That damn blood protection thing

[fishinginthemud.livejournal.com]

My sincere apologies if this has been addressed before, but I haven't found anything on it yet.

We are told that Harry survives the Killing Curse from Voldemort because Voldemort is now a "blood relative" and Harry can't be harmed in the presence of his "blood relatives." But at that point, hasn't the "blood protection" spell already ended, since Harry is now 17 and no longer lives with the Dursleys? Have I missed something?

Comments

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Actually, if we go by what we've been told elsewhere, in another context, the 2nd-string protection which Albus tied to Lily's sacrifice (and seemed designed to refresh it every summer) ought to have ended at Albus's death. There was no good and sufficient reason for Harry to have returned to Privet Dr after Albus died. Whatever was left of the original protection that Lily died for didn't need refreshing by a spell whose caster was dead.

Of course Rowling had Harry still under Petrificus until some time after Albus was dead, too. So evidently Albus was just all that, and his spells lived after him... (as did Moody's apparantly. Dustledore, anyone?)

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, the spells of the founders of Hogwarts still live after them. The protections Orion Black put on his home lived after him. Albus added Fidelius to the existing protections on the house, not instead of them. It's canon that at least some spells do not require their caster to still be alive to work.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Actually, what we are shown in canon is that once a spell is cast, it might as well be cast in stone. But Rowling started jerking us around with that nonsense that once Albus was dead, Harry could move again, and floating the theory that once a wizard is dead his spells no longer hold.

Except that Harry couldn't move. He couldn't move. He couldn't even scream. He had to stand there and watch Albus go floating over the parapet and out of sight. He wasn't able to move again until Snape herded the DEs off the tower and back down the stairs. So does a dead wizard's spells only *gradually* fade out, or is Harry simply a fool and assumes something that isn't the truth.

We saw Snape use a spell that canceled all the spells in the area in the Dueling Club chapter of CoS. It would be much easier to believe that he knew that Harry was there, somewhere, and turned him loose on his way out. But Rowling didn't even think of that.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

I just assumed Harry was in shock and psychosomatically paralysed for a while. But yes - this is definitely a contradiction, unless there's some bit of magical theory that Harry didn't pay attention to defining which spells hang around and which don't. (Or, as you say, that Snape knew Harry might be there and released him non-verbally).