[HPforGrownups] Re: Help me understand the importance of the prophecy, please

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 82167


>
> But... but... 6 and 7 change everything, because Harry now believes
> that either Voldemort must take over the world or he, Harry, must be
> a murderer.  What an awful choice!  No wonder Dumbledore tried to
> keep it from him.  (I don't have the book with me, but I'm pretty
> sure there's something in Dumbledore's words to Harry that show hw
> is aware of this consideration.)

Frankly, I wouldn't have worried about that too much, if I'd been in Harry's
shoes...but then, even at that age, I had a pragmatic, practical streak that
our young idealist doesn't have.

V-mort's killed _HOW MANY_ people?  He's a murderer himself, many times
over, and many of his victims weren't trying to do anything to him.  As long
as he lives, V's a menace to Wizard, Muggle, House-Elf, Centaur, Giant and
everybody else.

I don't think Harry will _enjoy_ killing V-mort, but I think he'll come to
the conclusion that it's a distasteful job that has to be done, and he has
to do it or otherwise this menace will not only kill him but go on killing.
If he allows V-mort to kill him, he is, in effect, killing more innocents,
including, in all likelihood, his friends.

As far as it being "murder" goes---every religion and legal system I'm aware
of makes allowances for acts in self-defense.  Killing in defense of one's
own life or another's life (or killing an enemy in a war, which is what the
WW has on its hands, whether the Ministry wanted to admit it or not) doesn't
count as "murder" to most people.  Now, if V-mort was just minding his own
business, say, working on a Philosopher's Stone of his _very_ own to make
himself immortal, and Harry snuck up behind him and AK'd him down...that
would be rather different.  But V-mort's the Wizard World equivalent of a
mad dog, and the expression from the Old West of "He needed killin'" applies
to him, if it ever applied to anybody.  He's made his own choices, and can,
as far as I am concerned, bl--dy well deal with the consequences thereof.


>
> The only logical way out consistent with a clear conscience for
> Harry, it seems, is for *both* Harry and Voldemort to die.
>
> However, I rather think that the main plot twist of Book 7 will be
> the mechanism by which Harry survives with his integrity intact,
> Voldemort is defeated (killed?  Who knows?  East Cheam awaits with
> baited breath), and the prophecy is fulfilled to the letter.