Extraordinary

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I was in the middle of crafting an extremely ingenious and elaborate explanation of why, uniquely in the WW, Lily’s sacrificial death could possibly have powered a shield so extraordinarily strong as to have deflected the unblockable Avada Kedavra, when the question hit me: but did it?

Or did something else happen that night?

This meta is dedicated to Erastes’ Random Death Eaters, Chuck and Lance, who I think would appreciate my final supposition.

(If you never read the posts in “Deadly Hollow” sporking DH, why not? Do that first.)




We inferred that that German woman’s attempt to shelter her children behind her own body (as Lily had shielded Harry) probably hadn’t saved them when Tom was Elder-Wand-hunting. We KNOW that James’s flinging himself wandlessly in Tom’s path didn’t create a shield that deflected the AK from Lily when it was her turn to face Tom’s wand.

And we know that a knowledgeable but inexperienced Dark Arts expert, sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle, agreed upon consideration that a mother’s dying to save her baby could be, or create, “a powerful countercharm.” [CS 17]

Only—powerful enough to outright block Avada Kedavra???

Well, but did it need to?

Tom never said that it had.

*

It was Dumbledore who disseminated the various stories about what happened that night, some of which we eventually deduced to have been, shall we say, more notable for creativity than for truthfulness.

For example, it was Dumbledore who informed the WW that Harry’s curse scar was from surviving Avada Kedavra, that the spell had actually hit Harry and somehow failed to kill him. Oryx_leucoryx argued, I thought most convincingly, that the scar was rather from the entry of Tom’s soul-fragment. (The existence of which Albus wanted to cover up….)

Similarly, it was Dumbledore who convinced the whole of Wizarding Britain that “somethin’ about you finished him, Harry…. somethin’ about you stumped him, all right [PS 4]” when really it was Tom’s rebounding Avada Kedavra that “finished” Tom (or at least destroyed his body).

And it was Dumbles who told Harry directly that “Your mother died to save you… love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark… to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good. [PS 17]”

So. Lily’s love and death created a permanent protection-field in Harry’s very skin, making it impossible for anyone evil ever to touch him. (That settles any possible question as to whether any of the Dursleys could be considered to be full of hatred, greed, or ambition, hm?)

Or at least, as Twinkles modified our understanding later [OotP 37], made it impossible for Voldemort himself to touch or (directly) harm Harry. His mother’s blood was Harry’s strongest shield.

So, that must have been what happened that night, right? It wasn’t HARRY’S super-Speshulness that had absorbed the killing curse with only a scar, it was the Power of Lily’s Love that had made it impossible for Tom to “touch or harm” her baby. Her loving sacrifice made it agony for Tom to touch her child later, and it shielded Harry from Tom’s direct curses.

Even from the Killing Curse, presumably.

But Avada Kedavra, we’re told, can’t be blocked by magical means. Any more than it can be survived.

That’s why everyone in the WW thought Harry had to be so very special, for surviving it.

So then Lily must have been, for blocking it.

The fact that the WW was previously utterly ignorant that Love can block the Killing Curse just proves that Lily’s love for her child must have been of unprecedented, extraordinary, depth and power.

Er, right.

Only, it was Dumbledore who’d put it in my mind that Lily’s sacrifice had SHIELDED Harry from Tom, Dumbledore who’d used the terms shield, and refuge, and protection...

Dumbledore told Harry that he had protected Harry “by an ancient magic, of which he [Tom] knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated—to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection… that flows in your veins to this day…. Your mother’s sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you… While you can still call home the place where your mother’s blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge.” [OotP 37, emphasis mine}

So it was Dumbledore’s words (and the fact that Lily had previously physically interposed her body between her baby and the murderer) that had led me to believe that Lily’s death had somehow created a shield that directly blocked harmful touches or curses inflicted by Tom on her son, that had blocked even the Killing Curse.

Instead, it seems that Dumbledore had BUILT upon Lily’s death-sacrifice some spell that subsequently MADE Harry “untouchable” to Tom when Harry was in the presence of (or domicile of) “Lily’s blood.” Which magical protection had weird legalistic restrictions on it, characteristic more of Twinkle’s twisty mind setting up a formal spell than of a dying mother’s love fountaining out to provide her baby with mystical protection.

I mean, a protection that blocked Tom but no one else from “touching or harming” her child? What, Lily would have been fine with Dudley’s gang using Harry as a football, with Tom’s servants kidnapping, binding, and cutting him, with a sadist permanently mutilating him? But would burn to death possessed!Quirrell for being in involuntary contact with the boy? Yeah, right. A “protection,” moreover, that blocked direct curses but left Quirrell!mort free to shake Harry off his broom? That could be easily circumvented by cheating (Tom’s taking Lily’s blood into himself)?

