how it is written in the book leaves room for the fidelius charm to have been put in place while Harry is digging the grave.

I thought about it over the weekend and realized PoA does reveal that Wormtail told Sirius. It was in pondering motivation–why would Wormtail reveal this to Sirius, who felt himself too risky. Wormtail was, of course, setting Sirius up for the Potter and Pettigrew murders. And he, of course, revealed it to Voldemort, thus the GH attack.

However, Dumbledore had to have known, too. How else was Hagrid dispatched so quickly to the right place? This is why, in combination with location, I believe DD offered the Potters his own GH home. So, it had to be DD who told Bathilda (so she could help the Potters), since he wasn’t in on the Secret-Keeping business.

I used the wrong word–negative–about Sybil. By negative I meant that she was not a respected character in WizWorld. She got by, barely, on her grandmother’s reputation. DD only hired her because of the prophecy, wanting to protect it and her. Her student “fans” are presented as foolish. Both DD and McGonnagal treated her sympathetically, while not endorsing her skills.

As for the prophcies. There is plain prophecy–speaking truth, such as the young girl in Acts and Balaam’s ass. And there is foretelling prophecy, such as Sybil’s and the OT prophets. I too believe God would not violate his servants. I agree with you that Sybil’s methodology was probably normal in WizWorld, and her foretelling prophecies were delievered in a manner to set them apart from her generic silly ones.

I also agree to disappointment over Wormtail’s fulfilling the life debt. It seemed as if it were done for him and he was unwilling. I also wanted to see him voluntarily pay the debt, in an act of redemptive conscience.

It has been much discussed that Harry showed mercy to Peter in the Shrieking Shack. This continues to not set entirely well with me. Giving Peter over to Azkaban and the Dementors was less merciful than death (explained in PoA). It seems Harry was rather showing mercy to Sirius and Remus, in preventing them from becoming murderers, because James wouldn’t have wanted it. Peter, though, seemed to regard it as mercy, perhaps because he knew it gave him a chance of escape.

Just a few thoughts before i change the litter box…

JKR (website):

“In other words, a secret (eg, the location of a family in hiding, like the Potters) is enchanted so that it is protected by a single Keeper (in our example, Peter Pettigrew, a.k.a. Wormtail). Thenceforth nobody else – not even the subjects of the secret themselves – can divulge the secret. Even if one of the Potters had been captured, force fed Veritaserum or placed under the Imperius Curse, they would not have been able to give away the whereabouts of the other two. The only people who ever knew their precise location were those whom Wormtail had told directly, but none of them would have been able to pass on the information.”

So the Potters could not have given Sirius the secret themselves. Only the Secret-Keeper can reveal the whereabouts of the hidden subjects (Harry, James, and Lily). We know it can be done verbally or in writing, but it must come from the Secret-Keeper. This is why the Shell Cottage Fidelius Charm presents a problem. If the cottage was under the FC (Bill being the Secret-Keeper) before the Malfoy Manor scene, then Ron could not have given the location of the cottage to anyone. If Bill rapidly placed the cottage under the FC as soon as Luna, Ollivander, and Dean showed up with Dobby, then Harry and the others should not have been able to get there let alone have been able to see the cottage when they arrived. It doesn’t hold together because it would make no sense at all if the FC had no effect on anyone who had previously known the location of a newly secret-kept dwelling. It would mean that everyone who knew the location of Aunt Muriel’s house would still be able to find it even after the FC had been cast on it with Arthur as the Secret-Keeper.

As for the HP prophesies, I have to point out that we only ever saw Sibyll Trelawney make them, and while she is a clownish character, I wouldn’t put her in the category of negative character. Moreover, Dumbledore held Sibyll’s grandmother Cassandra in high regard, so not all seers are fools. There is nothing in the text to indicate that Dumbledore regarded the violent manner of Sibyll’s Hog’s Head prophesy as unusual, so I conclude all seers undergo the same experience.

I think RevGeorge hit on the right answer to this question. The key (I feel very foolish for not considering this) is in the names of the seers who are known to us, Sibyll and Cassandra, which clearly reference pagan sources.

The young female soothsayer of Acts only started following Paul and Silus after they had been preaching for days in Philippi, so she was not revealing anything “Here are the servants of the Most High God; they have come to tell you how to be saved!”) that Paul and Silus hadn’t been saying in the public squares and marketplaces. And while I don’t want to offend PETA, Balaam’s Ass was a dumb animal, not a human prophet.

