Harry's Angst Re: A Simpler Scenario

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "annemehr" <annemehr at y...>
wrote:
 
> But...
> 
> The prophecy didn't say he must, it said he was the one who would be
> able to.  And the conditions in your second paragraph existed, and
> Harry knew of them, before Harry ever knew the prophecy existed --
> whether he thought about their implications or not.  He had already
> realised Voldemort wanted to kill him, even if he didn't know why.
> 
> I can come up with a reasonable explanation for Harry's feelings and
> how he got from one to the other, but I had expected that part of
> Harry's story would be *how* he came to terms with it.  Instead, I
> find his change of heart was a fait accompli that took place outside
> our view.
> 

Pippin:
But it did take place in our view, in chapter 23, when Dumbledore told
Harry he was setting too much store by the prophecy. As you say,
the prophecy didn't say he must, but Harry interpreted it that way,
"his life must include, or end in, murder..." OOP 38. Harry didn't
have to struggle to abandon that view of things, because he'd 
never been happy with it in the first place, in fact he found it hard
to believe, unlike Voldemort. He, unlike Voldemort, is much happier 
to see his life as a series of choices rather than a 'destiny.' 

Dumbledore, as usual, gave Harry the opportunity to try and figure
it out on his own before setting him straight

It's another case of Harry's first intuitive reaction being the wrong 
one. The solution, I think, is not that he becomes so wise in the
future that his first reactions will be right, it's that he will
become wise enough in the future not to trust his first reaction.


Pippin