Magical Contracts and Ancient Magic

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 182966

---http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/182947
> Beatrice: 
> What is important in their deaths is not that Snape
> asks LV to spare Lily, although this does mean that LV tells
> her to stand aside. What IS important is that Lily says,
> "kill me INSTEAD."
>
> This in a way becomes a contract between the two of them. LV
> accepts the terms of her verbal / magical contract. 

Mike:
Beatrice has raised an interesting question. How important to the 
activation of the "Ancient Magic" was the choice to live for Lily? 
Asked another way, was it only Lily's choice to live or were there 
other factors just as important to the once off backfiring AK at 
Godric's Hollow?

As Beatrice also brought up, I'd like to compare and contrast GH 
with "The Forest Again" AK against Harry. How were they different, 
what was the same?

Voldemort instructed Lily to step aside. According to LV's flashback 
memory, he had gone to the house with the intention of sparing Lily's 
life. How important the intentions of the killer are, I couldn't say 
for sure. They don't seem to carry much weight in my way of reading. 
But it did create the choice for Lily. Lily then chose to die, she 
literally begged Voldemort to kill her instead of Harry. We don't 
know what was in Lily's mind, so we must take her words at face 
value. She asked to die in Harry's stead, so mustn't we assume that 
she thought that was a possible outcome?

In the forest, it was Harry that was going to meet Voldemort. Harry 
had already made the choice whether to show up in the first place. 
And we see in Harry's thoughts, ("Dumbledore knew,
, that Harry would 
not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in 
his power to stop it." <DH p.693, US> ) that Harry made the choice 
willingly and with the intention of preventing further deaths. 
Because this time when they meet, Voldemort would give no one a 
choice. Harry was his intended target and there were no choices in 
the offing. 

Yet Voldemort had already given Harry the choice. And Voldemort 
himself set the parameters. "You have permitted your friends to die 
for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour 
 If, 
at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, not given yourself 
up, then battle recommences
 I shall punish every last man, woman, 
and child 
" <DH p. 660, US> 

So, in both cases there was a choice. Lily chose to die in hopes of 
protecting Harry. Harry intended to die in hopes of protecting 
"anyone else". In the first case, Voldemort had no intention and made 
no pretence of not killing Harry. Whether Lily had any idea that 
there was some "Ancient Magic" available to make her sacrifice 
meaningful, we have no way of knowing but it seems unlikely. 

In the second case, Voldemort implied that the war would end and no 
harm would come to anyone else, if Harry gave himself up. Whether 
Harry believed that is unclear, but he was sure that his sacrifice 
would put Voldemort one step closer to defeat and that seemed to be 
at least part of his intention. As I said above, I don't place much 
weight in the intentions of the killer, Voldemort, as to whether or 
not the "Ancient Magic" will be activated. Conversely, the intention 
of the one voluntarily sacrificing his/her life seems to make all the 
difference in the world.

Also, in both cases there seems to be a verbal contract in the 
offing. Lily offered her life "instead" of Harry's. Voldemort offers 
to cease the battle, not have any more of Harry's friends "die for 
you" if Harry gives himself up. The fact that Voldemort intends to 
kill Harry is so heavily implied that there can be no doubt as to 
what the verbal contract is demanding of Harry and therefore what 
Voldemort is conceding in exchange.

The theme of "choice" runs heavy through the series. There is no 
doubt in my mind that the choice to sacrifice oneself in defense of 
others commands access to the ultimate magical force in the WW. But 
surely, somewhere, sometime, someone has offered his/her life to 
protect someone else, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their life. So 
why didn't this "Ancient Magic" ever activate before?

This is a magical world and we are talking about ancient magic. It 
seems reasonable that the presence of a magical contract (also a 
recurring theme, from the Fidelius to the Unbreakable Vow), would be 
a necessary ingredient to activate this ancient magic.

Sure enough, both Harry and Lily, giving up their lives, fulfilled 
their half of their respective magical contracts. Both times, 
Voldemort tried to deny, acted counter to his half of the magical 
contract. Both times he was thwarted commensurate to how he attempts 
to break his contract. At GH, where his contract was not to kill 
Harry, his attempt to kill rebounds and "kills" himself. At Hogwarts, 
where he had promised to "punish" if Harry didn't show and thereby 
contracted himself to *not* punish when Harry did, his attempts to 
punish are weak, wear off quickly, and are generally ineffectual.

Note, Harry is not protected by the "Ancient Magic" in the final 
showdown in the Great Hall. The contract was for Harry to give up his 
life to protect the others, and Harry fulfilled his part of the 
contract just as Voldemort suffered the consequences of trying to 
break his half of the contract. But the contract was not made for 
Harry's protection and therefore there was none for Harry.

Most of you know I'm not a fan of interviews. Nor do I put too much 
stock in authorial intent unless s/he has made that intent clear in 
the text. Through her interviews, I know that JKR *intended* to give 
Lily the choice, that being the key ingredient as to why the AK 
rebounded and Harry lived. And though she tried to hide why Lily was 
given that choice, she never hid Lily's pleading to "kill me 
instead". JKR may not have thought of Lily's pleading as a magical 
contract, but putting it in context with the other themes and motifs 
of the series it reads like a magical contract to me.

Mike