Prophecy placing process: amalgamation

[zesca]

No: HPFGUIDX 81026

madeyemood wrote:
Is anyone familiar with the process by which a prophecy is 
funnelled into a crystal sphere?

Grey Wolf replied:
The answer (unless this world is much more weird than I give it credit for)=
 is 
no, since it has never been mentioned in the books, and no-on ehere that I =

know can transform real prophecies into glowing balls at the flick of a wan=
d. 
That said, I have a pretty nice theory about it.

Madeyemood, in turn, responded:
Thanks for the modification, GW. I was in fact reaching for theories, but i=
t was 
too late at night for my brain to know how to make such a distinction.

Grey Wolf continues with his pretty nice theory (MeyeM adds numbers:
1 Dumbledore hears the prophecy. 
2 Say he writes it down (to not forget). 
3 Goes to his office and 
4 uses a recording spell that works exactly like a muggle recorder, only in=
 this 
case the words spoken are kept in a round ball. 
5 Then goes to the ministry and does the same (he keeps the first 
in his office). 
6 The Ministry officials put it in the department of mysteries and place 
protection charms on it. 
7 After a while, they decide Harry and Voldemort are the ones the prophecy =

refers to and the DoM changes the protection so only Voldemort and Harry 
can remove it from its place without braking it.

I don't think there is anything particularly complicated about it, evidentl=
y. 

Madeyemood:
Perhaps you sell yourself short, GW. I find your theory pretty imaginative.=
 
This 
is what makes HPfGU so great. I can ask a question that my brain's too tire=
d 
to 
work on and a few people out there can share some thoughts that easily 
come to them. The miracle benefits of distributed cognition.

GW again:
The fact that other prophecies were broken in the fight shows that the 
defenses are not that great, 

M.E.Mood:
Perhaps because it's unheard of for wizards to be traipsing into the Dept o=
f 
Mysteries (sort of like a theft from Gringotts?), it wasn't thought that su=
ch 
defenses were needed. (Esp. since Fudge was promoting attitudes of denial 
about LV's return).

GW again:
and since we already know of  spells that record voice (howlers) it is not =
a 
stretch to imagine others.

M.E.Mood:
Good point. It helps to line up these technologies according to type and 
compare, as with the photos, portraits, etc.

GW again:
Hope that helps,

M.E.Mood:
Indeed!

boyd_smythe adds:
(again, M.E.M with the numbers, also stars to indicate preferred theory)
I had always imagined that either 
1a	the seer's memory of the prophecy was extracted as in our pensieve 
scenes and deposited in a magically spelled crystal ball, 
***1b	or that the original prophecy itself was made with the use of a cryst=
al 
ball (as Professor Trelawney mentioned in her 1st POA class) which then 
contained it. ***
I like the latter.

M.E.Mood:
How would Dumbly get the crystal ball away from Sybil? Would she be so 
spaced out from getting the position and coming out of a trance that she 
wouldn't realize that DD had slipped it into his pocket?

boyd_smythe:
Either way, my assumption was that this crystal ball would contain the 
prophecy; 
the memory of the prophecy would not  remain with the seer at all. Thus, LV=
 
has not gone after Trelawney to our knowledge, because she doesn't even 
remember the prophecy.

Since they are held in crystal balls in the MoM, 
M.E.Mood:
How did the ball get from Trelawney to the Department of Mysteries?
boyd_smythe:
we know that prophecies exist outside the seer who delivers them. I think t=
hat 
during this "channeling," the seer is merely putting into words the prophec=
y 
as best they can see it
. the prophecy in its pure form (as in the crystal =
ball) 
is actually *specific* about its subjects. So Harry and LV's prophecy was *=

always* about them, but Trelawney couldn't see that clearly when she 
delivered it.

