Harry's scar and Lily/Snape questions (Was: a whole lot of topics a la Catlady)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 163549

Kelly wrote:
>      Has anyone ever thought that the Scar came from Lily and not
> Voldemort? Some sort of Charm that caused the curse to bounce off.
<snip>

Carol responds:
As I said in another post, the AK does not mark its victims. IMO, the
open cut that turned into a scar had to be caused by the AK bursting
outward as the result of Lily's self-sacrificial Love magic. The shape
of the scar, which JKR has said is not *the most* significant thing
about it (meaning, IMO, that the shape is less important than the
Voldie-link and/or the powers that the scar gives Harry), may be
somewhat important--that is, it could resemble a rune, marking or
symbolizing the Love magic. In fact, it just occurred to me that the
rune shape (eihwaz for defence/protection) could be what clued in
Dumbledore to the nature and power of Lily's sacrifice and caused him
to realize that he could use that same protection to keep Harry safe
from harm at the Dursleys. 

I used to believe that Lily, whom I suspect to have been good at
Charms based on Ollivander's comment in SS/PS about her first wand
("Nice wand for Charm work"), placed a protective charm on Harry
before Godric's Hollow, maybe even tracing an eihwax rune on his
forehead as part of the charm (compare the sign of the cross on the
forehead of a baptized baby), and that the charm could only be
activated by Lily's self-sacrifice, but JKR has said that Lily didn't
know that she was going to die. I think we're supposed to believe that
her self-sacrifice alone, in essence trading her life for Harry's,
activated or invoked the Love magic. 

Still, JKR has said that we don't know everything about Lily's
sacrifice. Some people (many, actually) seem to think JKR means that
Voldemort had a reason for wanting Lily to live, but his words to her
("Stand aside, you silly girl!" etc.) don't sound that way to me. I
think he just wanted her out of the way so that he could kill the
Prophecy Boy, his goal in coming to GH in the first place. It's also
possible that he didn't want to murder Lily because he wanted to use
the soul fragment caused by Harry's murder, not hers, in his final
Horcrux. Still, though, I think it's Lily we'll learn more about in
DH, not Voldemort, who has already been studied in depth in HBP. 

So I still think that Lily *could* have cast a protective Charm on
Harry, even accompanied by a potion--the antithesis of Wormtail's Dark
magic, also involving incantations and a potion, to resurrect
Voldemort in GoF. Maybe that charm/potion, in combination with her
self-sacrifice, is what caused the love magic, apparently unique in
the history of the WW, and recognized as such by DD because of the
rune-shaped scar. (I'm not saying that's what happened, only pointing
out that it's possible. JKR had Hermione mention the eihwaz rune in
OoP, and take classes in Ancient Runes, for a reason. And Ollivander's
reference to Lily and Charms is unlikely to be coincidental, given
that he mentions a connection between James's wand and Transfiguration
in the next paragraph, and we know where that led.)


Kelly wrote: 

I sure hope we find out if Snape is one or the other. I don't
> know if I can live with nagging questions on Snapes loyalties. I for
> one think that Snape and only Snape can help Harry defeat Voldemort
> now that Dumbledore is dead. The question is how long will it take
for Harry to realise this?

Carol:
I agree with you. But I don't think we'll have any question about
Snape's loyalties at the end of DH. The whole of HBP was about him,
even when he was offpage. He's been important in some way in every
book (if it weren't for Snape, Harry wouldn't know about Bezoars and
neither he nor Draco would have known how to cast Expelliarmus, just
to mention two "small" things.) Harry has been asking questions about
him--and getting partial answers suitable to his age and experience,
in DD's view or none at all--since SS/PS (e.g., "What made you think
he'd really stopped supporting Voldemort, Professor?" GoF Am. ed. 604,
to which DD responds that that's between him and Professor Snape).
Harry asks a whole series of Snape-related questions in GoF:

"What was it that Snape had done on Dumbledore's orders, the night
that Voldemort had returned? And why . . .  *why* . . . was Dumbledore
so convinced that Snape was truly on their side? He had been their
spy, Dumbledore had said so in the Pensieve. Snape had turned spy
against Voldemort, 'at great personal risk'. Was that the job he had
taken up again? Had he made contact with the Death Eaters, perhaps?
Pretended that he had never really gone over to Dumbledore, that he
had been, like Voldemort himself, biding his time?" (720-21)

The mere fact that Harry would ask such questions makes them important
to him and, by extension, to the reader. We get partial answers in
HBP, but unlike Harry, we understand that they're partial, and that
he's distorting the facts when he reports Dumbledore's answers to
Lupin, the Weasleys, Hermione et al. We know, more or less, what Snape
was doing when he returned. We know even in OoP that it's his job to
report to DD what Voldemort is telling his Death Eaters. We know (or
think we know) that he can use Occlumency to lie to the Dark Lord
without detection. But we still don't know the answer to the key
question, why DD was so convinced that Snape was on their side, or
whether his remorse is real, or why he joined the DEs in the first
place. We may never get an answer to that last question, but I'll bet
my collection of HP books that we get answers to the rest. Snape is
too important a character for JKR to leave us in any doubt about his
loyalties and motives. And I hope we hear from Snape himself what went
through his mind on the tower and what, if anything, he saw in
Dumbledore's eyes.

Carol, agreeing with JKR that Snape is "a gift of a character" and
sure that she won't forgo the pleasure of writing scenes for him in DH
despite his no longer being Harry's teacher