Acronyms/The Prophecy/Ron'sFirstWand/Crookshanks as HBP

[carin_in_oh]

No: HPFGUIDX 104487

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)" 
<catlady at w...> wrote:
...
> Suppose The Other is a third party. 'Either (The Dark Lord or the One
> or both) must die at the hand of The Other for neither (The Dark Lord
> or the One) can live while The Other survives'. 

To me the strongest argument against the Third Party argument is the exchange 
between Harry and Dumbledore that concludes the discussion of the prophecy (OotP 
Scholastic hb, p. 844):

Harry: "So does that mean that... that one of us has got to kill the other one...in the 
end?

Dumbledore: "Yes."

When Harry asks that straightforward a question and Dumbledore gives that 
straightforward an answer, I think we've got to take it at face value. We know that DD is 
a very important conduit of authorial information. And there's no way in the logic or 
context of what Harry has just heard that he could be introducing some mysterious, 
unnamed "other" into the conversation when he says "one of us has got to kill the other 
one." Harry has got to mean simply Voldemort or Me. So even if there is a fair bit of 
ambiguity in the prophecy itself, this exchange narrows the ambiguity substantially.

Carin