Ruddy stargazers and The Prophecy (long)

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 129448

Our first meeting with the centaurs is in PS, in The Forbidden 
Forest.  We are first introduced to Ronan and Bane by Hagrid in the 
lovely "Mars is bright tonight" conversation.  Hagrid later 
says "... Keep themselves to themselves mostly [...] they know 
things ... jus' don' let on much."

Then Firenze rescues Harry, and Bane gets all cross with him, 
annoyed that Firenze has stooped to the level of letting a (spit) 
human (spit) ride on his back, and miffed that he set himself 
against the stars.
So what had they seen?  What was Firenze *trying* to prevent, and 
what did he *actually* prevent?

I suspect that what they saw was Harry's blood being used (in 
conjunction with unicorn blood, probably) to re-corporate 
Voldemort.  I suspect that they also saw that Harry would escape 
this encounter, thus what Firenze intended was *not* to save Harry,  
(that was just a lucky side-effect) but to prevent Voldy's return.  
Turns out he comes back anyway.  That's the problem with trying to 
tell the future, if you're any good at it, the future you predict 
ought to take into account your own actions which result from having 
predicted that future.  So to speak.

So what did Firenze *actually* prevent? Presumably Quirrell!Mort 
would have fired some spells at Harry, but with Quirrell's wand, not 
Voldy's, so no chance for the reverse spell effect to save his 
neck... who knows?  Personally I don't think it's that important.


And note Firenze's reaction to Bane getting cross:

Firenze suddenly reared on to his hind legs in anger, so that Harry 
had to grab his shoulders to stay on.
"Do you not see that unicorn?" Firenze bellowed at Bane.  "Do you 
not understand why it was killed?  Or have the planets not let you 
in on that secret? I set myself against what is lurking in this 
Forest, Bane, yes, with humans alongside me if I must."

Firstly, I take from this that Voldemort is not kindly disposed to 
centaurs.  Firenze expects Bane to immediately understand why he 
intervened and saved Harry, because whatislurkingintheforest is 
commonly known to be A Bad Thing.
Secondly, I get a sense that no centaur really *likes* humans, 
though some are more contemptuous of them than others.
Thirdly it puts Firenze firmly in the "We must all unite and stand 
together against evil, whether we happen to like each other's 
company or not." (Which in case you need it pointing out, is 
Dumbledore's side.)
And fourthly, it's the groundwork for the division amongst the 
centaurs (possibly Firenze against all the others), that we saw in 
OotP.  One side insists they should stay passive and not try to 
avert the things foretold (which makes one wonder just what the 
point of them telling the future is at all, perhaps centaurs just 
enjoy being smug and right), and the other side says "but we might 
have got it wrong, and dammit we ought to *try* to make the world a 
better place, even if the stars say we will fail."  No prizes for 
guessing whose side I reckon JKR is on.

I can't remember (and am too lazy to check) whether centaurs were 
mentioned in PoA, CoS or GoF.  I'm going to move on to what happens 
in OotP. GoF and OotP are too long anyway, and JKR insists that she 
couldn't cut any of it out because she wants readers to have clues, 
so that we don't turn around at the end and say "That's cheating!"  
So the big question is: Did JKR introduce a second Divination 
teacher to Hogwarts, a teacher of a subject that Harry is *not* 
going to take for NEWTs, and left him there, apparently unable to go 
home, simply so that we had a way of getting rid of Umbridge and a 
clue about Grawp?

We will be starting HBP with *two* divination teachers.  Shame 
neither of them seem like good candidates for DADA, or I'd bet
one of them switches.  But perhaps Trelawney would turn out to be a 
good potions teacher, so Snape could move to DADA, and we'd still 
have opportunities for Harry-Trelawney interaction and new prophetic 
disclosures.  (Precisely the sort of thing that is irritatingly 
unpredictable from our point of view, unless there's a tradition of 
prophecies coming in threes that I don't know about).