I’m not a Bible scholar, so I could hardly give a rundown of OT and NT prophets. Even so, it goes against every Christian instinct I have to believe God would ever utterly overtake the mind and body of a true prophet to deliver a message and then leave behind a bewildered servant. Happily, I do trust St. Jerome and St. John Chrysostom on the subject, and was glad to read the following in the Catholic Encyclopedia online:

“(c) State of the Prophet during the Vision — Ordinarily the vision occurred when the Prophet was awake. Dreams, of which the false Prophets made ill use, are scarcely ever mentioned in the case of true Prophets. Much has been said about the ecstatic state of the latter. Possibly the soul of the Prophet may have been at times, as happened to the mystics, so absorbed by the activity of the spiritual faculties that the activity of the senses was suspended, though no definite instance can be cited. In any case, we must remember what St. Jerome (In Isaiam, Prolog. in P.L., XXIV, 19) and St. John Chrysostom (In I Cor. homil. XXIX in P.G., LXI, 240 sqq.) remarked that the Prophets always retained their self-consciousness and were never subject to the disordered and degrading psychic conditions of the pagan soothsayers and pythias; and, instead of enigmatical and puerile Sybilline oracles, their pronouncements were often sublime and always worthy of God.”

The whole section is here if anyone wants to check it:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12477a.htm

So RevGeorge, I do believe you are correct that JKR clearly had pagan sources in mind. In light of the Returning Servant prophesy in PoA (that’s closer to the mark than Faithful Servant), I don’t really understand all the passages in which Dumbledore insists that the Chosen One prophesy was only fulfilled because Voldemort heard part of it and acted on it. Of course, DH begins with two epigraphs, one pagan and one from a Christian tradition, so it’s not beyond possibility that she was deliberating combining pagan elements with what we might consider Divine Providence.

Here is the prophesy Trelawney gave to Harry, a prophesy Harry promptly forgot about and didn’t remember until Wormtail had escaped:

“The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight . . . the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant’s aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was. Tonight . . . before midnight . . .the servant . . .will set out . . .to rejoin . . .his master. . . .”

As we’ve already discussed, Harry did not take any Macbeth-like actions to fulfil this prophesy – it just happened as predicted. When Harry remembered the prophesy much later and told Dumbledore, Harry initially thought that by preventing Sirius and Lupin from killing Wormtail, he was at fault for allowing Wormtail to return to Voldemort. But Harry would have done exactly as he did even if Trelawney had not made the prophesy. Harry emphatically was not preventing the execution for Wormtail’s benefit. The reason Harry didn’t want Sirius and Lupin to kill Wormtail was that he didn’t think James would want his friends to become killers on his (James’s) behalf.

So what to do with Dumbledore’s statement to Harry in HPB 23, “Do you think every prophesy in the Hall of Prophesy has been fulfilled?” Since the only two prophesies we see play out in HP both come true, I don’t know how Dumbledore can be so sure. Is Dumbledore wrong? And is Dumbledore correct in saying the Chosen One prophesy would never have been fulfilled had Voldemort not known of it?

After thinking about it more, it’s clear that JKR wanted the Chosen One prophesy to play out in a self-fulfilling manner. But say Voldemort had never heard of the prophesy and Yaxley had captured the Potters for no other reason than that they were members of the Order and working against Voldemort. What if this had happened:

1) Yaxley captured the Potters and took them to Voldemort
2) Voldemort decided to kill the three of them
3) Yaxley asked Voldemort to spare Lily for unsavory purposes
4) Voldemort killed James and told Lily to stand aside
5) Lily begged Voldemort to spare Harry instead
6) Lily threw herself in front of the AK Voldemort aimed at Harry

Wouldn’t the Chosen One prophesy have still played out?

Back to “small ‘p’” providence. Since both prophesies we do see in HP ultimately played out for the betterment of wizardkind (the Returning Servant prophesy heralds Voldemort’s return to a form in which he can be defeated by Harry by dint of the events that had occurred as a result of the Chosen One prophesy), does that suggest all the other prophesies were given for the benefit of the wizarding world in some way?

As you can see, I’m chewing on these prophesies, and given JKR’s explicitly Christian references, I want to know if she fitted the HP prophesies into an overarching theological cosmology in the way that Gandalf’s prophetic intuitions and Galadrial’s mirror are fixed in the theological cosmology of Tolkien’s LOTR.

