Game Theory!

Harry Potter ISN'T the Chosen One?

Trigger Warnings:

Spoilers?  Ig

Slight mentions of torture (towards a spider)

Slight mentions of being beaten

"The one with the power to vanquish, the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thriced defied him, born as the seventh month dies, and the Dark Lord will mark him as 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..."

Hello internet, welcome to FILM THEORY!  It's like Game Theory, but with one small difference.  I'll let you figure out what it is.  Now, if that prophecy sounded familiar, that's because it's the big reveal that comes at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, the fifth in the series of books, movies, and "video games", about the young orphan who gets whisked off to Hogwarts Wizard School with his friends, Ron and Hermione to find out he's destined to save the world.  Honestly, I never got the hype.  (I personally love Harry Potter, these are his words, not mine!) The fifth book was always my least favorite.  (Sameeee) Too much of all HP whining about being special.  Oh, suck it up!  Anyone would love to have magical powers.  So you are different, get over it!  But I will say the fifth MOVIE was my favorite in the franchise.  Whoo, that final wizard battle!  I could watch it for days!  And yet, whether I loved it or hated it, I never got the "Hoopla" around this prophecy thing.  Yeah yeah, Harry Potter is the chosen one.  He's the one that's going to have to kill Voldemort.  Big surprise.  Like, did we really learn anything here?  NO!  We just had a nice filler book to kill off some of the big characters and then transition to some of the darker installments.  It always felt like such an anti-climatic reveal, well, at least it did until I started thinking about it.  We've all just assumed that it was Harry the prophecy was talking about since you know, it's his name on the book covers, movie posters, and tighty whities.  But what if it was all a cover-up, a reus, a brilliant PR campaign to take the attention off the "Other Boy" who lived, the TRUE HERO of the story.  And what if this prophecy wasn't just "No Duh Moment" but instead, a clue hidden out in the open for us careful fans, about the identity of the TRUE hero of Hogwarts.  Sound crazy?  Let's break down the prophecy!

We know that the Dark Lord refers to Voldemort, the evil wizard with the unfortunate nose job, but the rest of the thing is unclear.  We know that "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord" must have been "Born to those who have thrice defied" old nose slits over here.  Okay, well Harry seems to fit the bill.  His parents, Lily and James Potter were both members of "The Order of the Pheonix", a secret society founded by the Hogwarts headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, to oppose Voldemort, so they probably did their fair share of fighting.  That said, we've never actually been given three specific examples.  So you know that connection is meh, at best.  What is with these darn ancient prophecies!  Why could they never say in clear English what they mean?  Hey you, Scar-bo, HP, you're the chosen one.  Go kill this guy.  

Anyway, the hero also needs to be "Born as the seventh month dies."   The prophecy is so adamant about this, that it mentions it twice.  So it's oughta be pretty important.  Well, after doing extensive research on the subject, I learned that the seventh month is actually July.  And Harry's birthday is July 31st, so that sounds pretty cut and dry.  And finally, there are those parts about "The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal" and "a power the Dark Lord knows not."  With Harry, these two sort of go hand-to-hand.  Voldemort marked Harry as his equal when he showed up at the Potters to kill Harry and avert the prophecy, but instead of killing him with the unforgivable Avada Kedavra killing curse, Lily Potter threw herself between them, sacrificing herself in the process.  Voldemort was completely blindsided as a mother's love, something he never knew or felt himself, activated ancient magic that reflected the curse back onto him and left Harry with an extremely marketable lightning bolt scar.  Seriously, it looks like a temporary tattoo, and don't worry, it is.  But yeah, the books and movies make it pretty clear that the power Voldemort knows not is "love".  And it's exactly that power of love that allowed Harry to defeat him in the battle of Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.  Ugh, really?  "Love is the power".  Can we... can we get any more cliched here?  It could've been something cool like... I don't know, laser beams.