Re: The Prophecy From Voldemort’s POV (long)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "nkafkafi" <nkafkafi at y...> wrote:

>snipped>
 
> Besides, he seems to rely too much on this single "one". If it said
> "the ONLY one with the power" I could understand why he's so sure. But
> remember Voldy never heard the part about "either must die by the hand
> of the other". So how can he be so certain that only Harry can kill
> him? Perhaps because the prophecy didn't come as a great surprise to
> him. Because he made it happen. What, after all, were all these
> experiments about?
> 
> In the Edinburgh Book Festival, 
> http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/news_view.cfm?id=80
> when JKR presented her famous question why Voldemort didn't die in GH,
> she said: 
>  
> "At the end of Goblet of Fire he says that one or more of the steps
> that he took enabled him to survive. You should be wondering what he
> did to make sure that he did not die — I will put it that way. I don't
> think that it is guessable. It may be — someone could guess it — but
> you should be asking yourself that question, particularly now that you
> know about the prophecy. I'd better stop there or I will really
> incriminate myself."
> 
> So maybe Voldemort's experiments were about binding his death to
> people. This can be a way to avoid death: bind your death to a certain
> person, so he's the only one who can kill you, then make sure he can't
> kill you.  
> So Voldy conducts this big binding spell that will finally make him
> death proof, and the spell succeeds, only he doesn't know who the
> bound person is. Until he hears the first half of the prophecy, and
> everything becomes clear. Or so he thinks.   
> 
> But if Harry is the only person who can kill Voldemort, and this was a
> result of an experiment Voldemort had done, why indeed didn't
> Voldemort die in GH?
> 
> Because the terms of the prophecy (and probably the terms of the
> original binding spell) say the Dark Lord can only die by Harry's
> hand. Had Voldemort died in GH it would have been by his own hand. So
> he didn't.   
> 
> Am I making sense?
> 

Very interesting.
This needs thinking about and I'm up  to my eyeballs in real life stuff at
the moment, which means that it'll be a few days before I can ponder
the possibilities.

However, when I read your post a part of it reminded me of an idea Lyn 
offered in an off-site exchange a few weeks back - that there are traditional
tales where a wizard protects himself by transferring his soul, essence
or whatever you want to call it, to a hiding place outside his own body.
Eliminating the scourge therefore requires more than just knocking off
his corporate form. His hidey-hole must also be found and cleaned out.

And if this hidey-hole is in Harry's head? If the transferred 'powers' are
more than just magical expertise but include something more fundamental
to Voldys existence? Hmm. What a fun idea. And IIRC there a few posts
that offered the idea that Voldy was somehow incomplete and wondering
if the Ministry possession had resulted in making him whole again. But if
he has *deliberately* split himself then this would be the last  thing he wanted,
it would make him more vulnerable, not less. And DD could have ended the
series right there and then by blasting a possessed Harry. 

'Course this line of thought has absolutely no connection to my oft-stated
belief that GH was all about possession not murder. Heavens above, no.
Who would think such a thing, shame on you.

Right. I promise to respond more fully i.e. the post as a whole, not just one
aspect of it, in a few days. 
Meanwhile - Lyn, any expansion on your Voldy-split-himself-for-safety idea?

Kneasy