It’s easy to see the designs of Providence working throughout LOTR. We’ve already touched on Gandalf’s intuitions about the “other power” at work in the finding and bearing of the One Ring (Bilbo was meant to find it, Frodo was meant to bear it, Gollum has yet some part to play, etc.). Moreover, Tolkien tightly associates the designs of Providence with theological virtues (especially mercy in the sense of sorrow or pity for one in distress) demonstrated by the characters. It is when the characters demonstrate Christian virtue that they serve the designs of Providence.

Bilbo was able to possess the Ring for many years with minimal harm because his possession of the Ring began with an act of mercy (he stayed his hand out of pity for Gollum) whereas Gollum, though not wholly ruined, was greatly influenced by the Ring because his possession had begun with an evil act (murdering his cousin).

Through Gandalf and Frodo’s discussion of Bilbo’s mercy toward Gollum, Frodo (who had wished that Bilbo had killed Gollum when he had the chance) begins to understand the value and power of mercy and later shows mercy to Gollum.

Gollum, responding to Frodo’s mercy, wants to help Frodo (Smeagol surfaces) and guides Frodo and Sam through the Marshes of the Dead, gathers food for the hobbits, etc. Gollum’s mistaken belief that Frodo has betrayed him brings his darker side back to the surface. Gollum sets the hobbits up with Shelob, but nevertheless, Gollum’s plans are thwarted and Frodo experiences a figurative death and resurrection. Despite Gollum’s treachery, the hobbits break into Mordor.

Upon hearing Faramir’s account of his meeting with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, Gandalf said to Pippin, “Yet my heart guessed that Frodo and Gollum would meet before the end. For good, or for evil. . . . Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature. But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes.”

And ultimately, Gollum is at the Crack of Doom where his concupiscence results in the fulfillment of Frodo’s task when Frodo failed. As Frodo said to Sam, “But do you remember Gandalf’s words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him!…”

Interestingly, mercy is also mentioned in the Harry-Wormtail plotline. In the Shrieking Shack, Wormtail said, “James would have understood, Harry . . . he would have shown me mercy . . . “. But Harry didn’t precisely show mercy to Wormtail. When Harry told Sirius and Lupin not to kill Wormtail but to give him to the dementors at Azkaban instead, Wormtail thanked Harry, but Harry replied, “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this because—I don’t reckon my dad would’ve wanted them to become killers—just for you.” (PoA19) This is not sorrow or pity for one in distress.

In DH, when Wormtail seized Harry by the neck, Harry said, “’You’re going to kill me?’ Harry choked, attempting to prize off the metal fingers. ‘After I saved your life? You owe me, Wormtail.’” And then, “The silver fingers slackened. . . . He saw the ratlike man’s small watery eyes widen with fear and surprise: He seemed just as shocked as Harry at what his hand had done, at the tiny, merciful impulse it had betrayed, and he continued to struggle more powerfully, as though to undo that moment of weakness.” And “Pettigrew was reaping his reward for his hesitation, his moment of pity . . . “(DH23)

I loathed this resolution to the life debt. I wanted the life debt to inspire some consciousness of virtue remaining in Gryffindor Wormtail in a way that would be connected to a real opportunity for redemption. It’s certainly clever to use Voldemort’s silver hand as a means by which Wormtail kills himself (if Snape is a triple spy, Wormtail is a triple traitor), but yet I don’t have a sense of theological virtue being played out in this resolution. JKR tells us that Wormtail experienced a moment of pity, and yet it seems more likely that he felt a twinge of guilt at Harry’s accusation.

I don’t deny that the Christian elements in the books are very obvious, especially in DH. Moreover, it was clear throughout the series that she believes strongly in the major themes of Judeo-Christian philosophy (free will, sacrificial love, right and wrong, good and evil, redemption, forgiveness, mercy, “doing unto others,” life after death, etc.), themes that are reinforced through the alchemical (personal transformation) and traditional Christ imagery woven through the books.

And I’ll agree that it’s unfair to expect HP and LOTR to be Christian novels in the same way because JKR and JRRT did not write the same book and do not share the same beliefs. JRRT was a convinced and devout Roman Catholic, and he described his own story as a fundamentally religious and Catholic work. And boy howdy is it. I’m far less certain of JKR’s precise beliefs. As she said in the “Veil” interview in the latest HogPro post, “Do I believe you go on? Yes, I do believe you go on. I do believe in an afterlife, although I’m absolutely doubt-ridden and always have been but there you are.” According to reports, she may be a member of the CoE, but she certainly isn’t a convinced orthodox Anglican on the level of CS Lewis.

