Prophecy (WAS Re: Why not let Harry destroy the Prophecy from the beginning?)

[davenclaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 132732

<vividscribbler at y...> wrote:
> "This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his 
> return: the knowledge of how to destroy you."
> -Dumbledore, American version of OOTP, pg 840 (CH 37)
> 
> This comment makes me wonder, though. Dumbledore clearly states 
that 
> Voldemort only heard the beginning lines of the prophecy, ("The 
one 
> with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born to 
those 
> that have thirce defied him, born as the seventh month dies...). 
> However, just from hearing those words, and assuredly, frothing 
over 
> it as Voldemort has apparently done for the past 16 years, the 
> prophecy doesn't strike as the place to find out how to defeat 
> Harry. Quite the opposite; if I were Voldemort, I would assume it 
> held the information about my own demise. So then wouldn't it have 
> been more accurate to say he wanted to find out how Harry might 
> defeat him, so he could safeguard against the possibility? Or did 
> Voldemort have other information that would lead him to believe 
> information about Harry's defeat could be found inside that 
specific 
> prophecy?


I'm guessing (and hoping) that the prophecy contains clues that 
might enable LV to figure out how to kill Harry, something in the 
wording of it, something to do with "old magic" and their connection 
to one another, and Dumbledore knows what it is and doesn't want LV 
to be able to figure it out.

If it isn't something like that... then this is one of those things 
that we're just supposed to swallow even if we can't make sense of 
it, like why it had to be the tri-wizard cup that was made into a 
portkey. (I've seen interesting explanations for this but nothing 
explicit in the book gives a reason.)

- davenclaw