria.
It’s not that she sacrificed herself for her child—it’s that the killer came with the express purpose of killing the child but sparing the mother, and she deliberately threw away that chance for her child. It never would have worked if he had come with the intent to kill her as well.
Which implies that Snape’s request was what was needed to give Lily that opening. Which further implies that Snape really did save Wizarding Britain, if accidentally.
I don’t believe I’ve shared the theory here before, I look forward to seeing if there are holes in the story that I have not yet discovered.
I thought about this for a while too, more than five whole minutes by the clock, and eventually I came up with a possible explanation.
It’s not that Lily sacrificed herself for her child. As you and uncountable other people pointed out, that must have happened innumerable times throughout history, even just among the witches and wizards. It’s that she sacrificed herself for her child when she could have lived.
Think of the oddness of the situation. The murderer arrives to kill the child, but not the mother. How often is that the case, historically? Then the murderer offers the mother a chance to live when she gets in his way, which is still stranger. When she rejects the offer to try to save her child, he does not bother to subdue her, but then chooses to kill her, which invalidates basically all of the explanations that I could think of that fit the above two criteria.
It’s not that she sacrificed herself for her child—it’s that the killer came with the express purpose of killing the child but sparing the mother, and she deliberately threw away that chance for her child. It never would have worked if he had come with the intent to kill her as well.
Which implies that Snape’s request was what was needed to give Lily that opening. Which further implies that Snape really did save Wizarding Britain, if accidentally.
I don’t believe I’ve shared the theory here before, I look forward to seeing if there are holes in the story that I have not yet discovered.