I don't know if I missed something in the book and I don't know if there is already a thread about this but the one question I never felt was answered was whether it was truly Lily's love that saved Harry when he was a baby.

We know that the killing curse will rebound because the Elder Wand won't kill its master but did Lily Potter actually make a shield of love? I don't know if that was ever clarified in DH.

 

It's the prophecy. And the Dark Lord shall mark him his equal.

 

No, not the prophesy.

The prophesy is a prediction of what will happen, not some sort of power that causes things to happen. Dumbledore stressed this in HBP. Had Voldemort ignored the prophesy, it wouldn't have come true.

So with the "either must die at the hands of the other", it doesn't mean that were Harry or Voldemort were to be hit with an AK they'd survive, it's simply a prediction stating that the only people who will land AKs on them are each other.

As for Lily's protection of Harry: yes, it was love. Or rather, sacrifice.

The counter to the killing curse appears to be willing self-sacrifice of life.

It links in rather well with the whole "Master of Death" thing too. A Master of Death is a person who is able to accept their own death, and go to it without resistance, like Harry did. Yet it appears to be this very thing that protects from the Killing curse: making the person truely the master of death.

 

Is it really consistent? The point of Lily's sacrifice was that she actually did die instead of Harry. Harry doesn't, the Horcrux snuffs it instead. And still, everybody who Harry intended to sacrifice himself for seems to be protected from Voldemort's wand in the ensuing battle.

I think it's possible to argue that the part of Voldemort inside Harry sacrificed itself for 'the greater good'. There's a lot of potential for great parody involved here.

 

As Dumbledore said to Harry, it's not the actual dying that counts, but the willingness to sacrifice oneself.

"And that, I think, will have made all the difference."

 

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost?

As for the point of the thread, wasn't there another case were someone willingly sacrificed themselves for a loved one...ah yes James.

So if we go by what has been told then why didn't Lily also survive an AK?

 

Lily sacrificed herself? For what? For Harry to live? She might as well have known that even if she gave herself up Voldemort won't stop. He'd just kill Harry after he killed her. It was more like a penniless woman bargaining with someone who has all the right cards. What she did was pitiful and pathetic.

Anyway, as for sacrifice creates magic that protects those you care about is just plain stupid. Another one of those holes JKR never really quite cared to tighten. If that were the case nobody would have died at Voldemort's hands cause Harry, since his first year, always tried to sacrifice himself so that people won't get hurt. The way I see it, it's just one of the infinite Deus Ex Machinas JKR made to finish Deathly Hallows.

 

Bond of blood

According to this, it is an ancient Charm and Lily sealed it when she defied Voldemort three times (see PoA). Dumbledore somehow expanded it to cover the Dursley's home.

 

The Lexicon's explanation doesn't quite fit the new data from DH. Harry never cast a Charm, and it seems neither did Lily. The self-sacrifice alone protected Harry.

What Dumbledore did is somehow harness that protection and extend it to protect Harry at the Dursleys'. btw: That this was possible might have given Voldemort the idea that he could harness the protection as well in GoF.

 

So the protection was not active when Voldemort attacked Harry, going by what the lexicon says.

Which leads to another question, if Harry had no protection on him, then was it the Prophecy which saved him?

Because if we do go with 'the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal' then it might have been Magic which actually saved him.

A bit cliche, but the only other alternative I see was that Lily knew James was dead trying to save them.

So she activated the Charm and then Voldemort killed her, then it went like Ferrovax says. (exponential sacrifices)

Although Lily still had no wand and how would she have known of the Charm, so...I'm lost.

 

The charm is a different entity to the initial sacrifice. The sacrifice ensures the immediate protection, the charm makes it so that the protection stays.

 

I can't remember which story, or even if it was only one, but I know that I've read a (at least one) fanfic where Harry raised this question - "Am I supposed to believe that in all the families that were attacked by Death Eaters, only Lily Potter ever tried to sacrifice herself to protect her child? That no other mother in Britain could love her child enough to die for them? What made this mother's sacrifice more powerful than the sacrifice of any of them? No, whatever caused Voldemort's spell to turn back on him, it was not my mother's love for me."