That was set to expire the moment Harry came of age?

Excuse me, we’re expected to believe that maternal love comes with an expiration date?

No, sorry, that protection on Harry was not the natural magical expression of a mother’s dying wish to protect her child. That was not a maternal death-blessing.

That was “the charm I placed upon you… the strongest shield I could give you [OotP 37, emphasis mine].” A charm which Dumbles constructed from, and powered by, Lily’s sacrificial death, after the fact.

It seems characteristic that Dumbles didn’t notice that Petunia’s blood-tie to Lily, and making her legal residence Harry’s, were actually extraneous to his charm—if Lily’s blood was the true key to his “shield,” Harry by definition was always in its presence.

I imagine that Albus adapted one of those ancient protective spells that were powered by burying sacrificial victims under the threshold or mixing their blood with the mortar in the walls, so the original spell WAS tied to protection both of a place and of a bloodline. Twinkles undoubtedly blithely assumed he understood the ramifications of his little modifications, only to be taken by surprise by Quirrell’s death.

“There” he cannot touch or harm you—wait, what, anywhere he can’t? Oh, right—wherever you go, there you are. So there Lily’s blood is. Ah, well, it’s not as thought I didn’t have other reasons to want you to be raised by lowly Muggles who feared and abused you, Harry.

And of course Albus’s charm would have an expiration date! Twinkles always intended Horcrux-Harry to suicide as soon as he came of age, and naturally if Tom had returned to a body by that time, poetic justice would require that Tom make himself mortal by killing Harry.


However, if Harry had been made “untouchable” to Tom’s hand or wand by Dumbles after the fact, if Dumbles had turned Lily’s “lingering protection” into a “shield”, that “shield” cannot be what had saved Lily’s baby in the first place.

Yet something did.

*

So, let’s turn to what our Dark Arts authorities said about Harry’s survival. Here’s Diary!Tom’s analysis.

“So. Your mother died to save you. Yes, that’s a powerful countercharm. I can see now… there is nothing special about you, after all. I wondered, you see. There are strange likenesses between us…. but after all, it was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. That’s all I wanted to know.” [CS 17]


And here’s Severus discussing Harry’s tendency to exist with two other Dark Arts experts (or three, and fully expecting his analysis to be generally circulated—and critiqued—among all of the Death Eaters): “… there were still many stories circulating about him, rumors that he himself was a great Dark wizard, which was how he had survived the Dark Lord’s attack…. Of course, it became apparent to me very quickly that he had no extraordinary talent at all. He has fought his way out of a number of tight corners by a simple combination of sheer luck and more talented friends.” [HBP, 2]


It’s a rather odd circumstance that the series’ villain and supposed villain are consistently more honest than the hero’s mentor, but so Jo would have it.


Tom was wrong, however [and Severus disingenuous], to denigrate “lucky chance.” We were explicitly shown in HBP exactly how powerfully luck can operate in the Potterverse: Harry accomplished the otherwise-impossible feat of acquiring Slughorn’s deleted, incriminating memory, and Ginny gaily dodged Unforgiveables she couldn’t conceivably have blocked.

And those effects were merely from a potion (though I now harbor dark suspicions about what’s required to brew that potion).

*

One of the traditional aims of human sacrifice (back when that was a traditional and honored practice) was to counter ill-fortune or to confer good-fortune: upon a city, a people, a person, a purpose (typically a war)….

To get the gods on one’s side.

Or at least the gods of chance.

Tommy complained to his followers [DH1}, “I have been … thwarted by luck and chance,”

He was precisely right.

*

Let’s look again at Tom’s memory (which might not have been accurate) of his attempt to kill baby Harry.

(A total aside: it’s interesting that Tom thought of James by name, but not the “girl” or “the boy”. Was it that James was only one he accorded respect as a plausible adversary?)

… James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut…

He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear… He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in…. She had no wand upon her either…. How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments….

He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand… and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead…

[Dialog: three times she pleads “Not Harry,” three times he tells her, “Stand aide, girl.”]

…. He could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more prudent to finish them all…..

The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had not cried all this time. He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib, and he looked up into the intruder’s face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing—

He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy’s face. He wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry: It had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage—

“Avada Kedavra!”

And then he broke. [DH, 17]


What’s missing from this scene?

Tom actually entering the nursery.

According to Jo, he did not move from the doorway to kill Lily, and he did not cross over her body to approach the crib. Tom was pointing his wand carefully into the toddler’s face … from across the room.

