Newbie OOP Prophecy as weapon (LV's true weakness)

[Mark D.]

No: HPFGUIDX 62730

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Anita" <mangomoonchild at y...> 
wrote:
> Hi everyone, I'm Anita, and I'm new to the group. I finished The 
> Order of the Phoenix yesterday and I am very sad to say that I am 
> extremely dissapointed with the book, for many reasons...I had 
very 
> high hopes for it (I think the other four are absolutely 
brilliant), 
> and it fell far short. I haven't had a chance to look through the 
> messages, so I don't know how the rest of you feel about it. 
> However, I'd like to vent one of my main problems with the book 
> right now, and see who else noticed this:
> 
> Ok, so the weapon that Voldemort has been trying to obtain is the 
> prophecy, right? Now, all that the prophecy basically says is that 
> Harry was chosen as Voldemort's equal and that one of them will 
have 
> to kill the other (wow, big news). All that Voldemort knows is the 
> beginning of the prophecy, the stuff about his equal being born in 
> July and all that. And Dumbledore knows all this, and has the 
Order 
> of the Pheonix risking itself protecting this weapon (although the 
> only ones who can touch it are Voldemort and Harry, and I doubt 
> Arthur Weasley would be able to stop Voldemort...). Right, but oh 
> wait, HOW is the prophecy a weapon??? 

I'let you in on a little secret Anita, Voldemort's a FOOL. With all 
his power he has a character flaw that he is always right and will 
not listen to others. He leads his followers with EXTREME narrow-
sightedness, and commands unquestioned obedience to the point of 
using crucio on his followers.

I'm reminded of a book on Hitler's great mistakes in WW2. How Hitler 
discouraged creativity or ingenuity in his forces and could have 
easily won the war except for some poor decisions at critical times. 
Hitler was obsessed among certain lines that led his forces into 
defeat.

Voldemort had superior forces. (OOP writes of Phoenix members being 
outnumbered 20 to 1)Yet despite being supposedly immortal Voldemort 
has an almost obsessive fear of dying.

He hears of a prophecy concerned his death and and thought it much 
more important than he was. From the books he turned the main focus 
of his forces to finding a baby born as the 7th month died. IF he 
ignored the prophecy as almost anyone would, what would have come of 
it? 

Anyway Voldemort fell 15 years ago trying to kill Harry. In GoF he 
FINALLY regains a body and what's the first thing he does? He tries 
to kill Harry. Wormtail was correct when he said the ritual could be 
done without Harry, but again LV obsessively pursues Harry and fails 
to kill him because he NEVER CONSIDERS THAT HE MIGHT BE WRONG!!!

Which brings us up to OOP where LV's objective is a 
weapon, 'something that he didn't have before.' Somewhere in his 
darkforce-addled mind, LV got the idea that the prophecy is the key. 
He may think it contains specific information to final victory so he 
makes it so. Because LV is after the prophecy, it becomes the OOP's 
objective to protect it

Agreed, Dumbledore should have known that the prophecy was not what 
LV thought and he did. For book 5, LV is not Dumbledore's #1 
priority. Dumbledore is concerned mostly with 1) his student's 
safety & well-being, 2)Fudge & the MofM and 3) Voldemort. By letting 
Voldemort waste a year chasing a worthless prophecy, Dumbledore 
probably saved countless lives, allowed the OOP to gather its 
forces, and allowed the HRH trio to get another year of training.