M.E.Mood:
So the crystal ball, like the pensieve, contains an account that is more 
detailed and reliable than wizard memory. Harry can see things walking 
around in Snape's memory that weren't possible for Snape to have seen at 
the time; the crystal ball contains the prophecy in greater detail than tha=
t 
which DD heard Sybil actually say at the time.

boyd_smythe:
But since The Prophecy *is* specifically about HP/LV, the crystal ball that=
 
holds it *could* have been accessible only to them from the very moment it =

was uttered by Trelawney. That would be part of the magic of the crystal ba=
ll-
-it responds only to the true subjects of the prophecy it contains. Perhaps=
 
even to the point of showing their initials on its label.

M.E.Mood:
It reminds me of the spell DD built into the Mirror of Erised; it could onl=
y show/
manifest the Stone to someone who didn't have the intention of exploiting i=
t. 
That is, there's a magic that keys into ownership.

Melinda /Meltowne adds:
(paraphrase)
While only the person with the initials etched on the prophecy can remove i=
t 
from the shelf, after it's been removed, others can hold. (that's why Nevil=
le 
was carrying it for awhile, and, adds M.E.M, why the DEs wanted Harry to 
give the ball to them once it was off the shelf).

Msbeadsley reaches for another box of kleenex and contributes:
(how the recording mechanism takes down information)
I have talked myself out of and back into your interpretation (mostly) sinc=
e I 
started this reply; the out of is because the notion that there is a "recor=
der" 
leaves me with the impression that what we'd see if that were true is 
Dumbledore, who was the person speaking to the recorder, recounting what 
he saw and heard. But then I thought of the Pensieve; what we saw when the =

globes were broken in the MoM is exactly like Dumbledore's recreation of 
Trelawny's prophecy in the Pensieve: the "Star Wars/Princess Leia action 
figure" of the actual seer, animated and intoning the actual prediction. 
***Ergo: the (any) Pensieve *is* the recording device, and the media, the 
globe, is the result of a particular spell.***

M.E.Mood:
Is anyone familiar with the history of the pensieve? Is there more than one=
 of 
them? Was it invented by DD?

Msbeadsley continues:
Doesn't there also almost have to be a spell allowing any prophecy to be 
"previewed," without having to break the sphere to see what's inside? 
Wouldn't there almost have to be? I mean, what if the fire sprinkler system=
 
went off in the prophesy room and all the labels were washed off (I know, b=
ut 
I hope you get my point. And how was the label changed to reflect Harry's 
name once Voldemort had "marked" him if no known individual other than 
Voldemort was authorized to touch it then without suffering madness? I thin=
k 
someone else asked this, but if there were any satisfactory answers, I miss=
ed 
them.)

M.E.Mood:
As someone who has many a problem with maintaining a filing system I 
amparticularly curious about this. How does one file the future, anyway?

Msbeadsley continues:
A passage about the prophesy also reminds me of another debate. 
Dumbledore says, "The thing that smashed was merely the record of the 
prophesy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was 
made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it 
perfectly." We are shown that means: the Pensieve. Taken as a whole, 
that's a pretty solid argument that Pensieve thoughts (like 
MWPP/Snape) have a higher degree of accuracy than just random 
memories; it would (or could be said to) argue against the notion 
that Pensieve thoughts or memories are skewed by the user's biases.

M.E.Mood:
That could prove helpful in a court of law.

Msbeadsley:

when Trelawny made her first prophesy, Dumbledore was there. Then 
when Trelawny made her second prophesy, Harry was there. I think the 
prophesies make themselves heard to or are triggered by the presence of 
persons who are/who are to be instrumental/smack dab center stage in the 
events to come. And if that's true, there are some ramifications...like, ar=
e they 
*warnings*? What is the magic behind them? That's a mystery I want 
answered by the end of Book 7.

M.E.Mood:
I do like this idea of a seer who has no idea when she sees because she's 
blind to her true ability. It reminds me a bit of Luna, although Ms. Lovego=
od 
seems a bit more self-possessed, less prone to hit the sherry.

Thanks again for these theories. I'm glad that something I wrote on the spu=
r 
actually activated an interesting exchange. Gratifying.

Peace out~