Lily's sacrifice may not be what we think it is... (very long)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 96063

Arianna wrote:
> 
> 	As usual, everyone has excellent theories on what happened 
> the night Harry's parents died and Voldemort's curse rebounded.  
> We all keep coming back to the same problem: why didn't 
> James' sacrifice protect Lily and Harry?  Was Lily the only person 
> in the history of the wizarding world to die protecting her child?  
> No one seems to believe that Lily was the first person who 
> would step in front of her child to save his life.  Any sane parent 
> would do the same.  Really, this is the reason that on planes, 
> parents are told to put their air masks on themselves before 
> putting them on their children: a parent's instinct is to protect her 
> child first.  
> 	
> 	 So far the consensus seems to be that Lily insisted on 
> Voldemort murdering her so that her death would create some 
> sort of protective charm on Harry.  Some posters suspect that 
> Dumbledore had suggested this to her.
> 
> 	Here's the problem: this theory requires Lily (and Dumbledore 
> and perhaps James) actually risking Harry's life.   
> 
> 	You see, for this theory to work, we must accept that Lily (and 
> Dumbledore) was OK with the idea that helpless Baby Harry 
> would actually be cursed with an AK (the magical equivalent of 
> being shot with a gun, point blank in the face) by the most 
> powerful dark wizard in a century, in the hope that 
> their complicated (and unprecedented) experiment would work.  
> We have cannon evidence as far back as the first book that no 
> one has been known to survive an AK.   Lily knew that 
> Voldemort had come into the room with the intent to murder her 
> child, and that there was no known way to deflect an AK.  There 
> was no guarantee that her death would protect Harry.   Is it really 
> possible that Lily would be so arrogant and reckless as to ever 
> allow Harry to be put in this position?  The theory also doesn't 
> address why the spell *rebounded*, instead of just failing. <snip> 

Carol:
I agree that ordinary self-sacrifice would not have saved Harry's life
and that there must have been a charm--which IMO was placed on him *in
advance*. But I emphatically disagree with your characterization of
Lily as "arrogant and reckless." Her charm did not *require* the AK.
It was placed there *in case* of an AK. Rather than intending to make
Harry "the one," Lily intended to *protect* him in case the Fidelius
charm failed and LV came after him. As I see it, Lily's charm was
intended *only* to spare Harry's life. What it required was *her*
sacrifice, which would activate the charm. If she died protecting
Harry, he would live. If LV AK'd Harry witout killing her first, Harry
would die. That's why she insisted so vehemently that LV kill her
instead. Her charm had nothing to do with giving Harry extra powers
from the failed AK. (That, IMO, was unplanned.) It was intended solely
to save his life. Far from being arrogant and reckless, she was
required by the charm to be wholly selfless--to die so Harry would live.

I don't know why the AK rebounded instead of failing, but I think it
had more to do with the immortality spells LV had placed on himself
than with Lily's charm--or maybe the two together produced an
unprecedented situation that caused LV's curse to rebound. Here's the
sequence of events as I see it:

1) The charm, placed on Harry *in advance* to save his life if LV
tries to AK him, is activated by Lily's self-sacrifice. 

2) The AK hits Harry, causing the scar, which forms instantly and
saves his life. Lily's charm has served its purpose. LV fails to kill
Harry.

3) The AK--*not* the protective charm, which remains with
Harry--bounces back and hits LV, robbing him of his body and all his
powers except possession. 

4) The lost powers (for reasons unknown) rebound through LV's wand
onto Harry, who is now--thanks to Voldemort's aborted attempt to
thwart the Prophecy--"the one with the power to defeat him."

IMO, neither the near-destruction of LV nor the deflection of his
powers onto Harry was part of Lily's intention. She just wanted to
save her baby by placing a protective charm on him, which could only
be activated by her own death. Far from being reckless and arrogant,
she performed an act of surpassing love.

As for Lily as "The Woman Who Lived," (sorry I snipped that part of
your post), the prophecy states that "the one with the power" will be
a boy not yet born. I don't think Harry had the power until
Voldemort's lost powers rebounded onto him, but I don't think Lily
knew that would happen. All she wanted was to save her baby from being
killed (and incidentally give the rest of the WW a chance to escape if
indeed her child turned out to be "the one").

Carol