The Prophecy

"Was it--was she making a real prediction?"

Dumbledore looked mildly impressed.

"Do you know, Harry, I think she might have been." he said thoughtfully. "Who'd have thought it? That brings her total of real predictions up to two. I should offer her a pay raise...."

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 426

So there we have the introduction to the idea of Trelawney's First Real Prophecy, which led to much speculation on my part (which can be found below) and, finally, its revelation in book five. Here, for anyone interested, is the text of the prophecy, which will be followed by some of my thoughts on its implications. And I'll still include here, if for no other reason than to prove that I was pretty close, my own pre-Order deductions about what this prophecy could be. But first, the prophecy:

"THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES.... BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES.... AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT. AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES.... THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES."

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, p. 841

My Speculations:

We learn, subsequent to Dumbledore's sharing of this prophecy with Dumbledore, that Voldemort's spy only heard up until the first "born as the seventh month dies." We learn that it could have referred to EITHER Harry or Neville, although Dumbledore says there is now no doubt that it is about Harry, because Voldemort has "marked him as his equal." Voldemort did not know this, nor did he know Harry would have "power the Dark Lord knows not." Now, let's go through this piece by piece...

First of all, why did Voldemort choose Harry over Neville? Dumbledore notes that "he chose, not the pureblood (which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing), but the half-blood, like himself." The question is, is this really enough of a reason for Voldemort to make the decision he did? It has been suggested that Harry is the Heir of Gryffindor--this is hinted at a number of times, most pointedly when Harry pulls Godric's sword out of the Sorting Hat, and in the fact that the Potters lived in Godric Hollow. If this is in fact the case, maybe Voldemort, who knew himself to be the Heir of Slytherin, thought the Heir of Gryffindor to be a more fitting or likely match. Looking at Harry and Neville now, we can see why Harry might seem to be more of a threat, but Neville's lesser magical abilities would likely not have been aparent when they were newborns. And Harry's and Neville's parents seem to have been pretty equal, both having escaped Voldemort three times. An interesting question is, is Harry a better wizard than Neville at least in part because he has some of Voldemort's abilities within him due to the scar? Also, is it really true that Harry is the only one who can fulfill the prophecy, or does Neville still have some chance?

When were the Longbottoms attacked by the Death Eaters and driven mad? Presumably it was after Neville was born, which, as we know, was right about when Harry was born. And presumably it was before Voldemort was defeated in his attempt to kill Harry Potter. Did their attack happen before Voldemort went after the Potters for the final time, and was it because they were insane that Voldemort chose Harry as his more likely opponent? Or was the attack on them a part of his response to the prophecy: did he send his Death Eaters after the Longbottoms for the same reason he himself went after Harry?

(Melinda, webmistress of Potter's Place (see my links page) asserts that the attacks on the Longbottoms were after Voldemort was defeated, since Sirius saw Bellatrix come into Azkaban. And, she notes, they were toturing them to find out where their downfallen master was. (The chapter of GoF entitled the Pensieve.) So that leaves us with the question of why Voldemort chose Harry over Neville, as well as the question of why the Death Eaters thought the Longbottoms would know where he is. UNLESS that means that his Death Eaters knew, or at least thought, that Voldemort was going after both Harry AND Neville that night, and they thought maybe he had gotten to the Longbottoms and they knew something. But it seems like it was pretty common knowledge that he was defeated when he tried to kill Harry. So it's still puzzling...) ,

As for the power the Dark Lord knows not... We are told by Dumbledore this is love, a force studied in a room of the Department of Mysteries which is always kept locked (presumably the very door that ruined the knife Sirius gave to Harry), a force "at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature." We have been told that it was Lily's death for the sake of love that saved Harry from Avada Kedavra, that, until book four, prevented Voldemort from touching him, and that keeps the Dursleys' house safe for him while he considers it home. Presumably, it will be this power that will allow Harry to finally defeat Voldemort. How exactly this will come about will be very interesting to see. It will be a powerful scene, I'm sure, in which Harry will have to draw from his love for the parents and godfather Voldemort took from him, and the many friends and mentors he has found within the wizarding community.

Of course, we have no guarantee, as Rowling constantly reminds us in interviews, that Harry will in fact survive the series and defeat Lord Voldemort. The prophecy merely tells us that one must defeat the other. Of course, I can't possibly imagine she would end the series with Harry dead and Voldemort at large. And with this prophecy, it seems apparent that Harry won't have to die in order to defeat Voldemort, so she doesn't have the option of killing them both off. So I would probably bet quite a lot on Harry's survival at the end of book seven, and Voldemort's death.

This does, however, mean that Harry will have to kill someone. Admittedly, it's Voldemort, but he will still have to kill. Probably he had hoped this task, at least, could be left to someone like Dumbledore. And we have already encountered the difficulty that the Unforgivable Curses have to be meant; Harry wasn't able to produce a very effective Crucio Curse; he'll have to come a long way in order to perform Avada Kedavra. Although perhaps he can kill Voldemort without this curse, relying solely on the power of love. I think that would be more fitting.

But wait a minute, neither can live while the other survives? But they've both been alive at the same time for a year now. How is that allowed by the prophecy? They even went through a duel and neither died. How does this not contradict the prophecy? Anyone?

Also interestingly, Harry hasn't yet told Hermione and Ron about this new twist in the prophecy, which most readers probably suspected anyway. We've known all along that Harry and Voldemort were inextricably linked, and that only Harry could be the one to defeat him, if only because he's the title character of the series. But I imagine the news will come as something of a shock to his best friends, who, although they have seen Harry escape from Voldemort four times, probably expect his death to be the duty of more experienced wizards.

