CHAPDISC: PS/SS 1, The Boy Who Lived and Avatar SPOI...

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187773


> Alla:
> Do you know what else sort of bugs me about blood protection thing? Why is it blood protection instead of love protection? I mean obviously the answer is that writer chose to do so, but if we are looking on the symbolic protection of mother, who gave up her life for her child, one would think that it makes sense for protection to increase ten fold, if Harry is raised by the people who love him, right?


Pippin:
IMO, it's blood protection instead of love protection because   Harry's sacrifice must surpass Lily's. Mother love can be a beautiful metaphor for spiritual love, but it isn't the same thing and doesn't have the same power. 

Unlike Harry, Lily thought only of saving her child -- she didn't extend her protection to anyone else. That's symbolized, IMO, by the fact that only someone who had a blood relationship to Harry could carry on the protection when she was gone. 

 That's a big theme in the series, that if we think some lives are more worth saving than others, we ultimately work harm to the people we wanted to save.

Alla:
> I mean, seriously be it Molly or Sirius or any other people who love and care for him, why would not their love count more to increase Lily's protection than Petunia's blood while it obviously does not even work against her jerk husband from whose hands Harry had to duck in order not to get hit when he was younger as Harry remembers in HBP. Was it in HBP?

Pippin:

Canon doesn't say that Vernon hit Harry, only that Harry had learned to stay out of his reach. If someone had a habit of grabbing me and shoving me around,  as Vernon does to Harry on several occasions, I wouldn't need to get hit to want to keep my distance.

If the blood protection worked in an obvious way, it wouldn't make sense that Harry doesn't know about it. I think JKR gives us a glimpse of how it worked when Vernon tries to strangle Harry and lets go suddenly as if he'd been shocked. It could have been Harry's own magic kicking in, of course, but that's the point. If anything like that happened in the past, it was subtle enough that it was just another strange thing that happened around Harry.

Look at what happens when Harry's protection starts working against Voldemort in DH. Voldemort can still scream insults and bluster, he can push people around with magic and make threats.  Not a pleasant person to be around by any means, but the worst of what he can do is being blocked. 

Pippin