I think this chapter explained something which has struck me as strange for a long time:
If the killing curse can be stopped by love, how come only Harry ever survived? Its not like Lilly is the only person who ever loved anyone, nor the only person who would sacrifice themselves to save another.
Maybe the Potters possessed a new, experimental deathly hallow, one capable of stopping the killing curse (or, alternativly, an old one whoes purpose has been forgotton). It must have limits on its power, otherwise James and Lilly would have lived, and probably wouldn't have been tested thoroughly, otherwise Lilly wouldn't have seemed to panic so much (unless she was acting to stop Voldemort guessing).
This could be the stone which glowed, and it may or may not require a love/sacrafice to power it.
I thought about this for a while too, more than five whole minutes by the clock, and eventually I came up with a possible explanation.
It's not that Lily sacrificed herself for her child. As you and uncountable other people pointed out, that must have happened innumerable times throughout history, even just among the witches and wizards. It's that she sacrificed herself for her child when she could have lived.
Think of the oddness of the situation. The murderer arrives to kill the child, but not the mother. How often is that the case, historically? Then the...
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 96. The previous thread is at almost 300 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.
Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, .
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