HP Timeline: Neville, Harry, Spoilery

[Milz]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
> 
> Milz:
> 
> > Unless other children were born in late July whose parents deifed 
> > Voldemort 3 times, there were only 2 babies in the UK (and perhaps 
> > the world) that fit the prophecy description: Neville Longbottom
> and  Harry Potter. The prophecy is pretty specific in that regard.  
> > 
> Pippin:
> It's only specific in retrospect.
Not quite  . Dumbledore tells Harry in OoP that only Neville and Harry
fit the criteria for the first part of  prophecy and that the Ministry
renamed the prophecy only after Halloween 1981. So the Ministry was
fully aware of the identities of the Neville and Harry before
Halloween 1981.

> After all, who decided what
> constitutes defying the Dark Lord?  So far we've seen  the Minister
> of Magic refuse to hand over power to him, Dumbledore refuse to 
> grant him the DADA position, (did you notice the acronym has made 
> its way into canon? ) Karkaroff refuse to go back to him, DE's try to
> kill Harry in defiance of Voldemort's wishes,  Slughorn hiding out,
> and 
> so on. 
> 
Voldemort decides what it means to defy him. However, there are 2 very
specific criteria: 1. The parents have had to defy Voldie 3 times and
2. The baby had to be born in late July. 

> There's nothing in the prophecy either  to say that the one who 
> vanquishes Voldemort is going to be a white wizard. The DE's think 
> only a greater Dark wizard can do it. Voldemort might have 
> started looking for traitors in his own camp.
>
 Again, the prophecy had 2 criteria to fulfill: defiance 3 times by
the parents (note: it says "parents" not mother or father) and the
baby had to be born in late July. Sure, Voldie, Dumbledore and the
Ministry might have over-intellectualized and began to ponder if the
prophecy used the Julian or Gregorian calendar, but whatever the case,
but Voldie picked Harry, so he picked the Julian.

> Milz:
> > That's what I think Dumbledore did: No one 
> > knows who Voldie will pick, so let's just keep our fingers crossed 
> > that he'll take a long time deciding? It's irresponsible. 
> 
> 
> Pippin:
> Was it irresponsible of Sam Gamgee to stay with Frodo instead
> of going back to the Shire after he'd seen the vision of its 
> destruction in the Mirror of Galadriel? 
> Her words to Sam could fit right into what Dumbledore was 
> trying to tell Harry, "Remember that the Mirror shows many things, 
> and not  all have yet come to pass.
> Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions 
> turn aside from their path to prevent them. The Mirror is 
> dangerous as a guide of deeds." Substitute _prophecy_ for
> Mirror and you've got Dumbledore's attitude in a nutshell.
> 
The Mirror Of Erised shows a person's desires, so it can vary with
time because a person's desires can change. Prophecies tend to
indicate the future---what will happen as opposed to what might
happen. It's like the oracle's prophecy for Acrisus, King of Argos,
that his grandson will kill him. 

> The only responsible way to interpret a prophecy in the Potterverse
> is to do exactly what you would have done if you'd never heard of 
> it. 
>The only reason it's about Harry is that Voldemort has decided
> that it is. Would Dumbledore have sent James and Lily out of
> the fray if he'd never heard the prophecy? Of course not. Once
> Voldemort had heard it and decided it applied to them, that's another
> story.
> 
If Snape hadn't been there eavesdropping, then that would make perfect
sense to do. However, there was an eavesdropper. So it would have been
a common sense thing to set up security around the Potters and
Longbottoms, rather than wait until late October 1981 to tell them to
go into hiding. And that's why the Timeline as it stands, with the
information we currently have doesn't make sense to me.

Believe me Pippin, I would like to think that Dumbledore wasn't an
incompetent clod who flagrantly used babies to bait Voldemort into an
ambush, but with the canonical info we currently have concerning the
timeline, I have my doubts.

> It's canon that Fidelius was used to hide Grimmauld Place. Ch 37
> of OOP, Dumbledore explains that Kreacher could not reveal the
> whereabouts because he was not Secret-keeper, and Snape also
> gives this as the reason he  couldn't do it in HPB.
> 
> Pippin

Mea culpa, but again, it doesn't say how long it takes to do the
Fidelus Charm, so until we get that bit of canonical info, we can't
take for fact that the 1 year delay for the Potters to hide was due to
 the time it took to conjure the Fidelus charm.

Milz