Survival of AK

[eloise_herisson]

No: HPFGUIDX 113716

Carol:
> >Harry didn't die
> > because he was protected *in advance.*

Kneasy: 
> Not quite that simple.
> Crouch!Moodys actual words:-
> 
> "Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no counter-
> curse. There's no blocking it."
> 
> So it can't be blocked either, which is in effect the action of a
> 'shielding' spell. 



Eloise:
Crouch!Moody (ostensibly) believes it is an AK because he says that 
Harry is the only one to survive it.

Voldemort apparently believes that his curse was "deflected" by 
Lily's sacrifice, although TR doesn't seem to know that.

Dumbledore says that,
"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot
understand, it is love. He didn't realize that love as powerful as 
your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible 
sign... to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who 
loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever."

OTOH, this doesn't really tie up with Voldemort saying in the 
graveyard that he should have remembered the old magic which gave 
Harry protection, implying that he *did* know there was a way of 
blocking whatever spell it was, but just like the Phoenix tears he 
forgot it at the crucial moment in true Evil Overlord manner. He 
didn't remember it when he told Quirrell to seize Harry, either. 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.


Kneasy:
> This ties to another thread that wonders if it was an AK after all.
> Only Crouch!Moody ever says that it is and how could he be that
> certain? And at the  same  time that he makes this assumption he
> keeps telling us that there is *no* protection against  an AK. 


Eloise:
Which might meant not that he's wrong in saying it was an AK, but 
wrong in saying there's no blocking it. I guess if you need someone 
else to sacrifice themselves for you then essentially, there *is* no 
blocking it. I mean, there you are on a dark night, a DE jumps out 
and shouts "Avada Kedavra!" at you and you'd be darned lucky to have 
a willing victim to hand.

We do have the evidence of the green light which Harry associates 
with the event in his Dementor-induced flashbacks. JKR has 
clearly indicated that AKs are green (see Voldemomort's AK in the 
graveyard).I would regard it as cheating if we suddenly found it was 
a *different* green spell that was the failed curse.


Kneasy:
> JKR says we should be asking why Voldy didn't die. Most posters
> have accepted that he was hit by a rebounding AK - a killing spell.
> Since he had not yet achieved immortality he should have died.

Eloise:
But if the AK works on *humans* and if Voldemort's transformations 
had made him not entirely human, much as Hagrid speculates (and how 
clever it would be to put something really reliable into the mouth of 
Hagrid) that might account for it.


Kneasy:
> He didn't. And the simplest answer as to "why?" is that it wasn't
> an AK but something else that *could* be shielded against. Even
> so, some part of the spell got through and implanted some
> of Voldy's powers in Harry. Now why would an AK that bounced
> do that? Or did it bounce?


Eloise:
Hmmm.  

Regarding the transfer of powers, Dumbledore says,

"Unless I'm much
mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he
gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I'm sure ...."

He doesn't actually say it was the failed curse that did it. Could it 
have been something that happened as he was torn from his body? Bits 
of his essence floating around and some of them landing on Harry as 
it were? I don't know. It's a puzzle.

~Eloise