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alex_zag_al comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81 - Less Wrong
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Avada Kedavra leaves no mark, but getting killed by Lily's ritual sacrifice might. Even so, that the body was burned, which makes identification harder, is suggestive that it is not really Voldemort's.
Yeah, I'm less confident in the notion that Voldemort survived Godric's Hollow, and it's not integral to the hypothesis, but that's the obvious explanation for a burnt body, and the last few chapters have given me a new respect for obvious explanations.
It's also difficult to see why Voldemort would want to pretend to die at Godric's Hollow. He was winning the war. Why pretend to lose, throw away what he had built up to then, and try an entirely different approach to gaining power? I think the more obvious explanation for the burnt body is that whatever ritual magic protected Harry was very destructive to Voldemort. I think it is clear that some ritual magic is involved here; how else can we explain the danger of Harry's and Quirrell's magic interacting? And the violence of their magics' interaction in Azkaban makes it plausible that if Voldemort were to cast a killing curse directly at Harry, he might end up as a burnt corpse.
Tentative explanation: he was hedging his bets. If it's a trap, to walk into it would be stupid. If it's genuine, to ignore a warning like that would be stupid, too. He acted in a way that accommodated either possibility.
I think the ritual he performed that night was copying himself into Harry (note to self: this may or may not be the same thing as horcruxing), and the resonance between their magics is a side effect of that. As to which explanation is more obvious, well, I don't think an argument from obviousness is valid in the face of a genuine disagreement, so I withdraw mine. It's reasonable, though.
Also, if there was no one left alive except Harry, how did they know it was Avada Kedavra that rebounded from Harry, instead of some other spell?
(When the Dementor attacks him, Harry sees the green flash and hears the words, but only when Voldie kills his parents, not when he’s attacked himself, as I recall.)
They could have tried Legillimency on baby Harry, but nobody actually mentions that, and other than Moody it doesn’t seem like anyone would think of it.
Looking at the last spell cast by Voldemort's want.
Of course, you’re right, I forgot you could do that. In MoR at least they should have thought of it, though they didn’t seem to try it on Hermione’s. Prior Incantato* doesn’t show who was target, though, and shows only the last spell IIRC, so it’d be easy to camouflage.
I wonder if it “wandless” spells are still cast through the wand (just without holding it), or if they’re completely independent of it.
(*Edit:) The first version of this comment mistakenly said Priori Incantatem, a different spell than the one I was actually describing.
Not only does it show who the target was, it summons a pseudo-ghost if the target was the victim of a Killing Curse.
The one in canon showed at least the last four or five, I'm pretty sure.
Edit: Whoops, sorry, didn't get the context. "Priori Incantatem" is the brother-wand effect, "Prior Incantato" is the analytical spell, which we know a lot less about- I don't believe there's evidence either way whether it's possible to use it to display the target or show multiple spells.
I was right by accident. I was actually thinking of the Priori Incantato (the analytical one), which seems to behave how I described above. I didn’t remember the other one, but it just happens it doesn’t apply to the situation, since Harry didn’t have his wand yet. I’ll fix it above.
It's 'Prior (no i) Incantato'. The link in the great-grandparent is broken because you inserted an extra 'i'.
Thank you!