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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184469

Carol earlier:
> 
> << (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.) >>

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

Carol again:

The only interpretation that makes sense to me (and it doesn't seem to
be what JKR had in mind) is that both Harry and LV are just surviving,
not living, until one or the other dies. With LV, we can argue that he
isn't truly alive (IIRC, both Fudge and Hagrid say something along
those lines: the human part of him is largely destroyed and he can't
be killed). He's lost seven/eighths of his soul (accepting JKR's math
and counting the soul bit in Harry as one of the lost soul bits). The
loss of whatever human nature he once had before all those murders and
Horcruxes is reflected in his snakelike appearance. He has few human
emotions and loves no one except himself and his dear Nagini, whose
snake nature mirrors and parallels his. In that sense, Voldemort isn't
living; he's just surviving.

With Harry, the case is less clear-cut, but his life is certainly
different from that of his normal friends (those without his destiny
or a soul bit in their heads). As long as Voldemort survives, he, too,
will be just surviving, unable to live a full life because the coming
conflict with Voldemort shapes most of his thoughts and actions and
prevents him from making long-term plans or commitments. (He gives up
his relationship with Ginny and his last year at Hogwarts--admittedly,
not much of a sacrifice with Dumbledore gone--and sets aside his plans
to be an Auror to concentrate on finding the Horcruxes and defeating
Voldemort.) 

I'm not sure that killing Harry (and one of his own soul bits!) would
have enabled Voldemort to truly live. Possibly only repentance could
have done that, and I'm not sure, JKR to the contrary, that remorse or
repentance could have brought the soul pieces back together once
they'd been destroyed. But Harry is a different matter. Once LV is
destroyed, by Harry's hand but not through an act of murder, Harry can
truly live, which is what the much-maligned epilogue is all about.

Obviously, however, neither Harry nor JKR interprets the line in this
way. She, or the narrator, assigns it the role that I would have given
to "either must die at the hand of the other," which could be read as
Harry reads the Prophecy as a whole to mean that he must either murder
or be murdered. (Trust JKR to find a way out of that one!)

Carol, who thinks that JKR just liked the way the line sounded and
chose the wrong line for Harry to keep repeating