6.0 KiB
[RT] If Dobby worked smarter, not harder (x-post from /r/HPfanfiction)
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Author: u/blazinghand Chaos Undivided*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/5gzk1j/if_dobby_worked_smarter_not_harder/
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Score: 15
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Created: 2016-12-26T05:29:15
Post:
Comments:
u/Frommerman [+8] (an hour later)
I feel like a rational (But non-HJPEV) Harry might still not decide to go to Beuxbatons. For one, this wouldn't be official, and as a result he might not even be able to get in. Second, he has no friends in France, and literally the only people on the entire planet who have ever been nice to him are at Hogwarts. Third, Dumbledore definitely would not allow Harry to go to another school, as he still knows the prophecy and is entirely reasonable in his belief that keeping the vital prophetic child safe near the most powerful light lord in the world is a good idea.
u/Avaday_Daydream [+12] (4 hours later)
Uh...you do remember that in the books, Dumbledore explicitly calls out the prophecy as bupkiss? Horcruxes, Chapter 23, Half-Blood Prince?
It's not the binding instruction that everybody in fanfiction seems to treat it as; it's only a prediction that only comes true because Voldemort tried to avert it in the first place.
You might be interested in the fic that bendertotes made out of my mini-fic, by the way; look here.
It's really just a fix fic, with more world-building than plot, but it has Dumbledore and Dobby and everyone else doing rather sensible things.
u/Frommerman [+5] (10 hours later)
I feel like Dumbledore is wrong, though, or perhaps playing a different game or even trying to comfort Harry. Clearly, prophecies do have power, or people wouldn't believe them enough to make them self-fulfilling. The fact that Harry's in particular was self-fulfilling does not mean that it is worthless, and does mean that, at the very least, a rational Dumbledore who suspects that Voldemort isn't quite dead yet should keep Harry close.
u/chaosmosis [+7] and with strange aeons, even death may die (12 hours later)
It could be that prophecies are perceived as working because of selection bias. The general public never hears about the ones that don't happen.
u/Frommerman [+6] (12 hours later)
That certainly could be, but then why does Voldemort worry about the prophecy in the first place? Yes, cannon Voldemort made some boneheaded moves, but he's generally perceived as being cunning and terrifying, so I am willing to fob the biggest of those (Goblet of Fire) off on the author. If prophecies have no power and this is well known to the most powerful wizards, there's no reason for Voldemort to have acted the way he did.
u/Avaday_Daydream [+6] (15 hours later)
If prophecies have no power and this is well known to the most powerful wizards, there's no reason for Voldemort to have acted the way he did.
Except that, Voldemort was raised by muggles. He doesn't know that prophecies aren't binding in the slightest, otherwise he wouldn't have been after the prophecy orb in book 5 at all.
For that matter, Harry doesn't know the prophecy isn't binding either; like I said, Dumbledore has to explicitly tell him that the prophecy has no power, and that it doesn't have to come true. It's just a prediction.
To be fair, Voldemort did try to avert the prophecy as soon as he learned about it, by trying to kill Harry Potter; seeing as that ended in his being inexplicably exploded by baby Harry, and the same Harry thwarting him 10 years later, and then killing his basilisk, he could be forgiven for thinking that the prophecy somehow has some magical influence on things.
That gives me an idea, actually...suppose that, aware that Voldemort may believe that prophecies are immutable fact, Harry and Dumbledore executed a swap of the prophecy orb to replace it with a fake that claims 'and the Dark Lord will be destroyed, with utmost certainty, unless he repents for his bloodshed', or something like that?
u/Frommerman [+2] (16 hours later)
Presumably the creation of prophecy orbs is some lost ancient magic like that which made Hogwarts, so I doubt they could have fooled Voldemort this way.
u/IllusoryIntelligence [+3] (a day later)
That wouldn't seem to be the case Harry's prophecy was recorded within his own lifetime. They don't need to create a prophecy orb, just something sharing the obvious properties of one. It's hard to do an in depth comparison when one of the objects compared obliterates non-authorised users.
u/ianstlawrence [+4] (13 hours later)
I don't know if this is a real thing, but the way it is represented by the author, Voldermort has an easy time of totally fucking up the wizarding world, so much so that, with what seems like a pretty small group, he almost wins a war vs an entire nation of wizards (noted that the wizarding population is small, but still).
I don't know if there is a term for this, but its almost the idea of "No pain, no gain" or "Nothing worthwhile was ever easy", this idea that Voldemort, from his perspective, must have something difficult to defeat to actually win.
Hence the idea of a prophecy might very much fit into preconceived notions he had of what fighting this war might take, and that is why he gets sucked into, what in hindsight, is pretty ridiculous series of events.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+2] Champion of Justice and Reason (a day later)
somebody wrote a continuation of the prompt: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12266465/1/Don-t-Be-a-Dobby-Downer
u/rhaps0dy4 [+3] (2 days later)
It's not super good. It's okay, I read 2 chapters, but meh.