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

[fhmaneely]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "nkafkafi" <nkafkafi at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> It's pretty amazing how many meanings we can read into these seven
> lines, but in the last few days I've been thinking about a slightly
> different angle. Lets look at the prophecy from Voldy's POV. Try to
> forget for a moment that you know the second half, and look only at
> the part that HE knows:
> 
> "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born
> to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month 
dies..."
> 
> To focus things even more, I'll make the (admittedly dangerous)
> assumption that the two last subparts of the above are merely
> identifiers of "the one". So assuming for a moment both Voldy and DD
> correctly identified Harry, the part that Voldy knows all boils 
down,
> in the end, to: 
> 
> "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches".
> 
> Read that again. ALL of Voldemort's strategy since before GH and
> throughout the series has been based on this single sentence. And of
> course on his guess regarding the part that he doesn't know, which
> apparently wasn't a very good guess. 
> 
> If we are ready to take DD's word, he tells us several additional
> things about Voldemort's view of the prophecy. First, it seems that
> before GH Voldy didn't see the prophecy as a threat at all. DD words
> are: "He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing 
he
> was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his 
cost,
> that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill you 
backfired."
> 
> Several paragraphs later DD stresses again that, until GH, Voldy
> didn't realize that baby Harry could be dangerous: "He <the
> eavesdropper> heard only the beginning, the part foretelling the 
birth
> of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort.
> Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would 
be
> to risk transferring power to you, and marking you as his equal. So
> Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, 
that
> it might be wise to wait, to learn more. He did not know that you
> would have power the Dark Lord knows not." 
> 
> DD also tells us about Voldemort's current guess regarding the 
second
> half of the prophecy: "And so, since his return to his body, and
> particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he
> has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is 
the
> weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the
> knowledge of how to destroy you."
> 
> I know I'm not the only member who has a problem with these words of
> DD, "the knowledge of how to destroy you." The second half doesn't
> seem to contain any special knowledge how to destroy Harry. But 
Voldy
> thinks it does.
> 
> To summarize the above, it seems that Voldy first treated the 
prophecy
> as a chance rather than a threat. He didn't imagine that "the power"
> is something he doesn't know. When he went to GH he believed that he
> was actually "fulfilling the terms of the prophecy". He seemed to
> think that the other half, the part that he didn't hear, says that 
the
> Dark Lord will kill Harry. After GH and even after the graveyard 
this
> view didn't change much. The difference is only that now he thinks 
the
> other part contains special instructions how to kill Harry, and that
> he failed several times just because he didn't follow these 
instructions.
> 
> Now, why would Voldy think that the prophecy is a chance rather 
than a
> threat? There aren't many possibilities here. We're talking about a
> single sentence. Look at it again with my added emphasis:
> 
> "The ONE with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches".
> 
> Of course this is a chance rather than a threat. This is wonderful. 
We
> are talking about a person that his greatest ambition in life is to
> become immortal, and now he's told that the only one who can kill 
him
> is a mere baby. Get rid of this single baby, and no one (not 
even "the
> only one he ever feared") will be able to kill him. To Voldy this
> prophecy must have sounded like the greatest Christmas present 
ever.  
> 
> But wait a minute. This is too much of a coincidence for me. A man
> with a great dream to become immortal, and no qualms about killing
> people since he was sixteen, suddenly receives a notice that he can
> become immortal if he just kills one additional baby. Nope, this is 
a
> bit too good to happen by chance, or even by the author's hand.
> Someone must have made it happen, and the one with the motive is 
Voldy
> himself.
> 
> 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."
> 
> Note this subtle nuance. She didn't say "particularly now that you
> know the prophecy" but "now that you know ABOUT the prophecy" I've
> been suspecting for some time before the Edinburgh Book Festival 
that
> the important thing about the prophecy is not so much the words
> themselves, but what Voldy thinks they are.
> 
> 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. Maybe the DEs were Voldemort's first guinea pigs. He binds
> his death to one of them, then he makes them unable to kill him, by
> installing them with great fear and reverence to the Dark Lord. But
> there must have been problems with these early experiments. He
> probably found that this binding didn't survive the death of the 
bound
> person (or he would have no qualms killing a DE to ensure his own
> immortality). Perhaps these bindings were limited in time. Voldy
> needed to find out how to bind his death to a person for good, so 
that
> once he kills this person, he can't die anymore. And perhaps he 
found
> that the only way to do it is to bind his death to a certain unknown
> person. Perhaps only to a yet unborn person. The BIG spells always
> come with these small, annoying clauses. 
> 
> 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.   
snip 
> Neri


What has bothered me a bit was when did LV made himself deathproof. 
Do we know for sure it was before his rumble with Baby Harry or 
after. I was thinking after the backfired AV, and that is why it was 
necessary for LV to have some of Harry's blood and not just for the 
protection Lilly bestowed on Harry. Since LV does not know how Harry 
could destroy him, maybe he thinks having Harry's blood puts he and 
Harry both on even ground. I know in the graveyard scene LV makes 
reference to Lilly's protection but I think its more than that.

FRan