[HPforGrownups] The prophecy - a maverick view....

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 128356

Geoff Bannister wrote:
We are told that the
> one "with the power to vanquish" the Dark Lord would be born at the
> end of July. As has been pointed out on numerous
> occasions, "vanquish" in no way means to kill. My dictionary
> gives "to defeat thoroughly, conquer, overcome, overwhelm, rout,
> trounce".
> 
> This has already happened – more than once. Voldemort was vanquished
> at Godric's Hollow; but was it by the "one with the power"?
> Continuing, if Harry is the one, then he repeated this defeat when
> Quirrell failed to kill him and Voldemort was banished from a
> physical form again. So he has been vanquished twice at least. OK, he
> returned in "Goblet of Fire" but does not seem to have recaptured his
> earlier powers and influence to the same degree. So, in a way, this
> part of the prophecy has been met. If you consider the thirteen and a
> half years between Godric's Hollow and the rebirth of Voldemort, the
> Dark Lord was out of commission from late 1982 to whenever he managed
> to possess Quirrell a year or so before the events of "Philosopher's
> Stone" and then out of action physically from then until the rebirth
> spell was activated  on 24th June 1995. So Harry has demonstrated the
> power to vanquish twice; when next?

This interpretation conflicts with the one I just posted last night,
suggesting that Harry had escaped Voldemort but did not show himself
to be LV's equal in doing so (ergo, he was not vanquished).  But, as
the matter is far from resolved, in my view, I'm just as happy to
argue from the perspective that Harry *is* the One.

I even cited the same definition (or one very similar).  It just goes
to show what troublesome things words are. ;-)

I do tend to think that the common usage of the word vanquish refers
to a final defeat, though, rather than an interim defeat in a much
longer battle, so that when the prophecy speaks of vanquishing, it
means that only the One can eliminate Voldemort as a threat. 
(Otherwise, Dumbledore could be considered to have vanquished
Voldemort at the DoM.)

> But then we reach "and either must die at the hand of the other for
> neither can live while the other survives". This to me is a
> contradiction in terms. Both Harry and Voldemort are alive. This
> contradicts the prophecy; one of them should be dead and one should
> be surviving…. So what do we make of this? Do we allow it to drive us
> round the twist while we try to analyse what our Delphic Professor
> has said?  And then the question of one dying at the hand of the
> other is open to so many interpretations. Harry could  attempt to
> kill Voldemort or vice versa; the latter has already had several
> attempts in one way or another. A situation could be created to cause
> a death perhaps by misadventure, not direct killing; Harry or
> Voldemort could attempt to lure the other into a trap or a dangerous
> location. Harry (for I consider he is less likely to try a direct
> attack) could be attacked by Voldemort and kill him in self-defence…..

But, if the meaning of "die" is fluid, couldn't the Dark Lord "die"
leaving Tom Riddle alive?  I'm sure this has been suggested many
times, though I've missed most of the prophecy discussions.  Perhaps
what Harry needs to do is to extinguish the powers that Voldemort
transferred to him, or perhaps all of Voldemort's powers.  Without his
powers Voldemort could not be the Dark Lord.

> To put one more ingredient into the recipe, the use of the
> word "live". In the Macbeth prophecy, we saw that the use of the
> word "born" was not what we expected. Coming at "live" from a
> different angle, Jesus remarked at one point "I have come that they
> may have life and have it to the full" (John 10:10). Could this mean
> that, say, Harry could not live life to the full, to have a
> satisfying and normal life while Voldemort remained and had not been
> dealt with? Could this be that his life will be constricted and
> hedged about and thus not as fulfilled as it ought to be for the
> moment? This might be a possibility to answer the paradox of both
> living while both also survive.

One possibility (also probably stated many times before) is that
neither is fully alive because of their connection.  Voldemort has
left a portion of himself in Harry, and Harry is burdened by
Voldemort's presence.  (The scar does not merely mark Harry as an
equal; it is a marker of Voldemort's continued presence.  It's not
just the pain that ebbs Harry's ability to live; Voldemort seems to
influence his dreams (what about the one where Snape in Quirrell's
turban urges Harry to transfer to Slytherin?).  The reason neither can
live while the other survives, perhaps, is because Voldemort is so
full of hatred, and fearing death above all things, cannot coexist
with Harry, who is infused with love and the willingness to sacrifice
for good.  Or, to put it simply, good cannot coexist with evil.  They
must be constantly at war until one vanquishes the other.

However, one thing bothers me about this explanation:  Aside from the
dreams, Harry seems to have no awareness of Voldemort's presence until
OOP.   I guess the counterargument is that until the rebirthing,
Voldemort's presence was largely dormant because Voldemort was "not
truly alive" (PS/SS ch. 17) at that point.

But, even in OOP, Voldemort's presence doesn't seem to prevent Harry
from living normally in blissful unawareness of the Voldemort
invasion.  It's only in extreme moments that Harry notices at all, for
example, when Avery is being punished or when he feels Voldemort's
glee at the DEs' escape from Azkaban, except for when Voldemort is
deliberately trying to use the connection.

Finally, why do you call this a maverick view?  Misinterpretation is
the engine of many a classic tale, as you point out yourself.  Indeed,
the main point of my earlier post was really that we can't take
Dumbledore's interpretation at face value.


Debbie
who has never posted about the prophecy before now