I'm still confused about the prophecy

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 95473

Antosha wrote:
> Lord Thingy had learned through his as-yet-unidentified spy that
'the one with the power 
> to destroy the dark lord will be born at the end of the seventh
month' (sorry, I'm doing this 
> off the top of my head, again... at Starbucks and no books :-( ) 
> 
> When he tried to act on that information and kill toddler Harry, it
backfired and he was  almost obliterated. It became clear to him
during his twelve years of bodiless exile that he hadn't heard the
WHOLE of the prophecy; in order to destroy the ONLY threat to his 
> ascendency, he must learn the entire prophecy and then act in
accordance with that oracle to destroy the threat. Once that threat
(Harry, it seems) is gone, LV CANNOT be defeated...
> 
> Thus the prophecy can, if carefully used, be an extremely powerful
weapon.
> 
> Did I miss anything?

Carol:
Although I agree with you, I think that Sirius's use of the word
"weapon" for the thing LV was after was also a red herring to throw
Harry (and with him, the reader) off the track, part of Sirius's
Harry-has-the-right-to-know-what's-going-on-but-not-everything
philosophy. Sirius couldn't come right out and tell Harry that LV was
after a Prophecy (or copy of a Prophecy) in the DoM, but he had to
provide a credible (and more or less true) explanation for why
Voldemort's war had become sidetracked. Harry had expected the killing
to have begun, even to the extent of appearing in some form on the
Muggle news, and he needed to understand, at least in a limited way,
why that hadn't happened.

Carol