In a post DH interview, she said her religious doubts are evident throughout the story. I couldn’t help but notice that none of the official religious characters in the books reflect well on the institutional Church. While there are no living characters who represent any kind of corporate worship, the jolly Fat Friar is the Hufflepuff house ghost and “a group of gloomy nuns” attended the Deathday Party in CoS. I’d wondered what Rowling might be saying by making the friar and nun ghosts since these are all formally-professed religious who presumably had extensive instruction in Christian theology, and yet they chose half-lives as ghosts rather than “go on.”

Christians at a minimum believe that Jesus Christ became man to suffer and die for our sins to enable us to share the afterlife with God in Heaven. As Christ said to the Penitent Thief: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Yet the Fat Friar and gloomy nuns chose to stay behind in a pale imitation of their living selves. Why did Rowling show us examples of Christians who had extraordinarily close contact with Christian theology and yet apparently drew no strength or understanding from it? She didn’t have to use religious ghosts at all, but she did, and I can’t help but be reminded of her July 13, 2000 CBCNewsWorld interview in which she said the church and Christian spirituality did not help her to deal with her mother’s death.

BTW – The only other religious figures we see in the books are in the paintings. One is a group of “drunk monks” near the Charms corridor (HBP17) and the other is a group of “sinister-looking” monks on the staircase leading to the North Tower (PA6). I don’t assume these paintings reflect an anti-Catholic bias since the Church of England still has active orders of habited nuns running around the UK and an active Franciscan community. I can’t help but be intrigued by her decision to include these negative images of people who clearly represent the “conventional organized religion” that in her interview she expressed having problems with.

Which brings me back the questions of what JKR might be saying to us relative to the source of prophesy in HP, the manner in which the prophesies are delivered, and the way in which they are fulfilled (or not according to Dumbledore).

I think perhaps why Trelawny’s true prophecy was so otherworldly & grating was to distinguish it from her normal flim-flammery gimmicky stuff, i.e. tea leaves & palmistry & crystal balls, what not. The prophecy is set apart by its strangeness & unpleasantness to show that, wait a second, something different is going on here, something unusual, something not of this world, something real as opposed to all the silly stuff Trelawny did.

Of course, historically speaking, Sibyl Trelawny gives her prophecies in almost exactly the same way her ancient namesake did. From the wikipedia article: “‘The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.’ (Heraclitus, fragment 12)”

Somewhat similar also is the Delphic Oracle who would go into a trance & speak her prophecy.

So, perhaps Jo is not saying anything in particular about the nature of prophecy but simply, as she does with so many other things, echoing Western mythology & history.

Makes me wonder about Trelawny’s grandmother, Cassandra. Like her historical namesake, was she forever giving true prophecies but never being believed?

As for prophecy, my husband pointed out that since there were true prophecies, this points to a higher being. While they may have come unwillingly and violently through the negative character, Trelawney, we don’t know how they came through the OT prophets or Balaam’s ass. We certainly know about the possesed young prophetess plaguing Paul in Acts who acted much as Trelawney. While her pronouncements came from demons, the prophecies (in true meaning–speaking truth) themselves were true.

This argument may be weak, but I think Trelawney was a willing/unwilling conduit of higher truth. Her incapabilites prevented her from being the distinguished seer her grandmother was. Trelawney, despite her sad degradation, had enough whatever to be a rare “conduit” of prophetic truth.

As for the predestination/providence time-travel argument. This is one of those mobius loop things. I don’t think predestination plays a part.

Felicity, you write: “One, the Time-Turner sequence at the end of PoA is a predestination paradox (causal loop). Harry was saved by the Patronus he cast while using the device, therefore he was predestined to use the device. I’m not sure how this conflicts, if at all, with the choice and free will theme in the book.”

Harry would never have saved himself with his Patronus if he hadn’t chosen to go back with the Time-Turner. He wouldn’t have chosen to go back unless he’d seen himself and Sirius be soul-sucked. This is one of those time-travel conundrums, but I don’t think it argues for predestination.

