jayne–you brought up something that I’ve thought about before. Have we discussed it before? I don’t remember.

Harry assumes that since he heard his mother’s voice that the male voice he heard was his father, James. But I’ve always wondered if it was actually Snape who told Lily to take Harry and run, perhaps he stepped in after James was killed. But all of that is just a guess. Part of what made me think it might be Snape was that JKR said that Snape wasn’t hiding under the Invisibility Cloak–but she could just as easily have put our speculation to rest by saying that Snape wasn’t at Godric’s Hollow that night.

Well, at least we’ll find out in just over 80 days. Yay!!!

Pat

This theory helps me reconcile some things that bother me. The only AK that Harry actually sees, is the one that kills Cedric. The other two mentioned, the one that destroyed the house at Godric’s Hollow, and the one that tossed Dumbledore over the wall, did not act anything like that one, except for the green light appearing. I think there is something different about BOTH of those particular AK’s actually.

BTW, has it ever been proved, beyond a doubt that JAMES was the man’s voice we heard at Godric’s Hollow, or could someone else have been there?

As to Lily’s eyes being important, they are. They are a symbol that he will choose to die to protect someone else (my guess is Snape), and this is how he will destroy the horcrux in himself and defeat Voldemort forever. He won’t necessarily die, (though I think he will. I think the sacrifice will be real, like his mother’s), but making that choice will in itself drive Voldemort out of him, just as it did in the Ministry at the end of OOTP>

How do we know this: Voldemart asked her to step aside and the only thing he is interested in is power and immortality.

I agree with Redhen that Harry’s green eyes are only important in that Harry has more of Lily’s gifts or strengths, his inherentence of her magic she is more important than whatever he got from James ( flying being one).

Last point as a question: Is it because of Lily that harry has the ability to throw off the Imperious curse or is that a remnant of Voldemart, if it is the former than the possession of Lily wouldn’t work in creating the horcrux.

My thinking is that Lily didn’t just die for her son; I feel sure that there were probably others who died for their loved ones before Lily died for Harry, but their sacrifice did not have a similar effect. So what was different this time? I think that while James was buying Lily time she performed some sort of ancient charm; a charm that had to do with love and sacrifice. I think that her death was necessary for the spell to be complete and that that is what gave Harry his amazing protection that the wizarding world had never seen before.

It seems failry clear that Lily was killed with an Avada Kedavra curse because of the flash of green light, but what curse Voldemort then used on the seemingly unprotected Harry I do not know; the theory that in order to create a horcrux Voldemort would have needed to use a different spell seems reasonable enough to me, but I don’t think that the spell that killed Lily was the one that rebounded back onto Voldemort. He just killed her. The spell that vanquished Voldemort rebounded off of Harry, though it did have some effect by leaving a connection between Harry and Voldemort.

If Harry is indeed a horcrux I guess that means that in order to kill Lord Voldemort completely Harry will indeed have to die … don’t really want to see him have to die, but then it isn’t up to me is it, and after all it is only a story.

THUS, since none of the Death Eaters have done this (specifically made a Horcrux), while they may have torn souls from committing murder, the soul portions would not be floating around or have gone outside the body (that is, they would still be capable of healing … it would be possible – how probable is an entirely different story; I don’t think it would simply be a matter of a “time heals all wounds” kind of thing, I would tend to think it would take some more direct action)

