12 THE FAITHFUL READER … 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…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. As long as Harry can call his aunt’s house his home, his mother’s self-sacrifice continues to protect him from Voldemort. Because of this, Voldemort cannot touch him while at his aunt’s house. In fact, Voldemort cannot physically touch him at all, a detail that foils his plan to regain a body at the end of The Sorcerer’s Stone. Eventually, Voldemort finds a way around this protection in The Goblet of Fire when Harry wins the Triwizard tournament. Voldemort’s elaborate scheme to regain his body requires a sample of the blood of one’s enemy. Voldemort selects Harry as the only satisfactory option, and his plan temporarily works to his benefit. After using Harry’s blood, Voldemort regains a body and is now able to touch him, and it seems the magic of Lily’s loving self-sacrifice has been overcome. However, when Harry recounts Voldemort’s success to Dumbledore, Harry imagines that he sees a “gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes.” In the context of book four, this comment foreshadows the larger plot in the series, which is not revealed until book seven, The Deathly Hallows. In the final book, Harry learns that he must sacrifice his life for Voldemort to be killed. Furthermore, he learns that Voldemort himself must be the one to do it. After Harry learns this piece of information, he goes willingly to his death and allows Voldemort the opportunity to kill him. As Harry walks to the forest to surrender himself over to death, he understands that he must accept death willingly for the sake of protecting his friends. Only Harry’s loving self-sacrifice will give his friends the chance to defeat Voldemort. However, as Voldemort attempts to kill Harry for the second time, Harry survives. He is, once again, the boy who lived.
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