Also, in time-travel lore, you have the “butterfly” principle: if you go back in time and accidentally step on a butterfly, it changes the course of history. A SF short story (Asimov? Heinlein?) dealt with this. The changes caused by Time-Turner Harry and Hermione were: the Minister’s vain visit, the executioner’s experience, Buckbeak’s escape, Harry’s Patronus, Harry and Sirius saved from soul-sucking, Dementors flee, Sirius freed and Snape’s “severe disappointment.” (Not to mention seeing themselves, another time-travel conundrum usually not allowed.)

So what were the historical consequences? The Ministry becomes more suspicious of Dumbledore; a pumpkin is beheaded, Buckbeak does heroic deeds, Harry lives to teach the DA, whose members fight DEs in the Ministry, Sirius lives (for good or ill depends on your point of view) and Snape’s resentments further smolder. The most critical butterfly effect is that Harry lives to defeat Voldemort, and his child Albus hermetically helps heal the Slytherin/Gryiffindor divide, so beautifully laid out by John.

As RevGeorge says, I’m not sure where I’m going with all this, but time-travel as deus ex machina is tricky.

The kitties believe I’m predestined to meet their every need, and in a way, they’re correct…

But then I thought about what would’ve happened if Voldemort would not have heard only certain portions of the prophecy, what if, as you note, it was not Snape but another Death Eater who heard it, what if Voldemort had not set any store by prophecy & had done nothing. Would no one have been able to stop the Dark Lord then? Would Dumbledore even realized that LV had horcruxes?

If someone had managed to leap from behind a bush & AK LV, would the result of his ‘death’ have been the same? That is, he’s broken & goes into hiding but always with the possibility of coming back & never being truly defeated because his horcruxes would always be tying him to mortal life. Almost like how the Ring ties Sauron’s spirit to Middle Earth & he can never truly be defeated until the Ring, which houses the greater part of his power, is destroyed. Which reminds me of how prophecy also plays a part in LOTR. The dream that comes to Boromir & Faramir. The vision Faramir sees of Boromir’s death boat. I’m sure there’s lots of others, too.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this but I still think prophecy can play a part in providential action. Dumbledore takes a dim view of divination as a study subject but he seems to take true prophecy seriously. He also seemed to have held Trelawney’s grandmother in high regard as a genuine seer.

Arabella – Wormtail had given the Potters’ location to Sirius. Sirius, after all, was the person everyone believed to be the Secret-Keeper, so for that reason alone, he needed to know where to find them.

The name taboo was in place early on, which is how Harry, Ron, and Hermione were found by Death Eaters on Tottenham Road moments after they left Bill and Fleur’s wedding.

When Harry was given the secret to the location of 12GP, he literally saw the house emerge between 11GP and 13GP, so the house does truly disappear.

Red Rocker – JKR said in an interview that Dumbledore could not see through the Invisibility Cloak. He knew that Harry was arround by casting a spell to reveal the presence of humans in the area. And I don’t see evidence anywhere that Dumbledore has powers of premonition.

I do think characters in LOTR develop, especially Frodo. Many remain static, but Frodo is deeply changed by bearing the Ring.

Gandalf appointed the Rangers, led by Strider, to watch over the Shire and he told Frodo not to use the Ring at all if possible. It’s expained in the book that Saruman was the head of Gandalf’s Order and made ring-lore his special study. Saruman had told the others that Sauron’s Ring had no doubt long been washed out to sea (while Saruman was himself trying to find it). Gandalf was not satisfied, but he hunted down Gollum and consulted libraries for documents hundreds of years old for the history of this Ring so that he could identify it.

Yes, there were close shaves when Frodo was on the road. Frodo was reluctant to start out, the letter Gandalf tried to send via Butterbur telling Frodo to leave immediately was three months delayed, which is why the Nazgul were in the Shire before Frodo left.

Etc., etc. The point is that plausible reasons were given for why things happened as they did. As a story, LOTR holds together better than HP in my opinion.

RevGeorge – Frodo was a reluctant hero. He didn’t want to bear the Ring, wishing instead to stay behind with Bilbo. He tried to give it to Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadrial at various points in the story. He accepted the task, as I read the story, because he was convinced that the task had been appointed to him.

I used the word predestination rather than Providence for a few reasons.

One, the Time-Turner sequence at the end of PoA is a predestination paradox (causal loop). Harry was saved by the Patronus he cast while using the device, therefore he was predestined to use the device. I’m not sure how this conflicts, if at all, with the choice and free will theme in the book.

