Skip to main content

Was it Dumbledore's charm or Lily's that protected Harry all those years?


I'm confused when reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because Dumbledore states that it was his charm that kept Harry safe while living at the Dursleys.



‘But I knew, too, where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he 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 he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative.’


‘She doesn’t love me,’ said Harry at once. ‘She doesn’t give a damn –’


‘But she took you,’ Dumbledore cut across him. ‘She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother’s sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you.’


Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 37 "The Lost Prophecy"




So does this mean it was Dumbledore's doing that Harry was safe at his aunt's house? There Voldemort could never touch him. If Dumbledore had never made this ancient magic, Voldemort could have found him?


Lily's sacrifice made it impossible for Voldemort to physically touch Harry, but would that have been the limit to his protection if not for Dumbledore? Lily's sacrifice made it possible for Dumbledore to do this, but was it still down to him to create this magic of safety with Harry's relatives?


If Harry went to live with the Dursleys and had Dumbledore been gone or dead, or did not care enough to create the spell, would Harry still have been protected where his mother's blood dwells?



Answer



It appears that there were two parts to the protection


From various sources throughout the books it becomes apparent that there were two separate aspects to the protection Harry had. The first was a more specific protection. This had nothing to do with Dumbledore, and was solely the result of Lilly's love. This specific protection prevented Voldemort's original curse from killing Harry, and it also prevented Quirrel from touching Harry. This aspect of the protection is dealt with in several places:


In the end of Philosopher's Stone Dumbledore partly explains the protection from Lilly's sacrifice:



“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign ... 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.”




In the end of Chamber of Secrets Tom Riddle says the following:



“So. Your mother died to save you. Yes, that’s a powerful counter-charm. I can see now ... there is nothing special about you, after all.



In the graveyard in Goblet of Fire Voldemort says:



“His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice.


. . . This is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it . . . but no matter. I can touch him now.”


Harry felt the cold tip of the long white finger touch him, and thought his head would burst with the pain.




We see from the above quotes that the protection from Lilly's love was limited to two things: It blocked the original Killing Curse, and it prevented someone who "has no love" from physically touching Harry. And in fact once Voldemort came back and took some of Harry's blood, he apparently overcame this part of the protection. As Dumbledore himself noted on that occasion:



“Very well,” he said, sitting down again. “Voldemort has overcome that particular barrier. Harry, continue, please.”



The second aspect of the protection is more general. This part essentially made Harry's home a "safe zone". This protection was derived from Lilly's love, but was ultimately implemented by Dumbledore. What Dumbledore did was essentially apply Lily's love protection to the Dursley's home by channeling it through Harry's blood relation to Aunt Petunia.


At the end of Order of the Phoenix Dumbledore explains how this worked:



“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. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years.”




As you note in the question, this is what Dumbledore said was his own implementation:



“She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you.


Your mother’s sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you.”



In the beginning of Half-Blood Prince Dumbledore explains this aspect of the protection to the Dursleys:



“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.”



Thus, it seems clear from all the above quotes that Dumbledore implemented a magical protection in addition to the protection Harry already had from his mother's sacrifice. Dumbledore's protection was based on the original protection, and indeed could probably be termed an extension of the original protection.



It is interesting to note, though, that it is possible that other characters did not fully understand this distinction. In the beginning of Deathly Hallows there are several references to the protection of the Dursley home:



Moody dropped his sacks at his feet and turned to Harry. “As Dedalus probably told you, we had to abandon Plan A. Pius Thicknesse has gone over, which gives us a big problem. He’s made it an imprisonable offense to connect this house to the Floo Network, place a Portkey here, or Apparate in or out. All done in the name of your protection, to prevent You-Know-Who getting in at you. Absolutely pointless, seeing as your mother’s charm does that already. What he’s really done is to stop you getting out of here safely.




“Now, your mother’s charm will only break under two conditions: when you come of age, or” — Moody gestured around the pristine kitchen — “you no longer call this place home. You and your aunt and uncle are going your separate ways tonight, in the full understanding that you’re never going to live together again, correct?”



In these two quotes, Moody apparently conflates Lilly's protection with Dumbledore's protection. It is possible that Moody was not fully aware of the mechanism of the protection, it is possible that he was simply being imprecise in his speech, or it is possible that a minor authorial error crept in here.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...