Help me understand the importance of the prophecy, please

[jwcpgh]

No: HPFGUIDX 82130

<tim_regan82 at h...> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > I've just re-read the prophecy chapter and I'm still hopelessly 
> > confused. Help!
> > 
> > My main problem is that it appears really lame. It doesn't tell 
> > anybody much that they didn't already know.
> > 
> > > 7) neither can live while the other survives . . . 
> > 
> Kneasy:

> A while back I speculated that this one stretches a bit further
> than you've cast your net.
> 
> The two of 'neither' could be James and Lily, the 'other', Harry.
> 
> So it would be foretold that if Harry is to survive, James and Lily 
> must die.

Laura:

But that's an incredibly tortured (you should forgive the expression 
in this context) reading of that phrase.  The "neither" and "either" 
have to refer to the same people, and those two people must be the 
ones referred to in the previous clause.  Otherwise it violates the 
rules of English.  

"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 a power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the 
hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives..."

Okay, so the subject of the prophecy starts out to be "the one with 
the power".  It's never about "those who have thrice defied him"  
because that's one of two descriptive clauses modifying "the one with 
the power".  Then it immediately switches to the DL as subject, 
with "him" as object-not "them".  So the next phrase can only make 
sense if it's about the object and subject of the previous phrase.  
And the "neither can live" clause is dependent on the "either must 
die" clause-it's a cause and effect relationship being stated. 

So I'm not buying the theory.  However, it does seem unarguable that 
*if* the power that protects Harry is indeed the love Lily bestowed 
on him in her self-sacrifice, then she did have to die so that Harry 
would in fact have that power.  Her love for her child  during the 
normal course of her life was apparently not enough to save Harry 
from LV.  

Although now that I think of it, we don't know that for sure...what 
if LV had tried to AK Harry before killing Lily?  DD says it was her 
dying love that saved him, but Kneasy and others are not about to 
trust what DD says.  Was it something about Lily or something about 
the sacrifice of her life, or both, or...

I'm going off to take some aspirins...good Lord, now I'm turning into 
a conspiracy theorist too...

Laura, shaking her head in utter confusion-but hoping the sentence 
deconstruction made sense