Second, I was thinking of LOTR and Gandalf’s comments about another power at work that didn’t want the Ring to return to Sauron. There are hints througout LOTR of a benevolent, guiding Providence. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and Frodo was meant to bear it. Gollum is also part of this Providential design:

Gandalf: “I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or for ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not the least.”

However, in HP, even though the prophesies seem to be given for reasons that ultimately help the good guys, they are delivered, not by the Providential intuitions of a kind and wise wizard like Gandalf, but through a kind of violent possession. There is a violation of free will in the way this Entity takes over a seer’s mind and body to communicate the prophesy in a loud, harsh voice. Harry first described Trelawney as having unfocused eyes and slack mouth, then said her eyes started to roll and she appeared to be having a seizure. She had no memory of the prophesy when she became herself again.

There’s nothing benevolent in that description. The information contained in the prophesies is outside what any human could guess, especially the Chosen One prophesy. And yet the information seems to be benefiting the forces of light.

It is Providential in HP in the sense that (other than the seer), the characters who hear the prophesy are not coerced into acting against their own natures. And as I mentioned before, Snape played an especially crucial role in the Chosen One prophesy. For instance, had those first two lines been overheard by Yaxley and had Voldemort not shared the prophesy with any Death Eaters other than Wormtail, we have no reason to believe that anyone would have asked Voldemort to spare Lily’s life. Had the offer not been made, Voldemort would have succeeded in killing the whole family.

Moreover, Snape’s remorse at having delivered this information to Voldemort that led to Lily’s death was the reason he was in place at Hogwarts to protect Harry all those years, he was able to spy on Voldemort, and he was able to heal Dumbledore temporarily from the curse on the Peverell ring giving Dumbledore the year he needed to instruct Harry in how to kill Voldemort, etc.

So Snape seems to have been a deliberately chosen player in the fulfilling of this prophesy. In LOTR terms, Snape specifically (no other Death Eater) was meant to hear the first two lines of the prophesy and deliver them to Voldemort.

Anyone have thoughts about this?

You know, this is just the sort of discussion that I loved while we were still waiting for the last three books, and just the sort that I avoided once we had the last book. I’m not sure why, but the inconsistencies don’t bother me that much. Perhaps it’s because I was so pleased overall with book 7 that I’m able to look past all of that. So the details of the charms, which are really (as I see it), a device for getting to the point of the story, don’t matter so much anymore. It’s not as if we are reading about something that is based in reality. If this were historical fiction, based on real events or people, I’d be looking at all the details and complaining if they weren’t correct. But it’s fantasy. The part that becomes real for me is only in how the characters react to one another (or to the situation)–personal interaction is the only thing that has to follow something really logical for me, and Rowling does that very consistently.

But, all that aside, I did want to comment on the Fidelius Charm as it relates to 12 Grimmauld Place and the Potter’s house in Godric’s Hollow. The Fidelius Charm doesn’t make a building invisible–it makes it impossible for someone looking in to see the people who are protected by the FC. It’s never really explained whether someone looking in the window sees no one inside or sees someone else–kind of a Witness Protection version, where the identity of a person is completely changed. I do think that it’s more than just Pettigrew who was in on the Fidelius Charm, though. Dumbledore offered to be the Secret Keeper, so in some way he must have known where they Potter’s were going to be stashed (I like the idea that it was Dumbledore’s family home and that’s why they were in Godric’s Hollow–too bad no one ever asked JKR that detail). They could have requested that Bathilda be told so someone could go to the store for food. Sirius was going to be the Secret Keeper but he and James decided to change at the last minute to Pettigrew, so Sirius knew where to go to check on them. Somehow, he had to know where they were; I just assumed that once the charm had been put in place, he and Dumbledore couldn’t actually see James and Lily there.

But 12 GP was protected by more than the Fidelius Charm. Sirius’s dad had placed all sorts of protections on the house that were still in effect–that it was invisible had to do with it being unplottable and some other charms, rather than an effect of the Fidelius Charm. So the Death Eaters couldn’t see it because of one charm/protection, and couldn’t get inside because of another. It’s possible that they were told to watch 12 GP because Harry had inherited the house from Sirius (which Bellatrix and Narcissa must have known by that time), but because they couldn’t actually see the house, due to the protections that made it disappear (not the Fidelius Charm) they made no attempt to enter it. All they could do was hope to see Harry coming out and suddenly appearing on the sidewalk once he was outside the protective barrier.