Anyway, he didn't move into the castle because the forested 
classroom DD offered him came with free climate control ("No, I 
don't fancy rain today, move the dial to ... Mediterranean summer 
evening").  I'm betting he's got something important to do, and I 
suspect that it will be to do with interpreting The Prophecy. Not 
because I have any evidence, mind, just because I like the idea that 
DD has good reason to stop Voldy knowing the whole thing, over and 
above getting him to show himself at the DoM, and not because it's a 
nice distraction to keep him busy and out of the Order's hair.

DD says something about Voldy wanting the prophecy so he could find 
out how to kill Harry, but the prophecy appears to say no such 
thing.  What's going on?

It's mostly Sirius' fault that I think like this - they're in the 
amphitheatre with the archway, fighting for their lives, the order 
have just arrived but Dumbledore hasn't yet, and Sirius 
says: "Harry, take the prophecy, grab Neville and run!"  Fighting 
for their lives, remember?  The only kid who can get rid of Voldy 
for good is in mortal peril, and his godfather wastes time *making 
sure that he takes The Prophecy with him*.  Why?  Why bother? DD 
already knows it, if the information Voldy would gain would not tell 
him how to destroy Harry, which is apparently why he spent OotP 
trying to get hold of it. I think there's more to it than a bluff to 
keep the DEs interested and wasting their time.

Let me be clear (or try to be, at any rate): I don't think there is 
a way of interpreting the prophecy so that Harry doesn't have to 
kill Voldy and/or Voldy doesn't have to kill Harry.  I don't think 
any of the straightforward reading is negotiable, but then syntactic 
gymnastics was never my strong point.  It's the "neither can live 
while the other survives" that is is ambiguous.  DD explains all the 
other parts to Harry: "Power to vanquish the Dark Lord," "Thrice 
defied," "Seventh month," "Marked as equal," "Power the Dark Lord 
knows not," and "either must die at the hand of the other" all get 
explained, but not the "neither can live while the other survives."  
I assume this is what JKR was referring to in the FAQ answer.

I can't think what it might mean, but we'll leave that – even if I 
could come up with a guess it would be wrong, so I shan't try.  But 
IMO *that's* the bit that Voldy would be interested in.  He knows 
about that sort of thing, see, surviving when you have no business 
doing so.  That bouncing AK in the face which should have been 
permanent.  

There has been much speculation about the clue JKR gave us, that we 
should be wondering what Voldy did to stop himself dying at GH, and 
much of that has concluded that whatever it was he did, Snape knows, 
and possibly helped. (For the record, I don't think he 
helped: "They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself 
against mortal death?" Voldy's in his mid-70's, a decade and a half 
isn't *long ago* - but Voldy implies that all the DEs knew what he'd 
done before the GH debacle, so Snape must know too.)  Which makes 
the following question leap up and down with its hand in the air 
like Hermione on a sugar high: If Snape knows the entire prophecy 
and he knows about the immortality experiments, shouldn't he have 
picked up on this ambiguous clause? And Snape was/is DD's spy, so he 
should have told DD about the experiments, and DD should make the 
connection, too.

I reckon this is what we need Firenze for, linking two pieces of 
information that would have told Voldy how to destroy Harry, but 
instead (done by the good guys) telling Harry how to destroy Voldy.  
But remember way back in PS: "Never," said Hagrid irritably, "try 
an' get a straight answer out of a centaur.  Ruddy star-gazers.  Not 
interested in anythin' closer'n the moon."  So it might not be quite 
that straightforward.

Firenze has shown himself willing not only to save people when their 
lives are in danger, but to actively work against Voldemort.  So is 
he just teaching, or will he join the Order too?  I'll admit to 
being intrigued as to how Snape and Firenze get along, since they're 
both rather aloof.  And how will Snape react when he finds out that 
Harry really is the most special little chap in the whole school?  I 
doubt it'll be pretty. (Hooray!) More importantly, if DD's dead by 
then, who's going to keep Harry and Snape from each others' 
throats?  

Damnation.  Is it still only May?

Dungrollin
Begging forgiveness for rambling.