Ruddy star-gazers and The Prophecy

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "dungrollin" wrote:

> I just posted this on HPfGU, and thought that since the TOC
> homepage shows such a lovely downward curve in posting frequency, 

Why aren't people posting? Is it that they don't like my replies to
their posts? 

Anyway, volume seems low enough that I don't have to bother to combine
posts. 

> 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,

He moved in because he knows that he has something important to do at
Hogwarts? Or because he saw in the stars that he would move in? OR
because THE AUTHOR has something important for him to do at Hogwarts?
IMHO good fiction requires the appearance that any character has 
hiser own reasons for hiser actions, not just that The Author needed
himer to do that for the plot.  

> 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.

Is there any canon that Sirius knew the Prophecy? I'm under the
impression that DD told the Order members only what he wanted LV to
believe (if there is a spy in the Order, telling the Order members is
a good way of getting LV to believe it): that there was a Prophecy,
and it's stored in DoM, and LV heard part of it and that is why he
tried to kill Harry, but the part of it he didn't hear tells HOW to
kill Harry. Sirius may have been just as deluded as LV.

Which makes room for a digression on DD's secrecy. Realistically,
giving cover stories to his own operatives is a reasonable part of
security like in real life. Altho' I hope he has a way of passing the
facts to his successor if he is killed or de-souled or de-minded.
Thematically, if he represents God and the Order members represent
people trying to be good, us people trying to be good always are
acting in a great absence of information. But inside the story, DD is
a fallible human being (altho' a wise and learned one) and it seems
pretty arrogant of him to Puppetmaster the people on his own side. 

> 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.

Snape, like Sirius, may not know the entire Prophecy. In addition, I
didn't understand LV to be saying that he had told his followers all
the details of all his immortality spells, just that he told them he
had been working on it for long decades, and a few horrific anecdotes
(brags) of how he had gone to very difficult places, defeated very
difficult obstacles, and done very scary and disgusting things.... 
You make it sound obvious that, unbeknownst to LV, one of the
anecdotes plus Snape's book-learning plus the full prophecy equals 
how to kill LV. (If LV HAD known, he would have skipped telling that
anecdote.)

> being intrigued as to how Snape and Firenze get along, since they're
> both rather aloof. 

It is possible that each will sincerely respect the other.

> And how will Snape react when he finds out that
> Harry really is the most special little chap in the whole school? 

I thought Snape already knew that and was just lying when he said
otherwise.