Ruddy star-gazers and The Prophecy (long)

[dungrollin]

I just posted this on HPfGU, and thought that since the TOC homepage 
shows such a lovely downward curve in posting frequency, and that 
I've been enjoying all the posts here wihtout contributing, that I'd 
post it here too.  With some of the errors corrected.



Our first meeting with the centaurs is in PS, in The Forbidden
Forest. We are first introduced to Ronan and Bane by Hagrid in the
lovely "Mars is bright tonight" conversation. Hagrid later
says "... Keep themselves to themselves mostly [...] they know
things ... jus' don' let on much."

Then Firenze rescues Harry, and Bane gets all cross with him,
annoyed that Firenze has stooped to the level of letting a (spit)
human (spit) ride on his back, and miffed that he set himself
against the stars.  So what had they seen? What was Firenze *trying* 
to prevent, and what did he *actually* prevent?

I suspect that what they saw was Harry's blood being used (in
conjunction with unicorn blood, probably) to re-corporate
Voldemort. I suspect that they also saw that Harry would escape
this encounter, thus what Firenze intended was *not* to save Harry,
(that was just a lucky side-effect) but to prevent Voldy's return.
Turns out he comes back anyway. That's the problem with trying to
tell the future, if you're any good at it, the future you predict
ought to take into account your own actions which result from having
predicted that future. So to speak.

So what did Firenze *actually* prevent? Presumably Quirrell!Mort
would have fired some spells at Harry, but with Quirrell's wand, not
Voldy's, so no chance for the reverse spell effect to save his
neck... who knows? Personally I don't think it's that important.


And note Firenze's reaction to Bane getting cross:

Firenze suddenly reared on to his hind legs in anger, so that Harry
had to grab his shoulders to stay on.
"Do you not see that unicorn?" Firenze bellowed at Bane. "Do you
not understand why it was killed? Or have the planets not let you
in on that secret? I set myself against what is lurking in this
Forest, Bane, yes, with humans alongside me if I must."

Firstly, I take from this that Voldemort is not kindly disposed to
centaurs. Firenze expects Bane to immediately understand why he
intervened and saved Harry, because whatislurkingintheforest is
commonly known to be A Bad Thing.
Secondly, I get a sense that no centaur really *likes* humans,
though some are more contemptuous of them than others.
Thirdly it puts Firenze firmly in the "We must all unite and stand
together against evil, whether we happen to like each other's
company or not." (Which in case you need it pointing out, is
Dumbledore's side.)
And fourthly, it's the groundwork for the division amongst the
centaurs (possibly Firenze against all the others), that we saw in
OotP. One side insists they should stay passive and not try to
avert the things foretold (which makes one wonder just what the
point of them telling the future is at all, perhaps centaurs just
enjoy being smug and right), and the other side says "but we might
have got it wrong, and dammit we ought to *try* to make the world a
better place, even if the stars say we will fail." No prizes for
guessing whose side I reckon JKR is on.

I can't remember (and am too lazy to check) whether centaurs were
mentioned in PoA, CoS or GoF. I'm going to move on to what happens
in OotP. GoF and OotP are too long anyway, and JKR insists that she
couldn't cut any of it out because she wants readers to have clues,
so that we don't turn around at the end and say "That's cheating!"
So the big question is: Did JKR introduce a second Divination
teacher to Hogwarts, a teacher of a subject that Harry is *not*
going to take for NEWTs, and left him there, apparently unable to go
home, simply so that we had a way of getting rid of Umbridge and a
clue about Grawp?

We will be starting HBP with *two* divination teachers. Shame
neither of them seem like good candidates for DADA, or I'd bet
one of them switches. But perhaps Trelawney would turn out to be a
good potions teacher, so Snape could move to DADA, and we'd still
have opportunities for Harry-Trelawney interaction and new prophetic
disclosures. (Precisely the sort of thing that is irritatingly
unpredictable from our point of view, unless there's a tradition of
prophecies coming in threes that I don't know about).

