The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore Irvin Khaytman (reading books for 4 year olds .TXT) 📖

take far too much energy, and Dumbledore is also a touch rattled by how successful Voldemort’s plot the prior year turned out to be. Better get a head start on bringing down Voldemort, so Dumbledore needs to find something relatively innocuous to occupy Voldemort while Dumbledore begins working on his own plans. And then Dumbledore is visited by one of his more brilliant ideas: since Harry escaped Voldemort, Voldemort will be obsessing over how to kill this boy once and for all. Voldemort will try to glean information from the prophecy. Dumbledore says as much during his “tell-all” conversation with Harry at the end of OotP:

“And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy you.” (OP739-740)

So why not keep him chasing after the prophecy while Dumbledore starts taking productive measures to stop him? It’s easier for Dumbledore to do his thing without Voldemort breathing down his neck. Lucky for Dumbledore, the prophecy would be useless to Voldemort, so it’s okay to send him on a wild goose chase for it. Dumbledore probably told Snape to subtly encourage this quest of Voldemort’s.

Let’s look at what the prophecy actually says:

“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 . . . and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives . . . the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies . . .” (OP841)

First, keep in mind that Voldemort already knows almost half the prophecy because Snape overheard it. According to Dumbledore, “He heard only the beginning, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort.” (OP743)

Of the information that’s left, there are two salient points. The first is that “the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.” But this is all in the past already, and Voldemort already suspects Harry has some power that he does not because the boy keeps not dying and keeps stymying his evil plots. This information would be no help to Voldemort.

The second point is that “either must die at the hand of the other.” Well, Voldemort certainly intends to kill Harry, so that information does not really help him either. In short, there is no information that Voldemort can glean from this prophecy that would merit so much fuss being made about it.

What’s more, after two years of the fandom agonizing over this prophecy, and several months of Harry worrying about it, Dumbledore comes right out and says that it doesn’t matter! During one of his private lessons with Harry in Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore gets very agitated, and finally tells Harry, “You are setting too much store by the prophecy!” (HBP509)

Even Harry feels the anticlimax of all this. “‘So, when the prophecy says that I’ll have “power the Dark Lord knows not,” it just means—love?’ asked Harry, feeling a little let down.” (HBP509)

Harry believes that the prophecy requires him to kill Voldemort, but Dumbledore disagrees, and moreover exclaims that, “It is essential that you understand this!” (HBP510) Dumbledore then explains to us, conclusively, that the prophecy does not matter at all.

“Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!”

[. . .]

“I’d want him finished,” said Harry quietly. “And I’d want to do it.”

“Of course you would!” cried Dumbledore. “You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal. . . in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you. . . which makes it certain, really, that—”

“That one of us is going to end up killing the other,” said Harry. “Yes.” (HBP511-512)

And there you have it. The prophecy’s only importance in the story is the backstory it provides on why Voldemort initially attacked Harry and set this entire chain of events in motion. At this point, Harry and Voldemort will fight to the death regardless of the prophecy, and Dumbledore is well aware of this.

So the obvious conclusion is that Dumbledore used the prophecy as a decoy to keep Voldemort busy during his first year back. But what’s astonishing is how far this deception went and how Machiavellian Dumbledore was about the whole thing. Indeed, thus far it can be argued that Dumbledore’s actions have all been unequivocally good, but now we enter the phase of some murkier morality in his actions.

The Order’s Role

Dumbledore funnels most of his considerable resources into keeping Voldemort away from the prophecy. Considering what is being guarded, this appears totally unwarranted—but if the prophecy is a decoy, then it would be a top priority to keep it from Voldemort.

One of the Order’s main tasks is the guard duty over this object. Logistically, this is impressive: Dumbledore puts in the effort to sneak people into the Ministry undetected to keep a 24/7 watch on this prophecy. And considering the entire Order of the Phoenix seems to be roughly twenty people, that is a considerable portion of their finite resources being used to guard this prophecy and keep Voldemort at bay.

But here is the scary part: the Order does not actually know that they are guarding a decoy. They seem convinced that keeping Voldemort from this prophecy is a matter of life and death, not just a stalling technique. After Mr. Weasley is attacked by