very basic confusion

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180706

Steve <bboyminn@> wrote:
> > ..(SNIP SNIP SNIP)..Snape told Voldemort about the Prophecy,
though, according to the books, Snape only heard the first part of the
Prophecy. <snip>
> >
> > Regardless of what the /correct/ interpretation of the Prophecy
was, Voldemort gathered the information and made his choices, and
those choices /created/ a correct interpretation of the Prophecy. In a
sense, Voldemort's own actions made it a self-fulfilling Prophecy... >>>
> 
> 
> potterfan220:
> Voldemort did choose to make it a self-fulfilling Prophecy. He chose
to believe that a boy was to be born that could defeat him. He chose
to act on Snape's recollection of half a prophecy. He chose to believe
that his secrets would stay hidden. He gave Harry everything he needed
to defeat him. Harry chose to use the information he was given and was
willing to die because of it. Voldemort brought about his own death by
not thinking there were people out there that would be able to defeat him.
>
Carol responds:

One small correction. Voldemort chose to act on the Prophecy in an
attempt to thwart it. He did not (deliberately) choose to make it
self-fulfilling. But, yes. He did choose to act, and he did choose the
boy he thought would be the greater threat. (JKR never stated that he
would also have gone after Neville had he succeeded in killing Harry,
but certainly it would have been in character for him to do so.) He
chose to break his promise to young Snape by killing Lily,
accidentally activating the ancient magic and giving Harry some of his
own powers in the process--certainly not something he chose to do but,
nevertheless, a consequence of those other choices.

Had he chosen to ignore Severus Snape's information, dismissing
prophecies as hokum and trusting in his Horcruxes to protect him, the
Prophecy would have gone unfulfilled. (Too bad Voldemort never studied
the mythology and literature of ancient Greece.) So, in that sense,
the Prophecy became self-fulfilling the moment he acted on it. But had
he kept his word to Snape and spared Lily (Stunning her, if necessary,
to get her out of the way, rather than killing her), he would have
succeeded in thwarting the Prophecy, killing the one with the power to
defeat the Dark Lord. Instead, he failed to kill Harry and made him
his "equal" in the sense of giving him the very powers he needed
(chiefly the scar connection and, arguably, the soul bit itself, but
also Parseltongue) to defeat the Dark Lord. 

If by "self-fulfilling prophecy" we mean that Voldemort himself
created "the one with the power" to defeat him, then, yes, Voldemort's
own actions, his choices, made it into the accurate prediction of the
future that it turned out to be (leaving out "neither can live while
the other survives," which doesn't mean what JKR thinks it means).

Carol, imagining Inigo Montoya saying to JKR, "I do not think that
line means what you think it means"