Have any insights of your own to add? I'd love to hear them! E-mail me at dragonfyre52@hotmail.com.

My Original Deductions:

There it is. Dumbledore has given us the key to the following speculation. Clearly, once before, Professor Trelawney made a real prediction. It's possible that whatever she prophesied has not yet come true, and it has been deemed "real" merely because it, too, was delivered unexpectedly, in a voice and mood entirely different from Trelawney's usual, and without her awareness. But what if it has come true?

Voldemort went to kill the Potters for a reason. Perhaps it was simply because they were strong wizards, and there was no chance they would join him, so he needed to get them out of the way. But even Hagrid notes, in Sorcerer's Stone, p. 55, that Voldemort's reasons for killing Harry, a harmless, defenseless baby, after James and Lily were already dead, is a "real myst'ry." Hagrid suggests perhaps that Voldemort "wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin' by then." These are possible explanations. He was definitely cruel and evil enough to kill a baby for no better reasons. But isn't it also possible that Voldemort came to Godric Hollow, not to do away with Lily and James, but for the express purpose of eliminating Harry. (We have further evidence for this, it has been pointed out to me, in the fact that, according to everything we know at the moment, it seems Lily died protecting Harry from Voldemort, who was trying to kill not her, but him.) And why would Voldemort be after Harry? Perhaps because he had heard a prophecy that Harry Potter would cause his eventual downfall.

Voldemort went to Hogwarts, when he was still Tom Riddle. We don't know how long Trelawney has been at Hogwarts, but it's possible that she was there when he was. She could have made this prophecy at any time, either to him or to someone else who told him. He could also have met her in some other way some other time and exacted a prophecy from her. The question of whether or not it happened at Hogwarts could be answered if we could determine whether the Tom Riddle of the diary in Chamber of Secrets seems to have heard of Harry before, or whether all his information about Harry's eventual defeat of him came from Ginny's conversation with him. The latter seems possible, even implied by Riddle: "'Well, you see, Ginny told me all about you, Harry,' said Riddle. 'Your whole fascinating history.' His eyes roved over the lightening scar on Harry's forehead, and their expression grew hungrier." (311)

Then there's the question of why Lucius Malfoy put the diary in Ginny's cauldron. Did he simply want to get back at Mr. Weasley by implicating him in involvement with Voldemort? Or did he know that, in the right hands, the diary could give Voldemort another chance to defeat Harry Potter. If so, how did he know this? Voldemort must have told him before his defeat about the diary, and that he had preserved his younger self in it. Does this mean he suspected he would be defeated one day? Was it paranoia, or prophecy that drove Voldemort to preserve his younger self and leave it in the keeping of a trusted friend? Also, did Diary-Riddle know anything about his mission before he talked to Ginny? Did Lucius write in the diary to inform him? Or, again, did he know already from a prediction by Trelawney? He tells Harry he has been his target "for many months now" (312) (and that, before this, his main goal was "killing Mudbloods"). What does this many months mean? Since Ginny told him? Since Lucius told him? Or many months in his lifetime, suspended for fifty years, since Trelawney told him? It's ambiguous, and at the moment I don't think we can determine anything more definite about this.

I did, however, just read an interview with Rowling about the second movie, in which she says, in reference to the second book and its relation to the movie that there is much important information in the second year that we don't yet realize the full importance of, "and I know how difficult it was to get it all in there without drawing too much attention to the clues." Clearly there is something going on here we'll find more out about later. Now, part of this could be the hints that Harry is the heir of Gryffindor, as many people are beginning to suspect. But couldn't part of this "important information" have to do with why Voldemort is out to get Harry in the first place, and isn't it possible that this could be the result of Trelawney's first real prediction?

If Trelawney's first real prediction WAS something about Harry Potter, what was it? Assuming that it was given before Harry's birth, it would have had to do with either "James Potter's firstborn" or maybe even "Lily's firstborn." Perhaps it was given on the day of Harry's birth, or after, in which case he would have been named. And was it a prophecy that Harry would cause Voldemort's downfall, in the which case, with delightful irony, it was one of those Oedipal self-fulfilling prophesies, because the very fact that Voldemort tried to prevent Harry from causing his downfall was what caused his downfall? Or was it an as-yet-unfulfilled prophecy (and one which I happen to agree with) that Harry will, one day, as he has not yet, cause Voldemort's total annihilation? Which would explain why Voldemort is still trying to kill Harry. (Of course, at this point he could also be motivated purely by a desire for revenge against Harry for reducing him to a mere shadow of his former self.)

But was Dumbledore too casual in his mentioning of this previous prophecy for it to have had anything to do with such a grave topic as Voldemort's attack on the Potters? Maybe, but then again Dumbledore has a habit of being casual about things most people would never be casual about. And it has to be of some pertinence to our story, else Rowling wouldn't have mentioned it. Every detail, as far as I'm concerned, will return of utmost importance at some later time.

It seems likely to me that, indeed, Trelawney's first real prediction had something to do with the fact that Harry and Voldemort's fates would be linked, to Voldemort's undoing. Any thoughts? Ideas of what exactly the prophecy was? When it was given? Evidence proving or disproving my theory? Other theories of what the prophecy could have been? Whatever you've got, send it on over to dragonfyre52@hotmail.com. Thanks!

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