The prophecy

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 104469

Carin wrote
(snip)
>What puzzles me, though, is how the prophecy is to be reconciled with
>the years we're currently reading about, in which both of them _are_,
>for the moment, surviving. My literary take on this is that the
>prophecy points to the fact that this situation (both H and LV alive)
>is fundamentally unstable and untenable, and we are hurtling (but not
>fast enough!) towards some kind of restoration of order in the
>Potterverse. But my literal-minded take is a little frustrated by the
>(existence of the) prophecy

This has puzzled me too. If neither Harry or Voldemort can survive 
while the other lives (assuming this is what the prophecy means), 
then to paraphrase Harry, you'd have thought one of them would have 
stopped moving.  When I looked at the prophecy again, what I got was 
a sense of it moving forward through time.  Sybill and Dumbledore are 
sitting in the Hogshead in what must be the winter before Harry's 
birth: the one with the power is approaching, and both Lily and Alice 
must have conceived in the previous autumn. We then move onto the 
birth, by which time the parents of 'the one' must have defied 
Voldemort three times- this event need not have occured at the time 
of the prophecy. The birth must take place after the third defiance 
and at the end of July, so at the Hogshead time, this is still a 
future and unknowable event; Harry or Neville could have easily been 
born any time from mid July to mid August.  'And the dark lord will 
mark him as his equal'- if this is Godric's Hollow, then we have 
moved forward fifteen months from the birth. 'power the dark lord 
knows not' could refer to Lily's protection, in which case it is 
contemporaneous with the marking or could be Harry's power to love 
and grieve for others, which could be growing as he lives. It is 
certainly manifest in the MOM. So, 'neither can live' may well be 
looking forward to an event in the future, where Harry and Voldemort 
reach a crucial moment that only one of them can survive.

I still wonder though  why JKR used 'neither' and not 'one', so I'm 
sure I'm missing something, somewhere

Leah