Lily's protection for Harry

[Tonks]

No: HPFGUIDX 151792

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>
> *Something* makes her sacrifice unique. Somehow, against what 
seems to be common sense and human nature and the normal state of 
affairs (i.e., any mother except the fortunately childless Bellatrix 
Lestrange would have done what Lily did), Lily's specific action had 
never occurred before. Is it *just* the fact that she stood in LV's 
way and refused his "offer" (more like an order) to "stand aside," 
and the ancient magic worked simply because she could have because 
she could have chosen to obey him and lived but chose not to do so? 
Or is her offer to trade her life for Harry's ("Kill me instead!") 
what's really important? Or, as others on this list have suggested, 
does Voldemort's violation of this "agreement" (by trying to kill 
Harry when he's already accepted Lily's death as a substitute for 
Harry's) set off a magical reaction, the ancient magic, as a 
consequence of attempting to violate an inviolable magical contract 
(one life for another)? 
> Carol, who has no answers but thinks that Voldemort's motives are 
less important than whatever activated the ancient magic


Tonks:
I agree with Carol that LV's motives are probably not that important.
Let us look at the basic facts again:

What we know:

1. Lily was given a choice and JKR said that Lily had time to think 
about it so that is was clearly a free choice.

2. Lily did not know what the effect would be. So we can, I assume, 
rule out any ideas that she picked up by working in the Dept. of 
Mysteries. Unless there was a theory that had never been tested, but 
I think this adds a dimension that is not necessary to the story. 
JKR said Lily didn't know, so we IMO have to go with that.

3. JKR implies that there is a small detail that she has not told us 
yet. It sounds like 90% of what happened was because Lily had a 
choice and made a clear decision to give her life. 

What we need to figure out is the other 10%.  This requires thinking 
outside of the box. I am having a hard time doing that. Perhaps the 
line of thinking would be to look at the quantum physics of the 
effect of a higher energy force (Sacrificial Love) on a lower energy 
(evil/death) one or something. I know nothing about science. Maybe 
one of our sciences minded folks can help us.

I do like the idea of once she gave her life then LV trying to take 
Harry's triggered some ancient magicical contract that you can't 
kill someone once their life has been replaced by a willing victim. 
This idea I think has some implications or tie in to the whole "life 
debt" concept. Perhaps the "life debt" is also some part of an 
ancient magical contact??? Perhaps if we could fully understand 
the 'life debt" we could figure out our missing 10%.

Tonks_op