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

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 85400

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "M.Clifford" 
<valkyrievixen at y...> wrote:
<snipping>
> The person who recieves the prophecy at the moment of receiving 
they 
> become its instrument through which it can be fulfilled.
<snip>
> 
> 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.   

Jen: Valky, I hope you're out there and I haven't waited too long to 
respond! Your idea of the Prophecy Instrument (PI) intrigues me. You 
mentioned the Prophecy threads over the summer, and I like your PI 
idea better because it allows for choice, even a poor choice. The 
line of thinking I remember this summer was that every action the 
*chosen* one takes is actually fulfilling the prophecy and that's 
why that person was chosen--that line of thinking had a more 
predeterministic feel to it.

Valky:  
> 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.

Jen: OK, I'm a little lost on this part. You're saying Dumbledore 
was chosen to hear the Prophecy and Snape to overhear *part* of it, 
(thus binding them together in a way--my thought). I'm lost though, 
about the Shrieking Shack. Snape was knocked out before Pettigrew 
was revealed. Are you saying Snape actually did believe Lupin/Sirius 
that Pettigrew was alive, perhaps he saw Pettigrew's name on the 
Map, then pretended he didn't believe Lupin/Sirius? How would that 
help pave the way for or condemn the First Prophecy?

>Valky: 
> 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.

Jen: I view the Prophecy as different from predicting the future, 
the way Trelawney does it, anyway. And Trelawney's type of 
divination is the one the Centaurs feel contempt for:"Sibyll 
Trelawney may have Seen, I do not know," continued Firenze..."but 
she wastes her time, in the main, on the self-flattering nonsense 
humans call fortune-telling." (OOTP, US, chap. 27, p. 603)

But as for the Centaurs knowing the ethical imperatives of a 
Prophecy--they certainly seem to know more about the Fates than 
anyone else! Firenze said, "We watch the skies for the great tides 
of evil or change that are sometimes marked there. It may take ten 
years to be sure of what we are seeing." (OOTP, chap. 27, p. 603) 
That type of long-range "foretelling" certainly has more in common 
with the First Prophecy than divination--15 long years and still 
waiting to see how the Prophecy is fulfilled!