Harry's protection

[macfotuk at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 112146

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Lady Pensieve" 
<ladypensieve at y...> wrote:
 (Quoting Kneasy)
> > Not quite.
> > Crouch!Moody says that Harry survived an AK but also says that 
> there's no counter-curse to it and no blocking it. Emphatically 
and 
> repeatedly. Seems a bit contradictory to me. So I take the easy 
way 
> out - if it's a spell that was countered by an ancient magic charm 
> then it couldn't by definition have been an AK. Crouch!Moody was 
> guessing, he didn't *know* what happened. Kneasy  <<<

I think that's right Kneasy. LV wasn't around to tell anyone what he 
did at GH until at least QuirrelMort and possibly nobody else could 
know (Harry too young to remember conciously, Lily and James both 
dead - we have no canon about other witnesses). It was simply 
assumed that LV would use AK - the young Barty likely wouldn't know 
a worse spell and the WW assumes this too in naming HP 'the boy who 
lived'.  

> What if the curse wasn't blocked, but deflected, and that's why 
> Harry has a scar, and why Lily died.  A mother's love is quite 
> protective and that particular love connected to a very strong 
> deflection charm may be the reason Voldemort keeps saying the 
mother 
> didn't have to die...the spell wasn't mean for her?
> 
> Kathy

I think we have canon to say that the spell *did* rebound AND, now 
that I re-read it properly, that LV used AK - on JKR's site and its 
transcript of her recent Edinburgh interview she states near the end
(my emphasis):

The first question that I have never been asked—it has probably been 
asked in a chatroom but no one has ever asked me—is, "Why didn't 
Voldemort die?" Not, "Why did Harry live?" but, "Why didn't 
Voldemort die?" The ****killing curse****   ****rebounded****, so he 
should have died. Why didn't he? At the end of Goblet of Fire he 
says that one or more of the steps that he took enabled him to 
survive. You should be wondering what he did to make sure that he 
did not die—I will put it that way. I don't think that it is 
guessable. It may be—someone could guess it—but you should be asking 
yourself that question, particularly now that you know about the 
prophesy. I'd better stop there or I will really incriminate myself.

She may mean another killing curse perhaps, but AK is THE killing 
curse surely?

And this leads me back to an earlier post about why priori 
incantatem didn't reveal this spell - and yes I accept from others 
that maybe it's because it didn't work, though it certainly didn't 
have 'no effect'!!!!!!!