A new Lily Theory: The ancient magic witch

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 42026

... at least I think it's new. I've been in the list a long time and, 
at least as long as I've been here, I've never read anything about it, 
but there has been an unsual amount of post in the Lily business 
lately, so you never know. At any rate, as always, sorry if this has 
been said before.

Some of the great unknowns in the Harry potter books is how Harry could 
survive the AK. Several times, people have asked in the lists how it 
could be possible that no mother ever tried the same selfless 
protection on her son. There are, of course, many possible reasons. For 
one thing, I don't think that AKing children is all that common; 
possibly a fire spell would work just as well, and not all wizards are 
powerfull enough to use an AK to begin with (especially two times in a 
row, I'd imagine). Neither is the specific situation (mother spared 
that throws in front of the baby; a person cruel enough to kill a baby 
would kill the mother first) all that common, and I don't believe that 
V attacked that many families's children without killing beforehand 
their parents. Still, I agree it could've happened before. Then, why 
isn't there a few more people with a love-shield protecting them from 
AKs? well, for all we know, there are such people, but they simply 
haven't been attacked by AKs in their lifetimes. But you might counter, 
that that's pretty unprobable.

So I got to thinking: we know that there is something special about 
Lily that we haven't been told yet. We DO know a few things about her, 
though. First, that she's a muggle-born. Second, that she was pretty 
powerful (but strangely, that didn't bother Voldemort, and neither she 
nor James tried even a single spell on V - Harry at least fights back, 
even if it's useless). But there must have been powerful, recent- 
mothers, besieged-by-a-dark-wizard-trying-to-AK-their-babies-without- 
killing-them-before witches before (even if the probabilities of 
matching the situation are steadily going down by now).

Another piece of the puzzle is the nature of the love shield: both 
Dumbledore and Voldemort describe it as "ancient" magic. I realised a 
few days back: what do they mean by "ancient"? It's not as if the 
wizards are all that advanced: they still live iun a medieval world, 
and their magic seems to be more or less unchanged since the days of 
Circe (except for new pells). Why is a part of magic called ancient? My 
answer (and please note this is part of my theory) is that this 
"ancient" magic groups all the spells that, for some reason or another, 
have not been used for quite some time, for whatever reasons.

Arranging all these thoughts, I developed a new theory: Lily had been 
studying the ancient magic, probably by order of Dumbledore himself, in 
case she could find something that could counter Voldemorts rise to 
power (after all, at that point, Voldemort was winning, and 
Dumbledore's side was in dire straits). And she *had* found something: 
the love shield spell, which could stop even the normally unstopable 
AK, but which required a human sacrifice to make it work (and the 
person to give his life had to *love* the recipient, too). Thanks to 
her studies, Lily could command the ancient magic, and when she 
discovered that she could not stop V from killing her baby, she used it 
while sacrificing herself.

Voldemort probably had studied this ancient magic himself (since it's a 
pretty nifty spell, especially for duels), but he must have probably 
discarded it as impractical, since he didn't have any person who'd give 
his/her life for him out of love. The slip is crucial, though:
"[Harry's] mother left in him the traces of her sacrifice... this is 
ancient magic; I should have remembered it, I can't understand how I 
forgot about it" (GoF, ch. 33, Sp. Ed., liberal translation)

Resuming: Lily had studied a magic that had not been used for countless 
years, and as such it was *not* known to other mothers that would've 
shielded their own children and Voldemort probably had heard of her 
studies, but with the pleasure of the hunt it somehow slipped his mind.

What are the ramifications of this theory? For one thing, Voldemort did 
not think much of that "ancient" magic at that point (which would 
explain why he didn't think killing Lily was necesary, since it "could 
do him no harm, and better have her searching something with no 
practical use"), but he's probably learnt better. The spell that 
protects Harry while with the Dursleys would be another offspring of 
Lily's studies, even if it was used by Dumbledore.

On another line, James could have been experimenting on another part of 
magic compleatly, maybe in something related to increasing a child's 
powers, which would explain why Voldemort went for the father and the 
son, but not the mother (I hold no faith in the "heir of Gryffindor" 
theory, since it contradicts with one of Dumbledore's little pearls of 
knowledge, and one of the main themes of the books: it doesn't matter 
who your parents were, you're what you make of your own life).

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf