Lily, LV and Harry at GH.

[Hannah]

No: HPFGUIDX 113391

There's been a lot of discussion over the past week or so about 
sacrificial love, and about the apparant absence of the AK that LV 
used on baby Harry during the 'priori incantum' during GoF.  I have 
formed a theory, it's quite controversial, but I thought I'd share 
it anyway.

What if the absence of that AK was due not to being another sort of 
spell, but because LV didn't cast it at all.  What if Lily cast the 
AK that hit Harry?  I DO NOT mean that Lily is any way evil.  But 
think about the sacrificial love thing.  Dying for someone you love 
is a great sacrifice, but so is killing someone you love to save 
them from a worse fate.

This theory is based on the idea that LV wanted not to kill Harry 
immediately, but to use him somehow.  At least try to find out what 
is was about this baby that gave him the potential power to defeat 
him.  I think this is quite a likely possibility.  DD could have 
warned Lily and James about this. 

So's here's how events might have gone.  LV turns up and kills 
James.  Lily runs up to get Harry, but for some reason doesn't get 
away in time.  LV arrives, Lily tries to block Harry, offers herself 
instead etc.  She doesn't use her wand against LV, since she knows 
it's not going to do any good.  When she realises her pleading has 
failed and that LV is about to kill her, she does the only thing she 
can think of to save her son from torture and a slow death/ being 
brought up as an LV 'mini-me' - she AK's him.  At the same time, LV 
hits her with the same spell. 

But AK is a spell that depends a lot on the intention of the one 
casting it.  When Lily's AK hits Harry, it doesn't kill him, because 
Lily's intention was to *save* Harry, even though killing him seemed 
to be the only way she had left to do that.  So the spell rebounds, 
perhaps also due to the fact Lily has just died trying to defend 
him.  

The rebounded AK hits LV, and does a lot of damage, but it cannot 
kill him, partly because of whatever he has done to make himself 
immortal, partly because it wasn't intended for him.  The rest is 
history.

I'm sure this theory is full of glaring holes and I don't exactly 
believe it myself, but it does account for several things - why LV 
didn't die, why Harry didn't die, why Harry saw only one flash of 
green light, why the spell did so much damage (2 AK's 
simulataneously, hitting 3 people), and why the spell never showed 
up during priori incantum on LV's wand.  And it seems like the sort 
of plot twist that JKR might use.

Anyway, there you have it.  What do you think?
Hannah