Survival of AK

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 113741

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman" <susiequsie23 at s...> 
wrote:
> I've been following this exchange with interest, as you & Eloise have 
> been batting about these puzzling bits of AK or not AK at GH.  I 
> don't see any holes in this, no, but I do have a question/issue 
> later....  In fact, I think mine is a similar idea to 
> your "automatically activating" scenario, only based upon a different 
> substance than Essence of Voldy.
> snip
> 
> This is where I'm with Eloise.  Kneasy, you seem to be saying that 
> because there's no protection against an AK, then it must not have 
> been an AK.  That is, you seem unwilling to consider that Crouch!
> Moody just might be wrong about there being no countercurse or 
> protection.  Yet C!M also said that it *was* an AK that was cast that 
> night.  So it seems to me that one way or another, C!M has to be 
> wrong about SOMETHING.  Either C!M is wrong about its having been an 
> AK, or he's wrong about there being no countercurse, that it can't be 
> blocked.  How do we know which one he's wrong about?
> 
> If the issue Crouch!Moody is mistaken about is there being no 
> protection/countercurse/block, then I would return to my argument 
> that the protection for Harry came about not JUST from Lily's 
> sacrifice, but that the sacrifice is what **activated** the "ancient 
> magic" that she had "applied" in anticipation of this Voldy attack.  
>

Kneasy:
Yes, you're right - C!M has to be wrong about something, you can't
have an irresistible force and and immovable object. Unless you
get devious. It's my contention that an AK is an irresistable force and
that Harry is an immovable object - but in a very limited way.

I've got a horrible feeling that I might be missing the point here, and
some of the aspects of this subject aren't easy to differentiate, so
what I'll do is break my meaning down into bits and then you thump
away at the ones you're not happy with. OK?

1. There's this ancient magic stuff whereby under certain conditions
(as yet unknown) a sacrifice can provide protection to another person.

2. DD hints that he placed it, that it was his idea.

3. Lily's sacrifice activated it, flicked the safety catch, if you like.

4. An attack by the designated enemy then triggers the automatic defence.

But what is the protection against? Is it harmful spells, a person or both?

5. It's my contention that the protection was against Voldy the person
because:

6. There's that puzzling blank. What blank? you ask - the blank during
the replay of Voldy's spells in the graveyard, of course. No sign of an AK
or any spell that resulted in the destruction of Voldys' body. But if he'd
gone for a mind intrusion then there wouldn't be a spell to replay. QED.

7. If the protection guarded against evil spells then one would expect 
them to bounce straight off - no scar, no bits left in the targets mind.

8. Voldy, even when possessing another body cannot *touch* Harry 
without disasterous consequences. 

9. But when possessing another body he can cast spells at Harry that 
work. (Rope binding and possibly Imperio! in PS/SS.)

10. We only get Voldy intrusions into Harrys' mind *after* the protection
has been nullified. (True, there seems to be a bit of Legilimancy going
on at the climax of PS/SS, but it's my contention this is straight-forward
magic and very different to the mental invasions in OoP.)

Conclusion: the protection is against Voldy, not spells.
What happened to Harry at GH did not involve a spell cast by Voldy. 
That's my bet as to where C!M was wrong. There was only one AK
and that was aimed at Lily. Harry was the target for something very 
different.

Whether or no there is a counter to an AK becomes largely irrelevent
in this instance because my bet is that one wasn't used and Harry 
wasn't protected against AKs anyway.

A bit of supposition: Voldy has killed lots of people; James, Lily and
maybe Harry are next on the list. If Voldy doesn't get them it's possible
one of his buddies might. That's important - it's not just Voldy who kills.
Lily wants Harry to live, but it's not possible to guard him against every
danger. She chooses to guard him against the worst, which isn't death, 
it's being taken over or subsumed by Voldy.
That would be the true horror, that must be prevented at all costs.
So the protection is anti-Voldy - nothing else, just Voldy. Voldy cannot
touch Harry, if he tries to he will be destroyed.


>SSS
> I recognize, of course, that you may be on the right track in your 
> assumption that the curse WASN'T an AK at all [absence of a 2nd green 
> flash].  In fact, I rather like the idea that Voldy was trying to 
> possess Harry and ended up putting something of himself into him.  
> But I think it's at least as possible that C!M was simply wrong about 
> there being no way to defend against an AK.  Perhaps there IS a way--
> by combination of BOTH a countercurse AND a life sacrifice--and it's 
> just that it's so rarely used, because it requires such an 
> extraordinary action to activate, that most wizards forget about it.
> 

Kneasy:
A combination of counter-curse and sacrifice - I don't know. 
Seems a bit complicated.
I wonder how anyone would be able to discover that trick - be an awful
lot of dead bodies before they found out it'd work.
Could be, of course, but I'll hold off on that for a while; I'll  wait until
the hypothesis above has been shot down in flames, forcing me to
look at other alternatives.