Normally, yeah, but given that in this case we're reading from an internal perspective, you can get away with a bit.

 

If Voldemort never heard of the prophecy or if he had stayed his hand and never marked Harry his equal, does it mean he'd essentially be immortal since they'd be no one who could kill him?

Or does the prophecy itself grant him that semi-immortality by giving him only the one person who can kill him and if he never marked an equal then anyone could kill him?

 

Though Dumbledore admits that Harry is only the chosen one because Riddle made him so, he also framed it as something of an existential truth.

No matter who it was, at some point Voldemort would have tried to tyrannize too many/the wrong people, as tyrants always do. Eventually, whether he heard it or not, he would have made the same mistake, because tyrants and mass-murderers always create their own worst enemies simply by doing what they do.

 

So does this mean Prophecies are set in stone? That he'd still be compelled by fate or magic or destiny to mark someone as his equal and fate would make sure that it was Harry?

 

Well, maybe not set in stone so much as that prophecies are not predictions of exact events so much as they are very accurate truisms that may or may not be fulfilled in the time-frame/way people expect them to be.

Like when Harry thought Trelawney's second prophecy would be fulfilled by Sirius's escape. She was right that Voldemort's most fanatic follower would find his way back, but was it Sirius? No. We think it was Peter, biding his time as a rat. But maybe that was the night Crouch first began to break his father's Imperius as well, biding his time as an invalid puppet.

This leaves room for there to be unfulfilled prophecies (as Dumbledore says there are), but also ones that do come true, mainly because people make it so by way of their own actions.

 

I trust Dumbledore's word on this, that the prophecy only applied because Voldemort believed it would, otherwise it would be worthless.

If Voldemort never heard the prophecy, it would be as if it was never spoken and Voldemort would take over the world.

 

I do remember that part, and that's what I was referencing. More specifically:

Dumbledore is basically saying here that if it hadn't been Harry, it would have been someone, eventually.

EDIT: ohh, lol, my bad then.

 

So just like I said above, the Prophecy itself is worthless unless Voldemort hears it.

 

Ah that actually answers my question perfectly. I guess it really is time for some re-reading.

 

Might there be a case of multiple futures? A prophecy doesn't tell you the future, but A future. Some are lucky and tell you the future which manages to happen.

 

Not exactly. Dumbledore confirms that whether Voldemort heard it or not, there would have been someone that eventually decided to kill him, simply because he was an asshole, and the circumstances would have provided at some point for a mother who really loved her child to stand in the way.

Voldemort simply accelerates the process.

Harry wouldn't be the Chosen One unless Voldemort heard the prophecy, but there almost certainly, at some point, would have been a Chosen One.

There's also this other, weirder idea to consider: the prophecy states exactly which children are eligible to be the Chosen One. Sure, if Voldemort had never heard the prophecy, it wouldn't have been either of them . . . but he did hear it, and the prophecy seems to know that he would, in fact, hear it, or it wouldn't have placed such a specific time on the birth, or the circumstances of its fulfillment.

Beyond that, are you really telling me that Dumbledore had no idea Snape was crouching just outside the door? Maybe Voldemort's choice was less his own than Dumbledore makes it seem.

Maybe Dumbledore, after hearing the prophecy for himself, and having Snape under his power at the time, decided that Voldemort should hear it too, in the process making himself a Chosen One that he could raise just so . . . I mean, he did let Snape go afterward. In the scene at the end of OotP, the penseive memory doesn't include any interruption of the prophecy, or even any kind of indication that the recaller's attention might have wavered (as it would have if Snape and Aberforth really had entered the room at that time, distracting Albus in the process), so one would think that Snape heard the whole thing, and yet . . . he doesn't relay the whole thing back to Riddle. Or, if the penseive is, as it might well be, capable of perfect memory even in the absence of perfect attention by the possessor of the memory, then perhaps Dumbledore only allowed him to hear so much as would be useful to him for Snape to hear, before having him removed from the premises.

Maybe Dumbledore altered Snape's memory and sent him off, back to his master, in the hopes of planting just the right seed. And Snape came back later on, after realizing that Voldemort planned to kill the whole family, and Dumbledore knew at that moment that his plan had worked.

He might have made Snape his servant before he ever made any choice to switch sides.

Sorry for the speculative post, though. Just considering certain ideas. I don't remember what Dumbledore's exact explanation of Snape's intrusion was.

 

Isn't there a line in the books that specifically says that most prophecies are bunk? Something along the lines of most prophecies being held in the department having gone unfulfilled?

 

lol, my apologies, I wasn't really trying to go into Evil!Dumbledore, I hate it just as much as the next person. But he is manipulative, and I was stricken by the idea that he might have arranged things even more skillfully than was implied by the end of DH.

It's why I said it was an idea to consider, instead of putting it forth as fact or even likelihood.

 

Do we know how far one can travel with Apparation, Portkeys, and Flu?

 

We know you can't do it internationally with Apparition, because Voldemort had to travel by flight for a while before he could Apparate in DH.

However, with Portkeys, you can get international I think, wasn't there something during the Quidditch World Cup about it?

Floo is limited only to Britain.

 

That's all speculation.

Voldemort could have had other reasons to fly. (Well, the main reason, out-of-book, was that Rowling needed him to take time to get places). In a prior interview JKR has said that intercontinental apparition is a challenge for most wizards, so that not only means that intercontinental apparition is possible, it also implies that a) apparition range is relative to skill and b) international would be easier than intercontinental, thus meaning more wizards able to do it.

Not to mention that we've seen people apparate distances within Britain that could easily take you to other countries. It's only 21 miles (34km) to France from the south of England.

Floo is never stated to be just Britain as far as I recall, though I could have missed an interview where it's stated.

Portkeys were one of the many ways people reached the World Cup, but it's never stated who took what means, other than not everyone is comfortable apparating.

 

Harry side-alonged Dumbledore all the way across the British isle(*), from England back to Scotland, and he would have just recently learned the art.

From what we know of side-alongs (Harry's experience in HBP and DH), those being carried don't really participate in the act, and Dumbledore was pretty exhausted (not to mention that from what he said, he was relying on Harry to get them there), so I wouldn't say he had any help either.

 

Could Voldemort have been overwhelmed with numbers? Say in a fight that was 50 on 1. 50 average witches and wizards versus Voldemort before he got fucked up by Lily's shenanigans. Or hell, make it an even 100.