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deathtocapslockTrelawney probably made her prophecy sometime between the fall of 1979 and early spring 1980. Harry and Neville were born in July 1980. So why did it take Voldemort until October 1981 to even try to kill one of them? Was he waiting for a significant date? Were the Potters and the Longbottoms just that well-hidden?
Or maybe we aren’t giving Voldemort enough credit.
We readers are introduced to the prophecy in its entirety, years after Dumbledore and Voldemort have decided who the subject is. So it seems obvious that Voldemort should have targeted babies as soon as they were born at the end of July. But was it obvious then?
Dumbledore is the one who says—in 1996, with the benefit of hindsight—that there were only ever two possible prophecy-boys, and that Voldemort “chose” Harry as the greater threat rather than just, say, going after whichever baby he got access to first. Even if he’s telling Harry what he honestly believes, he might be wrong. And he has strategic reasons to convince Harry that Harry is the only person who can defeat Voldemort, regardless of what other interpretations may have seemed plausible sixteen years earlier.
Exactly what interpretations were possible to Voldemort depends on how much Snape heard. Let’s start with the first two lines, which is what Dumbledore claims Snape heard.
First, “the seventh month” doesn’t have to mean July. It could be September, the seventh month of the Roman calendar (“septem” means “seven”). Or the seventh month after the month the prophecy was made. Or it could mean the seventh month after the parents’ marriage, or the seventh month of gestation, or any number of things.
What about timing? You could fill in the missing part of the verb with the future tense: “He or she [there is nothing in these lines to indicate the “one’s” gender] will be born to those who have thrice defied him…” But the past tense is also possible: “He or she was born…” The choice of “dies” rather than “died” doesn’t help even if Snape is sure which he heard, because the prophecy could just be using the historical present tense, in which pasts events are spoken of as happening now. “The one” could have been born in the seventh month twenty years ago.
The only way to know for sure that the subject is a child yet to be born is if, contrary to what Dumbledore claims, Snape heard the last line (which does say “will be born”), not the first. While this is possible, we have no solid evidence, and having a larger number of possible candidates makes Voldemort’s actions in 1980 and 1981 more sensible. So, moving on with the possibilities if he heard the first line…
“Approaching” could mean approaching in time, as in, “will be born soon,” but it could just as well mean approaching space, as in, they are on a boat or plane headed toward Britain.
Or walking up to the door of the room where the Seer making the prophecy is. Snape’s first thought might be, “Oh, fuck. I can’t hide that I heard this from the Dark Lord. What if he thinks “the one” is me? There must be something in the wording to rule me out…” He was born in January, which is not the seventh month of our calendar or the Roman calendar. His parents were married for a year before his birth. We don’t know whether he was born at the end of his seventh month of gestation, but even if he was, could Voldemort know that? So he’s probably safe. Whew!
Which leaves Voldemort looking for other candidates. Who has “thrice defied” him?
There is no reason to assume this must refer to a couple. An entire family could have thrice defied Voldemort. Maybe Amelia Bones spoke out against some proposal Voldemort had one of his followers try to push through the Ministry, and Edgar Bones joined the Order of the Phoenix to fight Voldemort, and their other brother (Susan’s father) wrote a letter to the editor about how Voldemort was terrible. Or maybe two of the defiances belonged to Edgar’s father and grandfather: maybe Grandpa Bones turned Tom Riddle down for a job, and Daddy Bones refused to join his new and highly exclusive club once Voldemort returned to Britain. Either way, that’s three! Voldemort was probably planning to kill Edgar anyway; might as well kill the rest of the family too, just to be on the safe side.
Or “those who have thrice defied him” might be an entire nationality or ethnic group. Maybe during Tom’s travels in Albania, three people refused to give him directions, or saw a suspicious foreign wizard poking around and tried to interfere. Therefore, Albanians have thrice defied him, and “the one” could be Albanian. You could make equally plausible cases for a religious denomination (the one will be born to a Catholic family!) or an organization (the one will have parents in the Rotary Club!), depending on who has “defied” Voldemort, in his opinion. Or, yes, it could be a couple. But again, that couple could be old enough to have a grown child.
So babies might be on Voldemort’s list—but perhaps at the end of his list. They weren’t special targets; they were just the only ones left by October 1981.
Dumbledore claims that Snape didn’t hear the bit about the Dark Lord marking the One as his equal. We can’t prove this is true. But say it is. Snape could have heard a few more words before the “him as his equal” bit. Would that change anything?