It didn’t really matter to me whether Harry and Hermione were right about Yaxley being able to spread the word about 12 GP and get himself and other DEs inside. It was a chance they couldn’t take, just as Dumbledore had been cautious about whether they could continue to use 12 GP once Sirius had died. If I had a great hiding place that no one else knew about, but then I knew that someone chasing me had seen it, even only once, I’d leave and not go back again. To me, that was a logical and valid choice that JKR made for the trio–their stay at 12 GP couldn’t be assured as a safe haven any longer. And they really didn’t have the time to test it to see if it was still a viable hide out.

I’m not bothered about the seemingly silly or stupid mistakes made by Dumbledore or Voldemort either. I’ve known some brilliant people, highly intelligent, who have absolutely no common sense and who do things that leave most reasonable people shaking their heads, saying “What were they thinking?!?” Well, clearly, they weren’t.

JKR gives us two excellent examples that intelligence alone isn’t enough. Dumbledore, with his brilliance, isn’t able to really trust anyone with all that he knows, because he doesn’t trust himself after he made such disastrous mistakes in his pursuit of power. For me, Dumbledore is a more interesting and compelling hero because of his flaws. If he were perfect, as he seemed to be in the earlier books (even though there were hints he was not), he wouldn’t be someone that we, as readers, could relate to at all.

Voldemort was brilliant at 16, when his soul was still intact. But it’s now years later, with his soul maimed. Even worse, he has always isolated himself, while seeming to surround himself with followers. But none of them really know much about who he is.

And in truth, he has been so focused on his quest for immortality that he hasn’t been doing the normal sorts of things in his life that would lead to his growth into a healthy mature adult. Voldemort has spent all of his time chasing after a way to ensure that he lives forever, but none of his time in understanding what life really is. In thinking himself above human faults and frailties, Voldemort has so separated himself from the rest of humanity that he doesn’t function the way an ordinary person does; his logic is his own, and he is one of those who has not a lick of common sense. We shouldn’t be surprised when he doesn’t act in ways that any of the rest of us would–he’s not like any of the rest of us. In Voldemort, JKR has given us a villain that is so narrowly focused that he shows just how scary the real world villains are–people like Hitler, Idi Amin, et al.

I think that when we pay too much attention to the details of the Harry Potter books, we end up not being able to see overall gift that Rowling has given us. Personally, I prefer to see the forest that’s pleasing to look at and enjoy and not worry so much about the individual trees, some of which aren’t growing as straight as they might if they stood alone.

Pat

According to one theory of time travel, everything that will ever happen has already happened.

We could look at that statement in two ways: as prescriptive, or as descriptive. Seen as prescriptive, then it does seem as if there is a kind of predestination which rules out free will. But seen as descriptive, there is no predestination. Just an infinte number of mathematical equations which ultimately only have one solution.

Do the prophecies – or at least one of them – show the power of the transcendent here on earth? And by transcendent, I assume we’re talking about a greater power, a cosmic consciousness, known elsewhere as The Force, Iluvatar and the Ainur, and most closely, God and his angels.

Have to agree with Felicity. The Chosen One prophecy was definitely self-fulfilling. That doesn’t make it non-transcendent, just that the hand of the transcendent is fully transparent, and invisible unless you choose to see it there. The Faithful Servant prophecy, on the other hand, is a bit of a poser for many reasons. First, it does not influence Harry’s actions. He doesn’t put much faith in what Trelawney – not a very credible person at the best of times – croaks out, and certainly has no reason to link it to Voldemort. This is in line with his general incuriousity about things magical. It is also very different from Voldemort’s reaction to the first prophecy. Granted that his doom is spelled out more clearly, Voldemort does the carpe diem thing, with disastrous immediate – and long term – results. Harry ignores the prophecy about the return of his potential enemy, with acceptable long-term results.

I think there is a message there, although it’s a bit of a reach. Take heed of the oracle and try to control your destiny, try to take out your enemy before he’s fully formed, and your actions will come back to bite you. Ignore the oracle, let destiny take care of itself, and you will live long and prosper. It’s also similar to the centaurs’ message in the books.

Going one step further, towards that tantalizingly out-of-reach transcendent, it seems almost as if the agenda of the transcendent in throwing out these cosmic forewarnings is like a test: try to mess with the future – i.e. things you have no business messing with – and you end up under a bench at King’s Cross. Keep it simple, and you’ll get a return ticket from the land few have ever come back from.