Category: The North Tower

One of the great mysteries in OotP is what exactly happened to Sirius in the Death Chamber in the DoM. I’ve had many owls about this and also read a whole bunch of different theories on the subject. Today, I’ll try to sort things out a bit.

Hi everybody! I’ll round off my series on prophecies today with a question/answer session on the matter. These past seven weeks, I’ve received a whole bunch of questions about my articles, and I thought I’d try to answer most of them here today. Okay, let’s go!

Today I’ll finish what I started last week: an analysis of what will happen based on the prophecies in Harry Potter. Let’s pick up where we left off and go back to the prophecies.

I’ll go through each of the prophecies today and see what I can make of them. Let’s start with the two fragmented ones that were smashed in the DoM:

OotP, p. 692: “…at the solstice will come a new…”
OotP, p. 692: “…and none will come after…”

We stand now before a major problem, a great mystery. On one hand, we have the prophecies, which seem to be showing us the future, no matter what the characters do to stop it. On the other hand, we have the major theme in JKR’s books of the importance of choice. How do these two things work together?

I’ll start by a new feature to this column that I secretly started last week, namely a small “Literary analysis and argumentation 101” interactive course. Last week, I presented you with the following theory (thanks, Jeanine):

“Don’t forget that if a person picks up a prophecy that is not about him or her, he or she will go crazy. Harry picked up that prophecy and did not go crazy. Therefore, the prophecy is about him, not Neville.” (A)

A prophecy, according to Longman’s dictionary is “a statement that something will happen in the future, especially one made by someone with religious or magical powers.” This definition goes well with the HP books as well as general mythology. What’s important here is to first make a distinction between a prophecy and general indications (GIs) of the future.

I got quite a lot of owls about Neville and Harry in relation to the prophecy. What if Neville’s “the One” after all and not Harry? So, I chose that mystery for today’s topic.

According to the prophecy (which we analysed last week), “the One” is born at the end of July to parents who have thrice defied Voldemort. Both Neville and Harry fit this description. They are both potentials.

The North Tower is a place of mysticism. It’s where Astronomy and Divination take place. It’s high up, near the stars, connected to the mysteries of the skies. My idea with this column is thus to look at and analyse some of the more enigmatic sides of the HP saga: metaphors, mythology, writing technique and so on. Through observation, logic and emotion I will analyse theories that are flying around on the ‘Net and present my own in an attempt to unfog the future.