Anyway, he didn't move into the castle because the forested
classroom DD offered him came with free climate control ("No, I
don't fancy rain today, move the dial to ... Mediterranean summer
evening"). I'm betting he's got something important to do, and I
suspect that it will be to do with interpreting The Prophecy. Not
because I have any evidence, mind, just because I like the idea that
DD has good reason to stop Voldy knowing the whole thing, over and
above getting him to show himself at the DoM, and not because it's a
nice distraction to keep him busy and out of the Order's hair.

DD says something about Voldy wanting the prophecy so he could find
out how to kill Harry, but the prophecy appears to say no such
thing. What's going on?

It's mostly Sirius' fault that I think like this - they're in the
amphitheatre with the archway, fighting for their lives, the order
have just arrived but Dumbledore hasn't yet, and Sirius
says: "Harry, take the prophecy, grab Neville and run!" Fighting
for their lives, remember? The only kid who can get rid of Voldy
for good is in mortal peril, and his godfather wastes time *making
sure that he takes The Prophecy with him*. Why? Why bother? DD
already knows it, if the information Voldy would gain would not tell
him how to destroy Harry (which is apparently why he spent OotP
trying to get hold of it), why take further risks for no good 
reason? I think there's more to it than a bluff to keep the DEs 
interested and wasting their time.

Let me be clear (or try to be, at any rate): I don't think there is
a way of interpreting the prophecy so that Harry doesn't have to
kill Voldy and/or Voldy doesn't have to kill Harry. I don't think
any of the straightforward reading is negotiable, but then syntactic
gymnastics was never my strong point. It's the "neither can live
while the other survives" that is ambiguous. DD explains all the
other parts to Harry: "Power to vanquish the Dark Lord," "Thrice
defied," "Seventh month," "Marked as equal," "Power the Dark Lord
knows not," and "Either must die at the hand of the other" all get
explained, but not the "Neither can live while the other survives."
I assume this is what JKR was referring to in the FAQ answer.

I can't think what it might mean, but we'll leave that – even if I
could come up with a guess it would be wrong, so I shan't try. But
IMO *that's* the bit that Voldy would be interested in. He knows
about that sort of thing, see, surviving when you have no business
doing so. That bouncing AK in the face which should have been
permanent.

There has been much speculation about the clue JKR gave us, that we
should be wondering what Voldy did to stop himself dying at GH, and
much of that has concluded that whatever it was he did, Snape knows,
and possibly helped. (For the record, I don't think he
helped: "They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself
against mortal death?" Voldy's in his mid-70's, a decade and a half
doesn't really count as *long ago* - but Voldy implies that all the 
DEs knew what he'd done before the GH debacle, so Snape must know 
too.) Which makes the following question leap up and down with its 
hand in the air like Hermione on a sugar high: If Snape knows the 
entire prophecy and he knows about the immortality experiments, 
shouldn't he have picked up on this ambiguous clause? And Snape 
was/is DD's spy, so he should have told DD about the experiments, 
and DD should make the connection, too.

I reckon this is what we need Firenze for, linking two pieces of
information that would have told Voldy how to destroy Harry, but
instead (done by the good guys) telling Harry how to destroy Voldy.
But remember way back in PS: "Never," said Hagrid irritably, "try
an' get a straight answer out of a centaur. Ruddy star-gazers. Not
interested in anythin' closer'n the moon." So it might not be quite
that straightforward.

Firenze has shown himself willing not only to save people when their
lives are in danger, but to actively work against Voldemort. So is
he just teaching, or will he join the Order too? I'll admit to
being intrigued as to how Snape and Firenze get along, since they're
both rather aloof. And how will Snape react when he finds out that
Harry really is the most special little chap in the whole school? I
doubt it'll be pretty. (Hooray!) More importantly, if DD's dead by
then, who's going to keep Harry and Snape from each others'
throats?

Damnation. Is it still only May?

Dungrollin
Begging forgiveness for rambling