Survival of AK

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 113720

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "eloise_herisson" <eloiseherisson at a...> wrote:
> 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."
> 

Kneasy:
The protection is interesting. I've been brooding on that and I've come
up with a slightly different slant on what's been going on.

>From what we've been told Lily's death emplaced the protection and if
the protection was specifically anti-Voldy, which is what we believe, 
then there must be something identifiably Voldy to trigger the protection,
Quirrell!Mort's laying on of hands in PS/SS for example. So how does the
protection 'know' that a spell comes from Voldy? An AK is an AK, and in
PS/SS there is the 'binding ropes' spell and possibly an Imperio! that 
Quirrell!Mort uses against Harry. And Harry is not protected against 
them. It is only when something identifiably Voldy (a possessed Quirrell)
actually touches Harry that the protection works. Maybe the scene in the
graveyard where Voldy proves that he can actually *touch* Harry is more
significant than we suspect. 

Perhaps it's not spells that matter, it's anything of Voldy's *persona*, 
body or spirit, that Harry is protected against. If so, then if what attacked
Harry at GH contained essence of Voldy, his mind say, then that would 
automatically activate the protection when it touched him. And if it went
straight into Harrys' mind the Voldy fraction would be evicted, leaving 
behind the powers associated with it. 

In which case Harry has always been vulnerable to spells, it's just that
Voldy never threw any at him.

Hmm. Seems nicely logical.
Can anyone see any obvious holes in the reasoning?

> Eloise:
> 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:
True. I've had a whinge before, lamenting at the incompetence of Voldy.
Impressive he's not. Played four, lost four in his matches against Harry.
Poor show. Must do better. He'll never get to rule the world at this
rate.
 
> 
> 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.
> 

Kneasy:
This whole 'sacrifice' thing needs to be cleared up. Are you listening Jo?
There are loose ends flapping around all over the place - DD hints that
he was responsible for the whole idea (logical - how much ancient magic
would Lily know?); different fans have different ideas of what constitutes
sacrifice in this instance - does eventually being killed after a tooth and
nail struggle constitute a sacrifice within the conditions of the spell (in 
which case it's likely Voldy has come across it before) or is it a willing
"'tis a far, far better thing I do.." sort of passive acceptance of death - a 
sort of offering? I tend to lean towards the latter myself, otherwise James
counts as a sacrifice too, but he doesn't get a mention as such in canon.


> Eloise:
> 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:
We do indeed. But only *one* green flash, after which Harry hears
high-pitched laughter. Logically this is the AK that kills Lily - she
dies first, Voldy might find it entertaining - and he sure as hell 
wouldn't be laughing if he'd just been dis-corporated. Nor would
any of his playmates that may have turned up to watch the  fun.
So where is the second green flash, the one aimed at Harry?
Non-existent, it seems. This is one of the key bits of canon that 
first caused me to wonder. 

> 
> 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:
Well - it works on spiders. How un-human do you want to get?

> 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.
> 
Kneasy:
That's an understatement.
I don't really feel comfortable with the idea of bits of dis-embodied
Voldy being the WW equivalent of passive smoking. A bit of a cop-out
IMO - sloppy, somehow. Could have happened that way,  but I'd be
disappointed if it did.