Prophecy and Choice - Ray Bradbury's, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN.

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 97080

vmonte wrote:
> The prophecy only unfolds the way it does because Voldemort 
> chooses to believe it.  He makes it come true.  If he had ignored 
> it in the first place he would have probably conquered the WW by 
> now.


Del replies :
We don't know that. It's easy to say, now that it is past, that LV 
made the Prophecy come true because he chose to believe it. But 
maybe the Prophecy would still have come true even if LV had ignored 
it. There is not necessarily only one way to fulfill a Prophecy.

Example : LV (and everyone else) chooses to ignore the Prophecy, and 
keeps on with the War as planned. Well, since they have already 
thwarted him 3 times, the Potters are obviously strong adversaries. 
So maybe they thwart him once more, and in his wrath he decides, a 
year after the Prophecy was made, and without thinking of it at all, 
to go and kill them. There's no Fidelius Charm, no traitor or 
whatever, but still there's the double murder, Lily trying to save 
her baby and losing her life in the attempt, and thus the rebounded 
AK. The only weak point in my theory is that many of us suppose that 
Lily did something more than just sacrifice herself, that she put a 
Charm on Harry. But she could still have put that charm on Harry 
anyway, just because she could do it and figured it could come in 
handy someday. So you see, nobody cares about the Prophecy and still 
it is fulfilled. And then of course, everyone would think that LV 
could have avoided fulfilling the Prophecy if only he'd believed 
it :-)

Del, who could come up with at least half a dozen other scenarios of 
how LV could have fulfilled the Prophecy.