Neville and the Prophecy - VERY LONG

[huntergreen_3]

No: HPFGUIDX 108178

DuffyPoo wrote:
>> At the end of July LV finds out about the birth of both Harry 
Potter and Neville Longbottom. They both fit the prophecy.
[snip] Along comes Wormtail and spills the Potters' secret. 
[snip] (There is no doubt in my mind he is planning to off both kids, 
just to be safe. No point getting *the one* and finding out too late 
it was the other one.)

[snip] Harry is considered to be *the one.* By DD, by the WW, by LV, 
and by the keeper of the Prophecies who changes the card from under 
the prophecy from Dark Lord & (?) to Dark Lord & Harry Potter.

But....

What if DD is wrong? He believes it and because be believes it, we 
believe it too. We believe, because DD believes, that LV has marked 
HP as *the one* by the curse that rebounded, leaving the scar. We 
believe, because DD believes, that LV *chose* HP because they are 
both half-bloods. But what if those beliefs are wrong? <<

HunterGreen:
Those are very good points. I think you may have a point about 
Voldemort *choosing* Harry, its much more likely that Voldemort only 
went after Harry first because Harry's parents were the ones who 
chose a traitor as their secret-keeper. Its not as though Voldemort 
was standing on a fork in the road, and one way was Harry and one way 
was Neville (and even then, he'd still plan to double back and kill 
the other one after he was finished with the first, I can't see 
Voldemort deciding to only kill *one of them*). 

DuffyPoo:
>> If LV went to the Longbottoms first and killed Neville, we would 
*know* beyond any doubt, that HP is *the one,* but because HP is 
attacked first, and LV is *vanquished* we only assume HP is the one. 
Like everyone else assumes he is the one because the curse rebounded.

LV believes HP is the one because the curse rebounded and sent him 
into vapourness. Circumstantial evidence. [snip]
If Lily hadn't been there to protect Harry that night, if she had 
stepped aside as LV told her to, HP may have been killed, and then LV 
would have moved on to Neville. <<

HunterGreen:
This is what I wrestled with when I first read the end of OotP, the 
prophecy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Voldemort is only trying to 
kill Harry because of the prophecy, and Harry only fulfills his end 
of the prophecy because Voldemort tried to kill him. Perhaps the 
prophecy was PART of itself, sort of like Harry somehow being able to 
save himself in PoA. That doesn't make it any less true though. 
*Harry* is the one who survived the attack on Godric's Hollow that 
night, and even though he played almost no part in it, it was 
technically *him* that made the curse rebound. Lily set it up, but 
*Harry* is the one who rebounded the curse.

DuffyPoo:
>>Did Lily know that by sacrificing herself she would protect her 
son? Probably. Did she know the curse would rebound off the 
protection the way it did - probably not. <<

HunterGreen:
I think she did. I wonder if there was some sort of spell or charm 
she had to use beforehand to make this work. For some reason it being 
just 'automatic' magic seems a little shaky. Lily purposely stepped 
in his way and said clearly 'kill me instead', which makes me believe 
she was trying to activate the charm. According to Moody in GoF, this 
is the *only* time this has happened. In the history of the WW, there 
has to have been another time someone had a reason to kill a child 
and the parent stepped forward to try to 'take their place' so to 
speak, but this is the ONLY time an AK has backfired. As other people 
have said in a recent thread, James essentially did the same thing 
for Harry, but no credit is given to him, and its odd that Dumbledore 
knew all about it even though Harry and Voldemort were the only ones 
alive when it happened. I think it was a plan they had, something 
that Lily decided beforehand in the case that Voldemort did find them.

DuffyPoo:
>>[snip]Fast forward to the end of the story. HP and NL are battling 
it out against DEs at the end of book 7. LV turns up to get HP, 
Neville casts some spell at him and POOF - vanquished. They all turn 
to Neville and say "It was YOU, not Harry!" Neville's never had to 
live with the stigma attached to being the one so had nothing to live 
up to. He was just trying to protect Harry like he was there for him, 
to the end, in the DoM. DD's thinking "Holy crap, I had the wrong 
kid!" <<

HunterGreen:
I very, very, much doubt its Neville. I don't think its any 'special 
skill' that Harry has that enables him to vanquish Voldemort, but 
rather circumstance. Had Alice been the one to die and give her son 
the blood protection then perhaps it would be Neville, but that ship 
sank somewhere around the time of GoF. 
At the end of Goblet of Fire, Voldemort uses Harry's blood in his re-
birthing ceremony, which is why he is able to touch (and by 
implication hurt or kill), Harry after it is through. However, 
Dumbledore still sees fit to send Harry back to the Dursley's after 
school ends. Why? Because the protection extends to other people as 
well. In the beginning of OotP, when Vernon catches Harry outside the 
window and starts throttling him, what's described as an 'electric 
shock' goes through Harry and forces Vernon to let him go. Could that 
be the protection kicking in? 
And this is where the problem comes in. If Harry is protected from 
*everyone*, then so is Voldemort, since he has Harry's blood. But 
they aren't, for some reason, protected from each other. Therefore if 
anyone but Harry used an AK against Voldemort it would just rebound 
(and most likely kill the person unless they had performed some weird 
immortality experiment like Voldemort had). Same goes with Harry. I'm 
not sure if Voldemort really understands this (he asks Dumbledore why 
he's not using a killing curse, but on the other hand he tried to 
bait Dumbledore into using it against Harry), but I think Dumbledore 
does.

All that aside, I just don't see how any part of the prophecy refers 
to Neville except for his birthday. He has not been 'marked as 
equal', he doesn't appear to have any special powers, and he doesn't 
have specific connections to Voldemort the way Harry does (such as 
the scar and the blood). Another thing, would Harry have been able to 
get the prophecy if it wasn't about him? Did the DoM employees put 
the curse on it saying that only "*Harry* and Voldemort" would be 
able to get it, or only "the ones the prophecy refers to"?