“Mark” can mean something like “acknowledge,” as in the expression, “mark my words.” But acknowledge what? The threat? Or maybe the Dark Lord will mark something on his calendar. If he’s physically marking a person, that’s bad news—for the Death Eaters. Who are, as you recall, marked by the Dark Lord. Curses, Voldemort might think. One of my Death Eaters might have the power to vanquish me! Which of them was born to a couple, family, ethnic group, religion, or organization which has defied me exactly three times? (And what counts as "defiance," anyway?)
There are not a lot of old Death Eaters. Maybe there used to be more, but they died in a purge, or were sent on suicide missions. And if the Order knows or suspects that Voldemort is killing disloyal followers, maybe that’s why they assume Regulus was one of those purged.
Oryx and others have found hints that the Death Eaters grew more violent around 1979. The prophecy might not be the initial reason for that, but it might convince Voldemort to escalate things even more quickly than he’d planned. He suddenly has a much longer hit list.
Here’s how this might play out. The prophecy prompts Voldemort to increase protections on his Horcruxes (leading to Regulus Black’s death). Late 1979 and 1980 is the most violent period of Voldemort’s rise yet. Amongst the victims are a bunch of candidates for “the one.” He has plenty of reasons to want those people dead, so the neither the Death Eaters nor anyone else (except Dumbledore and Snape) realize there is another, double-secret reason. Toward the end of 1980, he’s down to the candidates with the best protection, like Order members and Aurors, and the long shots, like babies born in September, July, and perhaps very late spring 1980.
(If the prophecy was made slightly less than eight months before early June, Draco is a candidate. Maybe his parents weren’t defiant enough. Or maybe Voldemort was just confident that he could kill an easily-accessible baby, and wanted to put off alienating Lucius until he’d done a few more jobs for him. When Harry blew Voldemort up, that decided him in favor of Harry for good, and Draco was as safe as any of Voldemort’s followers from then on.)
Now that the easy targets are dead, he runs the list by Severus, his only follower who knows about the prophecy, to see what he knows about the remaining candidates—and, in the case of the babies, the candidates’ parents. He learns that James Potter is an arrogant jackass and Lily is very talented and might be useful to us if you spared her, my lord. (And then, unbeknownst to Voldemort, Snape goes running to Dumbledore. This doesn’t mean Voldemort told him he’d singled out the Potters specially, just that Snape is focused on the threat to Lily.) Which is nice, but Voldemort would like more current information and access to those two babies born to Order couples. He recruits Peter, or at least starts putting pressure on him and gets some information before officially recruiting him a bit later, and brags about having a new (unnamed) spy in the Order to Snape. Snape reports this to Dumbledore.
If other candidate babies are easier to get at than Harry and Neville, he bumps them off along with their families over the next few months. No one realizes the babies were the primary targets, because why would they?
Then he gets the Order of the Phoenix class photo in July—thanks, Peter! Over the next four months, he and his followers kill the Bones family, the McKinnon family, Benjy Fenwick, Dorcas Meadowes, Gideon and Fabian Prewett, and who knows how many others in and outside the Order. Voldemort may be able to multi-task: one of Edgar’s children (whether a baby or older child) might be a Chosen One candidate. Maybe a McKinnon is too. Or Dorcas Meadowes, if Snape didn’t hear as far as the Dark Lord marking “him” and so Voldemort doesn’t know the Chosen One’s gender. The surviving Order members all increase their security, as you would expect. The Potters and the Longbottoms may not stand out from the rest.
And good news, Severus has succeeded in getting a job at Hogwarts! And Barty Jr. has joined up! So, he can have Lucius pass the diary to Severus, who will give it to a child at the beginning of the school year. Once it has caused enough chaos, he can have Severus assassinate Dumbledore and Barty assassinate Crouch at the same time. The loss of their two most capable leaders will throw wizarding Britain into despair and assure Voldemort’s ascension. Yay!
In October, Peter reports that the Potters are going to cast Fidelius, and he’s gotten himself nominated as Secret-Keeper. If this is unusual compared to what the rest of the Order is doing—and it might not be—then that might convince Voldemort that Dumbledore thinks Harry is the most likely candidate. But Harry and his parents are already on his hit list, and he’s already closing in thanks to his spy, so this doesn’t change his plans.
Halloween is coming up; it might be magically significant, or maybe it’s just that Dumbledore will be distracted by the feast for a couple of hours and so it’s a good time for nefarious deeds. Either way, Voldemort can cross one more off his list. That might leave just Neville. (Unless there is a mysterious Albanian approaching, but how can he know?)
Voldemort wasn’t just sitting around doing nothing about the prophecy for a year and a half. He did start killing candidates immediately. It’s just that his list of possible Chosen Ones was much longer than we realized.
Or maybe we aren’t giving Voldemort enough credit.
