Prophecy Problems

[B Arrowsmith]

No: HPFGUIDX 79273

A thoughtful  bundle of threads on prophecy and predestination to muse 
over.

This made me wonder - what is the prophecy archive in the Ministry for?
Why keep them all tucked away, inaccessible except to a chosen few?

I'm leaning towards the notion that the Dept. of Mysteries is in the 
business of evaluating prophets and prophecies. A sort of Quality 
Assurance exercise.

Most of us tend to think that the Prophecy can be deciphered and reveal 
future key events.
What if the Boys in the Backroom are more sceptical of Seers?
How do you evaluate a seer anyway? Easy -  by objectively viewing their 
track record. Not so easy in our world where it is  difficult to prove 
who said what, when. But the WW can avoid all the argy-bargy of "Oh, 
yes I did." "Oh no, you didn't."

Grab any prophecy that comes along, effectively place it in a security 
vault so that it can't be altered or accessed by those who might be 
able to influence events to match (or fail to match) the prophecies. 
Then sit and wait; see what happens. Eventually a time will come when
the prediction can be  compared to the real world. Do so. It is only  
then that the worth of a seer becomes apparent.

Trelawney does not have a track record. Her utterances are probably in 
the 'Amateur, Occasional and Unclassified' section, awaiting proof of 
their accuracy. Dumbledore probably kept her on at Hogwarts so that if 
she made any more, he could send them on for eventual testing too.

If this is the situation, then it becomes a bit dodgy trying to 
interpret a prophecy that the WW does not yet  accept as proven. JKR - 
1, Fans - 0, again!

Kneasy