The Ancient Magic Witch theory, the fight back

[abigailnus]

No: HPFGUIDX 42160

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "grey_wolf_c" <greywolf1 at j...> wrote:
> Abigail wrote: 
> > What if it's exactly the uselessness of Lily's sacrifice that 
> > protects Harry? ... she chooses to die rather than leave him - knowing that it is a useless 
> > gesture  because the 
> > other option is simply unthinkable to her  This gesture is motivated by pure love, 
> > not self-interest or any other purpose - Lily doesn't think it will 
> > save Harry's life, and this love is deep enough to repel Voldemort's 
> > AK curse.
> 
> I resist to believe this position, and I think I've made my reasons 
> clear enough to go through them again. I don't think it's as simple as 
> that because then more people would be carrying around the love shield, 
> and at least someone would have survived the AK before. We are talking 
> of no occurences in some 4000 years of magical history, which is a long 
> time for someone not to have sacrified his/her live for a loved one 
> even when it wasn't going to help.

A few thoughts on the frequency of AK-ing in the wizarding world:

We have no idea how old Avada Kedavra is, how commonly it is used, and 
how difficult it is to perform (actually, that last part isn't true, we know it is 
*extremely* difficult to perform.)  I think it's a virtual certainty that it is not 
the only curse capable of killing someone.  Quite apart from the suggestions 
that are raised periodically whenever the question of how Harry was planning 
to kill Sirius in the Shreaking Shack is raised (accio his heart, levitate him off 
the roof and let go, and other equally gruesome suggestions) we are never 
explicity told that there are no other other curses that kill.  Avada Kedavra's only 
distinction is that it is absolutely unblockable.  However, if your victim is 
sufficiently weak, or doesn't have a wand, or simply isn't a good enough wizard, 
there's probably no need to go for any of that fancy AK stuff, and any 
homicide curse will do.

Furthermore, we have no idea how common murder is in the wizarding 
community.  It's a small community, which to me suggests a lower crime 
rate than we're used to, but what about upheavals, coups, civil wars, reigns 
of terror?  How common are these events, and how common is the use of 
Avada Kedavra in them?  We have no data.  All we know is that in the last 
century there have been two powerful dark wizards, and that at least one of 
them terrorised at least England for 11 years.  It's possible, of course, that 
there have been dark wizards taking over the world every 50 years for the 
past 4 millenia, and that each of them felt the need to AK people by the 
hundreds, but it's just as likely that Voldemort and Grindlewald are the first 
dark wizards that the wizarding community has seen for a long, long time, 
and that before Voldemort's reign, Avada Kedavra was a scary story from 
the history books.

So I think it entirely probable that Lily's case was the first in which all the 
circumstances conspired to create an escapable scenario.  I still think it is 
probably very uncommon for a super-villain to offer the relatives of a victim 
their lives and actually mean it.  (And for the offer of life to be unconditional 
must be even more rare - the situation I can more readily imagine is of the 
"you *or* your child" kind, which is a whole different kettle of fish.)  It might 
also be uncommon that said relative would choose to die - a mother would 
certainly die for a child, but would a husband always die for a wife?  Would a 
brother always die for a sister?  (And remember, this is a situation in which 
the other person's life is no longer in question.  They are definitely going to 
die.)  In my opinion, Lily happened to make the right choice when all the 
variables were in her favor, and this stamped Harry with a mark of the highest 
kind of love - completely and totally selfless sacrifice - and this love was enough 
to repel the AK.  It's possible that other parents died defending their children, 
and that other parents chose death instead of their children, but that sacrifice, 
however great, simply wasn't enough to block the AK, and Lily's was.

(As a final note, I will point out the the only authority we have on Harry's
being the only person ever to survive AK is Fake!Moody, and it's entirely 
possible that there have been undocumented cases of survival, or ones that 
were documented but forgotten, or ones that were documented and are 
remembered by people other than Barty Crouch Jr., how was after all a 
practitioner of dark magic, not a scholar of its history, and whose training was 
interrupted at an early age.)

> 
> Anyway, you want a gesture motivated by "pure love, not self-interest 
> or any other purpose", and my version gives you that: the ancient magic 
> spell Lily uses *requires* to lay the caster's life for love of the 
> recipient. The spell will not work if there is self-interest 

But that is already self-interest (or at least interest.)  In much the same way 
that Harry couldn't have retrieved the Philosopher's Stone unless he wanted 
solely to find it, so Lily's sacrifice would have been in vain if she had had the 
slightest suspicion that it would save her son's life.  If she believed this then 
her choice to die was motivated by wanting to save Harry's life, whereas in 
my theory it was simply her decision that she refused to be the person who 
would stand aside and allow her son to die, even if not standing aside would 
make no difference at all.

> > kangasboy wrote:
> > 
> > >I always interpreted the "ancient magic" alluded to in HP as 
> > > referring to the most basic primeval forces from which all magic 
> > >stems. 

and I wrote: 

> > That's pretty close to my understanding of the phrase "ancient 
> > magic", but I thought of it more in the Narnia, ancient magic from 
> > before the dawn of time sense 
> 
> I think both you, Abigail, and Kangasboy are trying to play this hand 
> with the cards of the previous. Nothing in JKR's HP series points 
> towards an "elemental" magic of any sort. 

That's very true, although judging by message 42143 there's at least
 one other person who sees a connection :-)
Also, given how few of JKR's ideas are truly original, I don't think it's unlikely 
that she had such a concept in mind when she used the phrase "ancient magic", 
but I see that I have very little canon backing me up (I still think Dumbledore's 
description of the ancient magic is consistent with the "underlying rules of magic" 
concept, but I don't have the books in front of me so I can't be sure.)

> Then again, your argument about Voldemort forgetting one of the 
> principles of magic doesn't make any sense to me. As Ollivanders puts 
> it, "he did great things -terrible, yes, but great". Like the scientist 
> that invented the Atomic bomb, Voldemort is someone that knows magic 
> inside and out, and I don't think he would forget something as basic as 
> that.

But he does, and he says as much in the graveyard in GoF (or at least, 
I think he does.  As I said I don't have the books in front of me.)  He says 
something to the effect that he had forgotten that a mother's sacrifice 
might provide sufficient protection from the AK, and he doesn't say 
anything that might suggest that a specific spell was at work.  I'll look at 
the books tomorrow and know for sure.

As resistant as you are to the idea that only Lily's love stood between 
Harry and annihilation, I'm just as resistant to the notion that his survival 
was the result of some magical mumbo-jumbo.  I think it cheapens Lily's 
choice for it to be premeditated.  I don't believe that it was a hysterical 
decision, but rather a moral one - it is wrong to stand aside and watch 
someone be killed.  It is especially wrong if that someone is a person you love.  
And sometimes, the only right choice is the choice to die.  I think that shows 
a lot of courage, and not just the fighting kind of courage, but moral courage 
too.  Finally, I'm resistant to any theory that postulates the existance of 
some heretofore unheard-of spell in order to make it work - call it a yellow flag 
violation, call it the Occam's Razor of TBAY, I just like to keep it simple.

Abigail