We readers are introduced to the prophecy in its entirety, years after Dumbledore and Voldemort have decided who the subject is. So it seems obvious that Voldemort should have targeted babies as soon as they were born at the end of July. But was it obvious then?
Dumbledore is the one who says—in 1996, with the benefit of hindsight—that there were only ever two possible prophecy-boys, and that Voldemort “chose” Harry as the greater threat rather than just, say, going after whichever baby he got access to first. Even if he’s telling Harry what he honestly believes, he might be wrong. And he has strategic reasons to convince Harry that Harry is the only person who can defeat Voldemort, regardless of what other interpretations may have seemed plausible sixteen years earlier.
Exactly what interpretations were possible to Voldemort depends on how much Snape heard. Let’s start with the first two lines, which is what Dumbledore claims Snape heard.
“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...”
First, “the seventh month” doesn’t have to mean July. It could be September, the seventh month of the Roman calendar (“septem” means “seven”). Or the seventh month after the month the prophecy was made. Or it could mean the seventh month after the parents’ marriage, or the seventh month of gestation, or any number of things.
What about timing? You could fill in the missing part of the verb with the future tense: “He or she [there is nothing in these lines to indicate the “one’s” gender] will be born to those who have thrice defied him…” But the past tense is also possible: “He or she was born…” The choice of “dies” rather than “died” doesn’t help even if Snape is sure which he heard, because the prophecy could just be using the historical present tense, in which pasts events are spoken of as happening now. “The one” could have been born in the seventh month twenty years ago.
The only way to know for sure that the subject is a child yet to be born is if, contrary to what Dumbledore claims, Snape heard the last line (which does say “will be born”), not the first. While this is possible, we have no solid evidence, and having a larger number of possible candidates makes Voldemort’s actions in 1980 and 1981 more sensible. So, moving on with the possibilities if he heard the first line…
“Approaching” could mean approaching in time, as in, “will be born soon,” but it could just as well mean approaching space, as in, they are on a boat or plane headed toward Britain.
Or walking up to the door of the room where the Seer making the prophecy is. Snape’s first thought might be, “Oh, fuck. I can’t hide that I heard this from the Dark Lord. What if he thinks “the one” is me? There must be something in the wording to rule me out…” He was born in January, which is not the seventh month of our calendar or the Roman calendar. His parents were married for a year before his birth. We don’t know whether he was born at the end of his seventh month of gestation, but even if he was, could Voldemort know that? So he’s probably safe. Whew!
Which leaves Voldemort looking for other candidates. Who has “thrice defied” him?
There is no reason to assume this must refer to a couple. An entire family could have thrice defied Voldemort. Maybe Amelia Bones spoke out against some proposal Voldemort had one of his followers try to push through the Ministry, and Edgar Bones joined the Order of the Phoenix to fight Voldemort, and their other brother (Susan’s father) wrote a letter to the editor about how Voldemort was terrible. Or maybe two of the defiances belonged to Edgar’s father and grandfather: maybe Grandpa Bones turned Tom Riddle down for a job, and Daddy Bones refused to join his new and highly exclusive club once Voldemort returned to Britain. Either way, that’s three! Voldemort was probably planning to kill Edgar anyway; might as well kill the rest of the family too, just to be on the safe side.
Or “those who have thrice defied him” might be an entire nationality or ethnic group. Maybe during Tom’s travels in Albania, three people refused to give him directions, or saw a suspicious foreign wizard poking around and tried to interfere. Therefore, Albanians have thrice defied him, and “the one” could be Albanian. You could make equally plausible cases for a religious denomination (the one will be born to a Catholic family!) or an organization (the one will have parents in the Rotary Club!), depending on who has “defied” Voldemort, in his opinion. Or, yes, it could be a couple. But again, that couple could be old enough to have a grown child.
So babies might be on Voldemort’s list—but perhaps at the end of his list. They weren’t special targets; they were just the only ones left by October 1981.
Dumbledore claims that Snape didn’t hear the bit about the Dark Lord marking the One as his equal. We can’t prove this is true. But say it is. Snape could have heard a few more words before the “him as his equal” bit. Would that change anything?
“…and the Dark Lord will mark—”
“Mark” can mean something like “acknowledge,” as in the expression, “mark my words.” But acknowledge what? The threat? Or maybe the Dark Lord will mark something on his calendar. If he’s physically marking a person, that’s bad news—for the Death Eaters. Who are, as you recall, marked by the Dark Lord. Curses, Voldemort might think. One of my Death Eaters might have the power to vanquish me! Which of them was born to a couple, family, ethnic group, religion, or organization which has defied me exactly three times? (And what counts as "defiance," anyway?)
