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Depends on the firm and on the group. Also - "protected days" can easily be unprotected with exceptions in most circumstances - your associate would usually just have to ask the staffer if they can have you. However, I have heard that some banks take them pretty seriously - others it is a PR push and nothing more.
Depends on if you're doing intern work or analyst work. At a bank that gives interns more responsibility, they'll follow a more normal analyst schedule and come in as necessary like the rest of us. Banks with more structured programs where the interns are just doing profiles and fucking around typically have rigid protections (and a lot of them care about avoiding intern overtime pay).
In my experience and at my bank though, it continues to baffle me the number of kids who don't get banking. They show up and act like their fucking protected saturdays matter. If you want big boy work, you follow a big boy schedule. You can't have it both ways because deals don't wait for your day to go fuck off.
People like you are exactly the reason why banking has such a bad reputation. Everyone understands the live situation and occasional all-nighter/100+ hr week but 95% of time the weekend (at least Sat) work can be avoided by better time management and communication.
My office (BB) enforces the Sat protection and 80hr week policy for junior banker pretty well and I don't see any deal fall apart because of that. We also strictly enforce weekend protection and off by midnight policy for interns.
I heard Moelis protects Friday-Sunday every week. That is to say, they "protect" you from having free time by making sure you're in the office every day.