protective enchantments

[Carol]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)" <catlady at ...> wrote:
>
> Carol wondered in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39405>:
> 
> << about all those magical protective enchantments that Snape
> mentioned in OoP and why they so dramatically failed in DH >>
> 
> Dumbledore undid them all while hurrying to his death, and Snape as Headmaster did not put them back.

Carol responds:

Are you sure? The only one DD undid that I know of is the protection against flying into the grounds and that might have been temporary just to let himself and Harry through. (Why Snape wouldn't put that one back if it was still there, I don't know. He certainly blocked the passages into and out of the school, and he could claim that the anti-flying protection was to keep students in, not DEs out. The only person who flew in or out of the school grounds during DH was Snape himself, and he might have temporarily undone that protection as DD did for himself and Harry.) 

But I was talking about the ancient protections that Snape mentions in OoP during the first Occlumency lesson, not any new protections, such as locks on the gates and anti-climbing spells on the walls that DD added (probably after Snape told him about Draco's assignment to kill DD). Possibly, *those* spells would have died along with Dumbledore, which would explain why the DEs and Draco could escape through what should have been a locked gate. I suppose that Snape didn't put them back on because, with himself as headmaster and the Carrows on the staff, the DEs would have no reason to invade Hogwarts, thinking that it was already under DE control. But the ancient protective spells that Snape mentioned to Harry would not have died with Dumbledore. They should still have been in place. (True, they didn't keep Sirius Black out in PoA, but he wasn't really trying to murder Harry.)

For now, I'm just going to chalk it up to JKR's inability to remember what she's had her character do or say from one book to another, an inconsistency like Lily's letter to Sirius or Draco's Hand of Glory, which Ron should not have known about and Lucius refused to buy.

Carol, hoping that her point in this little digression is clearer now