In addition to what I cited in one of my previous comments on Dumbledore’s reference to Harry’s scar as the only know sign of physical damage left by an AK, I found Felicity’s comments illuminating on the plausibility of Red Hen’s theory here that Lily got in the way of some curse particular to the Horcrux process, rather than got hit with an AK. I wouldn’t necessarily agree that there is no discernable logic whatsoever to the spells regurgitated from Voldy’s wand (although what possible logic there is is, I think, fairly latent – the hand appearing versus the ropes could be that the hand is 1) physically united with Peter’s psychic being, ie a part of his body and thus mystically wedded to his soul and 2) the replacement for a hand that is an integral part of Voldy’s being as the basis of the flesh of the new body wedded to his own soul … the connection between this [the hand] and the shades of those killed by the AK curses would be … the ropes were only ever things hooked onto the exterior of a body, not involving any psychic connections … of course, in the beginning of GOF we have Priori Incantatem producing a non-psychic vestige, the mini dark mark, from Harry’s wand, but then that was an actual incantation of Priori Incantatem and not exactly the same thing we have going on in the graveyard as an unexpected result from the tension of the cores etc … but, like I said, even if it is a discernable logic it’s on a very latent level [alhtough the inclusion of the hand but not of the ropes seems a little conspicuous, seeing as the hand does not play a physical role beyond simply appearing but it is in fairly close temporal proximity with the ropes but she "remembered" to put the former in but not the latter ... but that's not really conclusive] … if there is any I would simply place it on the level of Vanderark’s “Jo Logic,” the high level of consistency she has in physical details in the works even when she may not have concretely “mapped things” out [ie consciously correlated and double checked things etc], due to that she simply has a very real and vivid picture of the scenery and workings of the potterverse in her head, which is what yields such a consistent and gripping picure on the page … but the particular point of whether the logic is there or not is not really here or there for me in any strong sense, just some thoughts [and an opportunity to bring up VanderArk's observation and coining of the term "Jo-Logic" because I thought it was so good, and I think the consistency of the "Jo Logic" in these scenes maintains whether or not you think there is a discernable logic on that particular element or not]).
BUT the salient point is that Lily’s shade emerged from the wand 1) as a distinct shade and 2) in the same fashion as the others (to the extent that its place in the progrssion could be interchanged “accidentally” with James’ and then switched back without, seemingly any real ramification, meaning the variant readings in the American editions of GOF, where in one printing Lily’s shade appears and tells Harry to hold on and that James is coming [which is the edition I have in the paperback] but in the other James’ appears first and speaks similar words about Lily coming, and it was officially explained as just a mistake and fixed in the next printing). I now decidely think she got hit with an AK like the others.

I also like Felicity’s word “transform” for a change brought about in the AK by contact with Lily’s love (although in Potter-verse lingo I might use “transfigure” instead … not meaning I think there is specific transfiguration class/magic thing involved – just that I think the term rather neatly appropriate, especially given the history the word has in Christian Biblical tradition)

To give an example from a very PoMo band: I was recently discussing the music of U2 with a friend, saying that I was coming around to liking a certain phase of their music . This friend said he sees the most recent album as a return at least closer to their old pre-1990 ways (as he called it, the “blow-hard Bono”) and that he is not as much into it, and that the albums that have been seen as so divergent are the ones he is actually into, and he phrased it: “I like the post-lapsarian stuff … forget this parousia junk.” I’m not saying I agree with him but I do see the issue at stake: the parousia (fulfilment of salvation in the second coming … seen in U2 in their recent tour closings of combining the early religious material in a song like “40″ with the most recent “feeling of religious resolution” of a song like “Yahweh”) seen as simply “undoing” the curse of the fall … either going back before the fall, pre-lapsarian, or going to to where humanity might have gone had the fall not happened, ie pre-lapsarian-Plus … either way sort of “bracketing” the post-lapsarian … and what it tends to overlook is the Felix Culpa (don’t get me wrong, I’m for the parousia … otherwise the Felix Culpa is just … culpa – which ‘twould not be a good thing atall).

So, in terms of Voldy on that fateful night … was he undone by simply an AK rebounding and doing its AK thing on its usual “AK Terms” (“ok, the curse of the fall backfired and undid the villian of the fall … so now we can just sort of forget that that fall thing ever happened … you know, ‘justification’ as ‘just as if I never sinned’ kinda thing”) or was what undid him an AK, death, transfigured by love? I like the latter possibility: it’s that mystery of the Felix Culpa … it remains a culpa, neither dismissed nor deconstructed and reconstructed in a way that does violence to that fact, but somehow mysteriously transformed by Love into the Felix Culpa (I’m aware that I’m getting dangerously close to heretically making sin a positive and necessary constituent part of things, andthus evil, but that is always the danger in trying to examine a mystery in too concrete of terms, which is why there is a very healthy note of sanity in the Eastern emphasis on apophatic theology ["negative theology" - focussing more on what we cannot say about God and mysteries of faith, rather than trying to pin down their exact nature] but hopefully I haven’t crossed over that line).