The Harry Potter Prophecy: What Does it Mean?

What is a Prophecy anyway? In Harry Potter we know that a real and true prophecy is made by someone who was born with the magical gift of being a able to see events of the future. These witches and wizards are called Seers. A prophecy made by someone who is not a Seer is nothing more then your average horoscope writer. The other fact about prophecies is even if they are made by a proper Seer they may not happen after all. What that means is certain actions must occur in a certain order for the prophecy to unfold. This opens the door to free will.

In Half-Blood Prince Dumbledore tells Harry that prophecies don't have to come true and asks if he thinks that every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecies has been fulfilled. So it's quite possible that someone must choose to fulfill the prophecy in order for it to come to pass. Furthermore, we don't really know if Sybill Trelawney, the Seer who created the prophecy between Harry and Voldemort is really a true Seer. That brings the truth of the prophecy itself into question. She is constantly blowing out bizarre prophecies but the ones that are important tend to be true, so it stands to reason that the one between Voldemort and the one who can vanquish could be a real one. A true prophecy or not, the choices that Voldemort and Harry make will determine the outcome of the prophecy.

So what about this prophecy? Dumbledore is the only one who heard the whole thing from Trelawney. Snape heard half of it before he ran off to report it to Voldemort. Trelawney herself goes into a state of weird unconsciousness when she makes the really important predictions so she doesn't even know what it says. Dumbledore tells Harry the whole thing so now they are the only two that know all of it, giving Harry a bit of an edge over Voldemort. What Voldemort knows is he was looking for a boy born at the end of July whose parents thrice defied him. His choice is either Harry or Neville Longbottom, who also fits this description. Voldemort chooses Harry and thereby sets the events of the prophecy in motion.

What Voldemort does not know is that the person he chooses would be marked as his equal. So when he went to kill Harry before he had a chance to grow up and take him out he accidentally transferred some of his powers to Harry. He also doesn't know that the person he chooses will have special powers the Dark Lord does not know about and that either this person will kill Voldemort or be killed by Voldemort. The irony in all of this is that Voldemort chose all of this. There wouldn't have been one person to vanquish him if he hadn't given Harry the power to do it! In essence, he created his own enemy.

Where does that leave Harry? The fact that Harry knows the entire prophecy is more important then the prophecy itself. He has the ability to choose his actions based on this knowledge where Voldemort is just bent on killing Harry. Voldemort has no focus and not a lot of choices to make. Harry has knowledge, choices and the all-important power of love that Voldemort could never have or even understand. In the end Harry should come out triumphant and hold his head high.