At which point ickle Harrykins finally registered that the person who had just made Mummy scream, and cry, and fall down amidst that pretty flashing light, wasn’t Daddy after all, and began to wail.

And maybe—let go of the bars of his crib?

*

Avada Kedavra is unblockable, that’s why it’s so fearsome, right?

Which is to say—it can’t be blocked by the shield spell, however strongly cast.

And those moronic wizards and witches are so impressed by this, they don’t notice that the killing curse IS blocked by solid matter.

In fact, that like some {apparently not all) other spells, it can be reflected off solid surfaces.


How much do you want to bet that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection?


Too bad the WW only took paid attention to Isaac Newton’s work in alchemy. What were Isaac’s other interests, remind me?

*

In OotP, we saw that when most offensive spells hit those golden statues, they broke off pieces from the statues (and presumably were spent in so doing). But when Tom’s Avada Kedavra hit, it “glanced off.”

Here’s from the battle between Bellatrix, Harry, and then Tom and Albus:

… her counterspell hit the head of the handsome wizard, which was blown off….

She screamed, “Crucio!” and he was forced to duck down again as the centaur’s arm… spun off…

… his own Stunning Spell bounced back at him. Harry scrambled behind the fountain, and one of the goblin’s ears went flying across the room….


“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

… The spell merely glanced off its chest as the statue flung out its arms, protecting Harry. [OotP, 36]


*

Umm. So.

By luck, by chance, baby Harry just happened to let go of the bars and fall on his bum at exactly the right moment to let Tom’s AK skim over his head and hit—what?

I kind of favor, myself, the idea that the killing curse bounced off the back of Harry’s crib into Tom’s face—cribs are meant to protect babies, right? But probably Avada Kedavra needs to bounce off a reflective surface, and the crib might have been painted rather than polished. Was there a mirror behind the crib? Or a window (the attack took place at night)? Or just the odd talcum-tin or picture frame? Or—if Tom was aiming down as well as over—perhaps a stuffed animal with shiny metal eyes was propped up against the far side of the crib?

Whatever it was, its fortuitous placement meant that NOBODY had to manifest extraordinary talent, or power sufficient to block the Killing Curse, in order to save Harry’s bum that night.

Nor a degree of courage and love utterly unparalleled in human history, a sacrifice capable of conjuring a heretofore unimagined shield.


Ordinary love, yes, absolutely, but not extraordinary. Not to create a death-blessing conferring fair fortune.


Harry survived by sheer dumb luck, same as always.

Comments

[librasmile.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. A bit confounding because one DOES like to think there's some greater magical or metaphysical mystery involved. Although I do wonder wouldn't the aurors have seen evidence of that kind of reflective property by now and exploited it? Then again they do say wizards don't have an ounce of logic.

I myself postulated that it had something to do with Harry being tied to old magic, the kind of ritual magic from the days when human sacrifice was a regular occurrence although this magic, in MY universe, wasn't meant to require that. I mention it in my story, As Pretty Does. Of course I never explain quite how the mechanism works so there you go.

Newton was into alchemy and astrology I do believe in addition to mathematics and, along with Liebniz I think, inventing calculus Of course I could be wrong and I"m too lazy to lift my portable DVD player off my college freshman calc book to check, lol.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

I'll try and add something intelligent once I'm done cackling my lungs out. XD

Brava, Terri! Brava!

Edit:
The wiki gods say that metal cribs were quite popular in the late 1800's, and were frequently made of iron before that, going back to the 17th century at least. These metal cribs were often 'painted' with a white vitreous enamel, which as a form of glass can be rather reflective depending on the manufacturing process. Later cribs made of wood would use white, lead-based paint to achieve the now traditional color, though this was banned once the dangers of lead poisoning became better known. So, if the crib were a Potter Family Heirloom (TM) - or just designed to look like one - there's a good chance that it would have been reflective enough to cause a rebound.

Edit 2:
It just occurred to me that maybe James' sacrifice wasn't entirely wasted after all. He threw himself at Voldie to protect both Lily and Harry. If a human sacrifice (which this arguably was, being a suicidal charge with no possible defense) can grant a certain level of luck to those in whose name it is offered, maybe Harry got some of his luck from his father's death. As a corollary, it's possible that whatever luck Lily gained from that protection manifested through the protective charm her own death created. It was Harry's safety she was trying to protect above all else, and a protective charm strong enough to grant Harry's ludicrous level of luck might be genuinely unprecedented, and far beyond anything Lily could have normally achieved offering only herself.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Regarding the crib: remember that it's really the Dumbledore family's house, and the old furniture could easily have been left there. If it was the Dumbledores' crib, that would make it easier for it to be old like that.