That's almost certainly not the exact phrasing used, and I truly wish that I could remember the name or author of the fic I read it in, but... Close enough for all of you to see and follow the point the author was making. Many families were attacked. Other mothers loved their children, other mothers were willing to die to try to protect those children. They died. Their children died. Harry didn't. Something else must have been different.

I don't buy that Harry was safe and lived because Lily died. Yes, she died while trying to protect him, and yes, Voldie's spell then backfired. But I don't think that the spell backfired because Lily loved her baby and was willing to die for him.

And I don't buy that it was the prophecy - after all, even if you think a group of words uttered by a demented Seer hold enough power to divert and alter spells, it could have applied to someone else just as easily.

 

No, the difference in the Potter's case was that Lilly was given a choice in the matter. (due to Snape's request) She took the decision to sacrifice herself knowing she could have walked away. As it appears to be so that magic is fuelled by intent, taking the conscious decision of laying down your life in order to protect another one triggers the arcane power which Dumbledore spoke of.
In case of the other mothers; they would have died anyway.
I think

 

Imo, that's the flaw in the concept the books present. Lily had no way of knowing that her sacrifice would protect Harry. What she did was more like deciding to die alongside her son.

I dunno why Rowling thinks this is - compared to James' death - the greater sacrifice. I can't see much greatness in not even trying to fight back, even if the odds were abysmal.

 

Lily died a human sacrifice, James died fighting. The idea that there is power in sacrifice is an old one. Though to be honest, James couldn't make that sacrifice since Voldemort was going to kill him anyway.

I always thought it was clear that Lily knew just what she was doing. It's mentioned several times that she was very talented.

 

It depends on whether you want to take the Prophecy at face-value, or at the fact it is meant to be an obscure referencing tool for linking Harry and Voldemort. I don't think Voldemort could have simply ignored the Prophecy, nor do I think he could of escaped the implications behind it; even with out Deus Ex Machina driving it all home.

The prophecy states Voldemort would; "Mark him as his equal". HPB clearly states Voldemort's choice in why he chose Harry over Neville, so that doesn't need to be covered. If you take that particular line of the prophecy at face value, Voldemort could have simply walked up to Harry, stabbed him with a knife (and the knife would of obviously bounced off of him, due to the fact Harry could not have been killed by Voldemort before the Prophecy was inacted), and then stabbed him again and been done with it.

The Blood Protection that Lily left Harry was just a scape-goat for the eventual binding of the two characters. Lily was given a choice, because of Snape, and she took into consideration those last moments of her life that she would rather die for her child, then allow him to just die. That's self-sacrifice, she is sacrificing herself, for her child. Which called into effect the full implications that allowed the Prophecy to be carried out the way it did.

I think that if Lily hadn't done what she did, if Voldemort had simply murdered her before she had time to willingly choose her course... the entire story would of been done. There would of been no Blood Protection to force Voldemort's first offensive action against Harry into creating the Mark.

 

Doesn't it seem quite off that the blood protection only activates if the self-sacrifice is done consciously? What about the others who sacrificed themselves for no other reason than because it was the right thing to do?

In essence both are just the same (facing certain death to give others even the slightest of chances to live) so how could one invoke blood protection while the other could not?

 

Because that kind of protection is still a charm, and hince you need to know how to cast it.

Second, it requires the ability to walk away and not give up your life. If you couldn't just walk away you aren't sacrificing anything.

 

Still she didn't have any time to cast the charm. She couldn't have known beforehand that she was going to be spared, so she couldn't cast it earlier. Harry remembers the whole exchange between Lily and Voldemort, while facing Dementors, and she does nothing except begging him to let her son live. Unless crying and begging is the incantation for that charm, I don't see how she could have consciously cast that charm.

I think it more likely that the protection happened unknowingly, similar to accidental magic occurrence. Either way it was the protection that saved Harry as Dumbledore himself says, and he is the all powerful, all knowing, always right being in canon.