HouseElves/Pettigrew/Shunpike/Bertha/Slytherin/Rewrites/Economic/Carol, Carol

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 180489

> > > Pippin:
> > > The explanation's in "The Other Minister" - "Yes, alive," said
> Fudge. "That is--I don't know--is a man alive if he can't be 
killed? I
> don't really understand it and Dumbledore won't explain properly --
> but anyway he's certainly got a  body and is walking and talking and
> killing, so I suppose, for the purposes of our discussion, yes, he's
> alive."
> > > 
> > > But not for the purposes of the prophecy, evidently. 
> > 
> > a_svirn:
> > That would mean that Harry "hadn't been alive for the purposes of
> the  Prophesy" as well.
> >
> Carol responds:
> Besides, Fudge isn't explaining the Prophecy, which he hasn't heard.
> He's explaining how LV could be "alive" when he can't be killed.
> That has nothing to do with "neither can live while the other
> survives" being interprete as "one of us has to kill the other."
> 
> Now, I happen to agree that LV isn't really "alive" in any normal
> sense; he ought to have died from the first rebounded AK and would
> have done so had it not been for the various Horcruxes and he has 
only
> a mangled fragment of a soul with which to possess a body not his 
own
> or inhabit a magically created/restored body. 

a_svirn:
Well, yes that does make sense. 

> Carol:
Harry, I suppose, can't
> "live" in the sense of not having a normal life while LV survives.

a_svirn:
But it seems so 
 silly, really. For one thing Harry lived a normal 
live for two years after Voldemort's return (well, sort of): he 
attended school, did his homework, started and ended relationship 
with girls etc. For another, to live in a sense `to have a normal 
live' seems like a very trivial thing for the Prophesy to be about. 

Besides, either it wasn't how Dumbledore initially interpreted the 
meaning (because in this interpretation it doesn't really mean 
anything, except the obvious – that with Voldemort's return Harry's 
can't be serene and carefree), or he always knew that the Prophesy 
was meaningless. Then how account for his long talks with Harry about 
the Prophesy? To say nothing about risking the phoenixes' lives for 
the sake of guarding it? 

> Carol:
> But that has nothing to do with Harry's interpretation of the phrase
> as meaning "one of us has to kill the other" and DD's cool agreement
> with that statement. (He knows that LV has to "kill" Harry to 
destroy
> the soul bit, but he's concealing that bit of information from 
Harry.)
> "Neither can die while the other survives" would make more sense, 
but
> those words couldn't be interpreted to mean "One of us has to kill 
the
> other," either. Harry comes away from the discussion of the Prophecy
> thinking that he either has to commit murder or be murdered, and he
> bases that deduction on "Neither can live while the other survives."
> Odd, given that they're both surviving at the time, and no mention 
of
> killing occurs in those words.

a_svirn:
Yes!!!!

> Carol:
> It has nothing to do with your understanding of English (which 
happens
> to be excellent), a-svirn. It has to do with JKR's (and therefore
> Harry's) apparently thinking that the words mean something that they
> can't be interpreted to mean.
> 
> Carol, realizing that a prophecy has to be ambiguous but not to the
> point of making words mean something that they can't possibly mean

a_svirn:
I haven't followed her interviews recently, but has she perhaps 
explained this bit of semantic gymnastic? I remember her saying after 
OotP that she was particularly proud of her wording of the Prophesy. 
It would be nice to learn what exactly she was so proud of. 

a_svirn, thanking Carol for her vote of confidence!