Of course, now I'm thinking that Dumbledore might have planned this as a possible last-gasp precaution.

[oryx_leucoryx]

remember that it's really the Dumbledore family's house

Is it? I thought it was the house of the Potter ancestral home, one that was inherited from the Peverells.

I thought the Dumbledores lived next door from Bathilda, and the Potters in another part of the village.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

...Actually, I don't know. I still haven't gotten around to reading Book 7, because there are more interesting things to read out there, including fanfic. From fanfic that I've read, though, like "The Best Revenge," I understood that it was the Dumbledores'.

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

I don't recall that we're ever told who the Potters' house originally belonged to.

[duniazade.livejournal.com]

Hahahaaa, wonderful!

Maybe Harry has fallen into a cauldron of Felix Felicis when he was three days old - like Obélix falling into the potion when he was a kid. :)

[kahran042]

That would explain a lot. :)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! :-)

[oryx_leucoryx]

He was baptized in Felix Felicis. Nothing less for Harry.

[oryx_leucoryx]

This is so brilliant! Now I'm waiting for Severus of Unlikely Allies to arrive at this realization. Not that I know how much it should matter, except in emphasizing to him how much the Headmaster has been manipulating him all along.

As for the composition of Felix Felicis - can't be too awful if Slughorn brings it to the students' attention. The composition is in the textbook he uses, it isn't some secret formula.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Sorry to come in so late, but it makes me wonder why one can't just brew it up in bulk if there's no reason not to. Shouldn't everyone always be lucky?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well it takes six months to brew it and can be disastrous if you get it wrong. That would tend to put it into the "last resort" category, and the time frame would mean that by the time you think you need it, it's too late to make it.

Something that the competent (like Sluggy) might create on spec for the sake of building up a nest egg.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well it takes six months to brew it and can be disastrous if you get it wrong. That would tend to put it into the "last resort" category, and the time frame would mean that by the time you think you need it, it's too late to make it.

Something that the competent (like Sluggy) might create on spec for the sake of building up a nest egg.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. I haven't read the books for a while, so I forgot about the time factor.

[oryx_leucoryx]

OK, so if I understand you correctly, there was no magical reason for Harry to go to 4PD in the summers, and Dumbles should have realized that by the end of Harry's first year at Hogwarts. But it served Dumbles' plan, to remind him how awful Muggles were, to keep him isolated and ignorant, to limit his social contacts outside of Dumbles' supervision and interference. But it was also a good thing Dumbles got Tom to believe the protection (in GOF Tom is convinced in its existence) - it kept him from sending DEs there until the very last minute.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

*"Voldemort always planned on killing James (and everyone else he killed). I'm sure Lily wasn't the only one who pleaded to be killed instead. But she was the only one given the choice. Voldemort was honestly going to spare her. If she had moved, she would have lived (now, I would be horrified if she did anything else, and I'm sure the rest of her life wouldn't have been pleasant)."

Except there are always choices. Stand your ground or attempt to run? Shield your companion or charge the enemy? Whose chance of survival do you maximize, your own or your comrades? A soldier, for instance, can choose to dive for cover himself or throw himself on the grenade. The grenade doesn't give s%!* regardless, but does that fact make the soldier's sacrifice of his life for his comrades' less heroic than St. Lily's?

**"We get proof that by choosing to sacrifice yourself you protect your loved ones - after Harry turned himself over to Voldemort, Voldemort couldn't hurt anyone on the "Light" side (the fire doesn't burn Neville, the silencing spell doesn't hold, etc.). Again, it only worked because Harry chose to die. He chose to walk into the forest to meet his death. If Voldemort had cornered him and he had fought for his life, it wouldn't have worked (although the horcrux would still be destroyed)."

This reminds me of a Japanese aphorism: 'Duty is heavy as a mountain. Death is light as a feather.' So you have something you're willing to die for. Wonderful. What are you willing to live for?

**"As for why Lily's ran out at 17, it's because Harry reached majority. He went through the "transformation" of child to adulthood. Like in the US (where I live) parents don't have to legally support their children. They (the children) can now vote, and sign their own paperwork. No one can make them take their meds anymore - their officially adults in the eyes of the law.

So why would it be different with magic? Harry is now officially an adult wizard who has reached his majority. No one can protect him anymore."

