Survival of AK

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 113704

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tonks" <tonks_op at y...> wrote:
> Here is a thought. When Moody says that there is no countercurse to 
> the AK, he means after it has achieved its goal of death. There is 
> nothing a healer or anyone can do to counter the AK. Dead is dead. 
> But as you all have pointed out if something gets in the way of the 
> AK and blocks it from fullfilling its purpose that is different. So 
> I think that the ancient magic charm that occured when Lily died for 
> Harry was like a block to the AK. For this reason the AK could not 
> achieve its end.  Am I making this clear?
> 
> Tonks_op

Carol:
Absolutely. I agree that Lily's "ancient magic," which may have
involved more than her willing self-sacrifice, is not a countercurse,
which would be performed after the fact, but a form of magic that
shielded Harry and deflected the curse onto LV. Harry didn't die
because he was protected *in advance.* LV didn't die because of all
those transformations and immortality potions or whatever he did to
himself, also in advance. If he'd been anyone else, say Lucius Malfoy,
the deflected AK would have killed him. Deflected or not, it was still
an AK. Instead, apparently, it blew him out of his robes and ruined
the house. (Note that Harry wasn't killed by the falling house any
more than his parents could have been killed in a car crash. Oops.
Wrong thread.)

An Imperio, OTOH, would probably require a countercurse to reverse
it--unless it was a short-term, mild Imperio that ended when the spell
caster released the victim from his will like the ones Crouch!Moody
placed on his students. A better example might be "stupefy," for which
the countercurse is "Ennervate" (GoF Am. ed. 683). BTW, the term
"countercurse" is somewhat misleading since "Ennervate" and similar
spells are not curses in themselves but a means of countering the curse.

Carol