either must die at the hand of the other, Contradiction or Clue?

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 139726

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "M.Clifford" <Aisbelmon at h...> 
wrote:

Valky:
> Something that has had my attention since my first read of HBP, is the
> line from the prophecy that says either must die at the hand of the
> other. The reason this bothers me is because Dumbledore claims that he
> and Harry have both destroyed a piece of Voldemorts soul each, or at
> least he seems to. And I question, how can Voldemort die at the hands
> of two people? It contradicts the prophecy. 

Geoff: 
I'm rather inclined to take a simplistic view of what goes on. To that 
end, I have tended to avoid joining the thrashing heap of bodies 
scrambling to present their own conspiracy theory about Horcruxes et al.

With reference to your comment above, the famous line in the prophecy 
goes "...and either must die at the hand of the other...", a line which 
has probably used up more bandwidth than any other line in the Harry 
Potter books.

To me, the crucial word is "die". If I interpret all the information 
about Horcruxes correctly, Voldemort will not pop his clogs until the 
last Horcrux is destroyed. Surely therefore, the prophecy is not 
concerned with who destroys the pieces up to the penultimate one; it is 
the person who lines up to deal with the last fragment who is the 
crucial opponent.

As an aside, I often wonder whether we are assuming that Jo Rowling, as 
an individual person, been able to work on some of the minutiae of the 
plot and allocate as much time to it as the august body of contributors 
here on HPFGU seem able to do.

Just over two years ago, in message 75634 "Second guessing JKR", I 
wrote:

<quote>
I sometimes wonder whether, here on the group, we get a little too
involved in second guessing what Jo Rowling is intending us to read
into her books...             
            
...I have cogitated for some time as to whether JKR spent a great deal
of time putting together the words of the prophecy so that ambiguities 
would be perceived by those who like to dissect every paragraph of the 
book with a scalpel! By way of example, we have had deep treatises (and 
a good deal of fun) in trying to interpret what was meant by the use 
of "either" and to whom it referred. I wonder whether this was the 
case. Have readers ever written an email or a letter or said something 
to find that the reader or hearer has put a totally different slant on 
what was meant? Maybe JKR wrote down the words of the prophecy with her 
own specific line of thought in mind without stopping to consider how 
the readers might choose to see a different meaning – or did she 
consider every word thinking "Aha! This'll get `em going. He, he". This 
is perhaps a trap of critical analysis that we assume that the writer 
has paralleled our line of thought and has indeed inserted material 
which can be analysed in umpteen ways; or perhaps we are tripping 
ourselves up in our own eagerness to "unfog the future".
</quote>

I wonder whether some of those comments are still relevant today when 
we consider Horcruxes and the role of Snape?