If we're talking about 'transformations' from child to adult, shouldn't it have run out when Harry hit puberty? 17 is just utterly arbitrary as a cut off point. Also, why does being (legally) an adult mean no one can protect him? Humans are social creatures: its instinctual for us to look out for each other regardless of age or even personal relationship at times. It's why we care for our elderly and ill, have police and civil services to look out for the public good, and yes, institute programs specifically for individual people's protection, such as Witness Protection programs.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

**"Of course, James had a choice. Try to protect his family, or run. But it's not James' choice that mattered, it was Voldemort's. Voldemort had decided James was going to die either way, so it didn't matter if he died protecting his family or running away. He was still going to die."

How exactly does Voldemort's choice have any bearing on James' sacrifice or lack thereof? He's not God Almighty. He doesn't just say "Let them smitten" and his opponent drops dead. Lily and James had already defied him and survived three times at that point. If they hadn't survived the prophecy couldn't have applied to them in the first place.

**"You have some valid points about our world. But the Wizarding World is not our world, and magic has it's own guidelines. Dumbledore says in HBP to the Dursley's:
"The magic I evoked fifteen years ago means that Harry has powerful protection while he can still call this house 'home.' However miserable he has been here, however unwelcome, however badly treated, you have at least, grudgingly, allowed him houseroom. This magic will cease to operate the moment that Harry turns seventeen; in other words, at the moment he becomes a man. I ask only this; that you allow Harry to return, once more, to this house, before his seventeenth birthday, which will ensure that the protection continues until that time."

Harry becoming a man = turning 17. It's how the magic works. Why? I don't know. I didn't make up the Wizarding World or the rules of Magic. JKR did. To truly understand, we have to accept the guidelines/rules of magic. Otherwise we're projecting our reality of programs, laws, etc. onto the Wizarding World and it won't make any sense because we don't have that magic."

Let me highlight this for you: The magic I evoked... This was the entire point of Terri's post. The cut off age of 17 is utterly arbitrary and more reminiscent of a constructed, legalistic spell than Deep Primal Magic. Parents don't stop loving their children and wanting to protect them when they become legal adults. If they say they do, there wasn't much love there in the first. If you want to continue the conversation on this point, please address the content of the original post and explain why we should assume it was Lily's protective charm that expired on Harry's 17th birthday and not whatever extras Dumbles built on top of it.

[night-axe.livejournal.com]

OK I apologize in advance because this is nitpicky as all get-out.

JKR says Lily's sacrifice was extra specially powerful because she was given a choice. The problem is this. I'll grant that accepting the choice to die for someone else is the most magically powerful sacrifice. But that's not what happened to Lily. She wasn't given the choice to die for her child at all.

Voldemort tells Lily to move away from Harry. He doesn't threaten to kill her if she refuses, nor promise to let her live if she obeys him. He just makes it clear that he's here to kill Harry.

Lily assumes he's giving her a choice: step aside and live (and Harry dies), or die (and Harry dies). Neither option saves Harry. It doesn't matter that she's willing to die for him ("kill me instead"). Nobody's offering to kill her instead. The choice she thinks she's been given is to save her own life or die with her child, not for him. She chooses option b). This is not the sacrifice we were looking for.

The point of choosing to die for your child isn't to die, but to try to save him even at the ultimate cost to yourself. Lily isn't doing that. She's 'protecting Harry' only in the narrowest, most technical sense. To shield Harry with her body takes guts, but it's a meaningless gesture because she knows her death won't save him. It'll only delay Voldemort for a few seconds. She's got better options, such as attacking Voldemort. Equally suicidal, but at least with a tiny chance of saving her son.

Plus, despite what Lily assumed it's not at all clear that Voldemort really was giving her the choice to live or die. When he ordered her to stand aside his intent was to let her live, as he'd promised Snape. Killing her is a total afterthought. Right, no more farting around, it's Harrymurder time. Shove the girl aside....no, wait, better just kill her too. She dies for nothing, because the plot demands it the idea of killing her suddenly pops into his head even though she's obviously no kind of threat. It's not OOC for Voldemort to act like that, but given the huge magical import of the circumstances of Lily's death it's really poorly motivated.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Diary!Tom accepts that dying *to save* someone else is a powerful countercharm. But if Lily's actions couldn't have saved Harry directly then there should have been no countercharm.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----We get proof that by choosing to sacrifice yourself you protect your loved ones - after Harry turned himself over to Voldemort, Voldemort couldn't hurt anyone on the "Light" side (the fire doesn't burn Neville, the silencing spell doesn't hold, etc.). Again, it only worked because Harry chose to die.

I'm not sure if we can say for certain that Voldemort's spells failed specifically because Harry (sort of) died. What if his spells didn't work against Harry's friends because he was using the Elder Wand, which belonged to Harry?