Voldy, Macbeth and the ambiguity of prophecy (spoilers)

[victoria_loe]

No: HPFGUIDX 129125

>Inkling108 wrote: 
>
>Maybe Harry will end up rejecting the prophecy and the fatalism it 
>proclaims. Maybe he will make his own free choice, based on his own 
>vision and conscience.


Lurker makes self known. Couldn't resist jumping in on this thread. I 
wonder if it's not all in the title of the first chapter of the 
entire opus: The Boy Who Lived. Add to that the following tidbits: 
1. Lily died so that Harry might live, imbuing him with an 
extraordinary ability to love.
2. As revealed in the Mirror of Erised, Harry's deepest heart's 
desire is to be with his family (all, except Petunia and Dudley, now 
deceased).
3. VM – being Harry's shadow – detests love and desires nothing so 
much as to defy death.
4. Dumbledore tells VM there are things much worse than death.
5. When Harry encounters the archway with the veil in the MoM, his 
first instinct is to pass beyond the veil.
6. After Sirius' death, Luna confirms what Harry perceived: that 
there are people whispering behind the veil. 
7. And, of course, the substance of the prophecy: 
 neither can live 
while the other survives.

Harry is very much emerging as a sacrificial figure – but death may 
not be the sacrifice he is called upon to make. I think we can count 
on his losing more people that he loves (Hagrid? Dumbledore? Lupin? 
Hermione? Ron?) and finding his special status more and more a 
burden. May he not, when the burden grows unbearable, yearn to slip 
behind the veil and (theoretically) be reunited with his loved ones? 
Might his sacrifice be in reaffirming the choice his mother initially 
made for him, to be The Boy Who Lived? That would fulfill the 
prophecy while confounding its presumed meaning. 

I don't know exactly how that would "vanquish" the Dark Lord. I doubt 
that it's as simple as VM simply dying. Perhaps VM is returned to a 
state of innocence, to the Tom Riddle that would have existed if his 
parents had loved him as Harry's did.

Victoria