There are not a lot of old Death Eaters. Maybe there used to be more, but they died in a purge, or were sent on suicide missions. And if the Order knows or suspects that Voldemort is killing disloyal followers, maybe that’s why they assume Regulus was one of those purged.
Oryx and others have found hints that the Death Eaters grew more violent around 1979. The prophecy might not be the initial reason for that, but it might convince Voldemort to escalate things even more quickly than he’d planned. He suddenly has a much longer hit list.
Here’s how this might play out. The prophecy prompts Voldemort to increase protections on his Horcruxes (leading to Regulus Black’s death). Late 1979 and 1980 is the most violent period of Voldemort’s rise yet. Amongst the victims are a bunch of candidates for “the one.” He has plenty of reasons to want those people dead, so the neither the Death Eaters nor anyone else (except Dumbledore and Snape) realize there is another, double-secret reason. Toward the end of 1980, he’s down to the candidates with the best protection, like Order members and Aurors, and the long shots, like babies born in September, July, and perhaps very late spring 1980.
(If the prophecy was made slightly less than eight months before early June, Draco is a candidate. Maybe his parents weren’t defiant enough. Or maybe Voldemort was just confident that he could kill an easily-accessible baby, and wanted to put off alienating Lucius until he’d done a few more jobs for him. When Harry blew Voldemort up, that decided him in favor of Harry for good, and Draco was as safe as any of Voldemort’s followers from then on.)
Now that the easy targets are dead, he runs the list by Severus, his only follower who knows about the prophecy, to see what he knows about the remaining candidates—and, in the case of the babies, the candidates’ parents. He learns that James Potter is an arrogant jackass and Lily is very talented and might be useful to us if you spared her, my lord. (And then, unbeknownst to Voldemort, Snape goes running to Dumbledore. This doesn’t mean Voldemort told him he’d singled out the Potters specially, just that Snape is focused on the threat to Lily.) Which is nice, but Voldemort would like more current information and access to those two babies born to Order couples. He recruits Peter, or at least starts putting pressure on him and gets some information before officially recruiting him a bit later, and brags about having a new (unnamed) spy in the Order to Snape. Snape reports this to Dumbledore.
If other candidate babies are easier to get at than Harry and Neville, he bumps them off along with their families over the next few months. No one realizes the babies were the primary targets, because why would they?
Then he gets the Order of the Phoenix class photo in July—thanks, Peter! Over the next four months, he and his followers kill the Bones family, the McKinnon family, Benjy Fenwick, Dorcas Meadowes, Gideon and Fabian Prewett, and who knows how many others in and outside the Order. Voldemort may be able to multi-task: one of Edgar’s children (whether a baby or older child) might be a Chosen One candidate. Maybe a McKinnon is too. Or Dorcas Meadowes, if Snape didn’t hear as far as the Dark Lord marking “him” and so Voldemort doesn’t know the Chosen One’s gender. The surviving Order members all increase their security, as you would expect. The Potters and the Longbottoms may not stand out from the rest.
And good news, Severus has succeeded in getting a job at Hogwarts! And Barty Jr. has joined up! So, he can have Lucius pass the diary to Severus, who will give it to a child at the beginning of the school year. Once it has caused enough chaos, he can have Severus assassinate Dumbledore and Barty assassinate Crouch at the same time. The loss of their two most capable leaders will throw wizarding Britain into despair and assure Voldemort’s ascension. Yay!
In October, Peter reports that the Potters are going to cast Fidelius, and he’s gotten himself nominated as Secret-Keeper. If this is unusual compared to what the rest of the Order is doing—and it might not be—then that might convince Voldemort that Dumbledore thinks Harry is the most likely candidate. But Harry and his parents are already on his hit list, and he’s already closing in thanks to his spy, so this doesn’t change his plans.
Halloween is coming up; it might be magically significant, or maybe it’s just that Dumbledore will be distracted by the feast for a couple of hours and so it’s a good time for nefarious deeds. Either way, Voldemort can cross one more off his list. That might leave just Neville. (Unless there is a mysterious Albanian approaching, but how can he know?)
Voldemort wasn’t just sitting around doing nothing about the prophecy for a year and a half. He did start killing candidates immediately. It’s just that his list of possible Chosen Ones was much longer than we realized.
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no subject
Date: 2020-08-19 08:58 pm (UTC)Also, with regard to the Sorting Hat: it is “borne” into the Great Hall by the Deputy Head of Hogwarts at the opening feast each year, so it could easily qualify as the object of the prophesy.
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Date: 2020-08-22 02:31 am (UTC)