How is a Person 'Chosen' to Hear a Prophecy?

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 85067

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at e...> 
wrote:
> 
> I used this quote in another post and was intrigued by the 
> part, "fell to him to arrange the boy's future." Voldemort may not 
> know the whole story, but assuming he does, I started thinking 
again about Dumbledore and the Prophecy. This seems the logical 
starting point for when the responsibility "fell" to Dumbledore, for 
he was involved in protecting Harry long before James and Lily died.
> 
> What is the ethical responsibility of a person hearing a 
Prophecy?  

Hi Jen,
I have been lurking a bit lately. Just finished my exams and need to 
catch up a bit.
Your post has gotten me spirited though because the question you are 
asking is very much like a theory I was working on a while ago but I 
put aside during semester.
I will just cut and paste in the stuff I wrote in July and perhaps 
it will be of interest to you.

Thinking about prophecies and who is chosen to recieve them, I am 
starting to see a recurrence of a pattern I will tentatively name 
P.I. (Prophecy Instrument.)
Thinking carefully about the centaur, Firenze's, comments about the 
wisdom of his kind coupled with his insistence that the future is 
not to be foretold because it has no certainty. While looking at 
your post in its exactness of investigation* and finally adding 
the 'other' prohecy as well as I can remember it to the mix. 
Prophecy Instrument looks something like this.

 (*relates to another post I was reading at the time can't remember 
whose it was in June.)

The person who recieves the prophecy at the moment of receiving they 
become its instrument through which it can be fulfilled.

The cannon support. Harry recieves the Voldemort ressurection 
prophecy alone. There is no-one else that hears it not even 
Trelawney. So Harry is *chosen* as the instrument.

Harry's life then takes a turn to which the whole truth of the 
prophecy is revealed to him. Others are denied the full story.
Harry essentially 'knows' enough at the time he chooses to save 
Peter to be liably aware that Peter may help Voldemort if he lives.

I am guessing this is the universal ethic of prophecy. The 
Instrument must choose to do the deed with enough information to not 
have been blind to the consequences.

He doesn't put two and two together but thats the catch really isn't 
it, the one DD is kicking himself over in OOTP. If you have all the 
information but don't make the connection bad luck.   
 
It doesn't matter to (lets call it the Fates) "the Fates" because 
their instrument has all the information he needs to make his own 
choice. 

So post Harry making his discovery about Peter he is given the 
choice to pave the prophecies way to fulfillment or end it. 

In this, I am also thinking that the person who overheard the first 
prophecy was Snape.
I am seeing him as the P.I. of the first prophecy aside Dumbledore. 

His prescence in the shrieking shack revealed one truth to him, the 
Pettigrew was indeed alive. As a prophecy instrument he had a choice 
to pave the first prophecy or condemn it in that moment also.


Interestingly, the emotions that Harry and Snape felt at that moment 
incited them to action in the former. And hence, the path was 
cleared by the instruments for the fulfillment of each prophecy. 
Comments are anticipated.
 
So, as we *all* have already noted anyway, Harry was the instrument 
of the prophecy he heard, I have just extended it a bit and I want 
to add something else.


Firenze insists that Centaurs do not predict the future. 
Is that a passive alliance of existentialism? is it why they are 
contemptuous of humankind who would seek to know it then control it 
for their own end.
 
Do Centaurs conciously choose to avoid being the instruments of the 
fates by not predicting the future because they know of the 
Prophecy's Instrument law.
 
Umm this is a little bit shabby as a theory, I guess. I put a lot of 
thought into the process but this is the first time I have written 
it down. Take a look anyway and tell me what you think.
 
>From Valky