Prophecy (was: HBP chapters 24-26 Post DH look

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 184467

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184443>;

<< (I've left out "neiher can live while the other survives" because
it makes no sense to me even now. I do have my own interpretation of
it, but it doesn't match Harry's interpretation, one will have to kill
the other, which fits better with the preceding line, "either must die
at the hand of the other." I think JKR just got "neither can live
while the other survives" stuck in her head and assigned it a meaning
that it can't have, either logically or grammatically.) >>

Please share your interpretation of what 'neither can live while the
other survives' could mean. Because I can't make anything of it.

At the end of PS/SS, Harry asked DD why LV had targetted him, and DD
refused to tell him until he is older. As an experienced audience of
stories, I (like many others) instantly figured that the Big Bad
targets the little child because the Big Bad believes a prophecy that
this little child is destined to bring him down.

But why would DD refuse to tell Harry that? After a few minutes or a
few weeks (I don't remember how long), I figured that this prophecy
must not only specify Harry, but specify that he can only kill LV by
dying himself, and DD didn't want to tell a young child that he must
die young.

A statement that 'neither can DIE while the other survives' would
convey that meaning, and would be true during their final
confrontation. It was clever of Pippin to turn to turn 'neither can
live' into 'neither can die' by quoting Fudge about LV in HBP, but it
doesn't really work: 

"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." 

Fudge there suggested the possibility that LV (and therefore Harry
during the final confrontation) is not alive because of not being able
to be killed, but he concluded that LV (and therefore Harry) was alive
despite unkillability. 

Further, LV and Harry were differently unkillable. LV, having already
been killed once, was on magical life support from his Horcruxes.
Harry, not having ever been killed yet, was still naturally alive and,
as I understand it, he could still be killed by anyone but LV. 

DD's gimmicky little spell to make Harry safe when in the presence of
his mother's blood used 'blood' to mean biological kinship so that
Harry had to live with Petunia and Dudley, but also to mean that red
stuff (so Harry should have had a reliquary enshrining a dried out
fragment of a used tampon -- sorry!) once it was inserted into LV's
veins. 

(Harry's own blood is as much (more!) his mother's blood than
Petunia's or Dudley's, but it doesn't keep him safe while in his own
veins, not even when splattered on his clothing after being trod on by
Draco.)

So Harry is safe when in the presence of his mother's blood in the
form of his own blood in LV's veins, so he is safe when in the
presence of LV, but he could be killed when not in the presence of LV.

So telling Harry that the prophecy said 'neither can DIE while the
other survives' could have given him dangerous false confidence during
the years before it became true (when LV took his blood) and when not
in LV's presence.