A real prophecy could cause what it describes, but this isn’t true of Trelawney’s first prophecy. It didn’t cause Voldemort to go after Harry. He could have gone after Neville, but Dumbledore notices he chose Harry as a “half-blood, like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you.”13 What made him choose Harry wasn’t the prophecy, which didn’t cause him to go after anyone. Dumbledore suggests that if Voldemort had heard the whole prophecy, he might not have been so hasty. When Harry asks why Voldemort hadn’t waited to figure out which one it was (or, I might add, killed both), Dumbledore says Voldemort had incomplete information because his spy (later revealed as Severus Snape) was thrown out of the room halfway through the prophecy:“Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you—again marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait or learn more. He did not know that you would have ‘power the Dark Lord knows not.’”14
The prophecy by itself couldn’t have made Voldemort do anything. He heard some of the prophecy, but it didn’t ensure anything. It couldn’t control how much Snape heard. If Voldemort had heard the rest, he might not have chosen to do anything. So, it doesn’t seem as if the self-fulfilling interpretation of prophecies is a good way to distinguish “real predictions” from Professor Trelawney’s usual prophecies.
Destiny
In a 2007 interview with a Dutch newspaper, J. K. Rowling said that her use of Professor Trelawney reflected her view that there’s no such thing as destiny.15 What does this denial of destiny amount to?
A compatibilist about freedom and predetermination thinks we can be free even if our choices are determined by things outside our control. Some compatibilists say there’s just one possible outcome, the actual future. Other compatibilists speak of possible choices, meaning we can consider various options and then pick one, even if our deliberation is predetermined by things outside our control. A libertarian about freedom holds that we have options because there’s nothing that guarantees our choices ahead of time. This is more than compatibilism allows, because the libertarian considers predetermined choices unfree.
Some libertarians believe in a fixed future, meaning there are truths now about what will happen. You might have many possible futures open to you, even if there’s only one actual future that will happen.16 Other libertarians, thinking that such truths about future choices would threaten our freedom, insist on an open future, where statements about our future free choices are neither true nor false (until those choices are made).
The most natural denial of destiny is the open future view. No future statements about people’s free choices are true or false. Yet someone denying destiny could mean that there are possible futures open to us, without denying that only one of them is the actual future. It’s possible Rowling means just that, in which case she might even be a compatibilist, although this kind of language is more typical of a libertarian.
Dumbledore tells Harry that the prophecy about him doesn’t have to be fulfilled just because it’s a real prophecy. Does Dumbledore mean there’s no fact about whether it will be fulfilled, and it becomes a genuine prophecy only when the foretold event occurs or is guaranteed to happen? Or does he mean the prophecy doesn’t make Harry or Voldemort do anything? What it predicts is the actual future, but other futures are possible. We need to delve more deeply into the Potter books to see what kind of destiny there is and isn’t in Harry’s world.
A Rodent’s Destiny
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Trelawney makes a second “real prediction”:“The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight . . . the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant’s aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was. Tonight . . . before midnight . . . the servant . . . will set out . . . to rejoin ... his master.”17
If the prophecy that one of Voldemort’s followers would go to him that night was overwhelmingly likely, then Wormtail must have been extremely likely to escape that night. Other followers who were capable of going were unlikely to try. If Remus Lupin had remembered to take his Wolfsbane potion to manage his werewolf transformation or someone had responded more quickly when Wormtail transformed, Wormtail might not have escaped. If a “real prediction” involves greater likelihood, this should be a likely outcome. It doesn’t seem likely, so this particular prophecy is hard to see as fallible but likely.
The earlier prophecy is similar. Even if Voldemort was likely to go after Harry, how probable was it that Wormtail would become secret-keeper at the last minute? Voldemort wouldn’t otherwise have marked Harry and given him power “the Dark Lord knows not.” If Voldemort hadn’t told Snape his plan, Snape wouldn’t have begged for Lily Potter to be spared, and Lily wouldn’t have had to make a voluntary protective sacrifice. Again, Harry wouldn’t have been marked. Thus, this prediction also seems to be “real” in some stronger sense than simply being “likely but fallible.”
Time Travel and Fixed Time
To make sense of Rowling’s views on prophecy and destiny, we must consider what she says about time travel. If time travel can change the past, it allows serious paradoxes, such as the case Hermione Granger mentions of killing your past self before you could travel back and kill yourself. If you did that, you wouldn’t have lived long enough to go back in time to have done it. You can’t change the past according to the fixed-time theory, and that means you won’t kill yourself. You already survived, so it won’t happen because it didn’t happen. In Harry’s one instance of time travel, Hermione and he travel back in time three hours, carefully avoiding being seen. They accomplish what they set out to do, saving Buckbeak and Sirius Black. There’s never any indication of a change. The entire account fits nicely with what we already knew about that three-hour period.
We find out the second time around that later-Harry cast the stag Patronus that saved earlier-Harry from the dementors. A fixed view of time fits this best. If Harry is saved by the Patronus stag the first time around and then casts it the second time around, the best explanation is that Harry’s later self was there all along. Yet future events cause those present actions, which means the future must happen a certain way for Harry and Hermione to have been able to travel back in time to do these things. A fixed view of time allows for this.
Nevertheless, Hermione describes time travel in a way that allows changing the past. “We’re breaking one of the most important wizarding laws! Nobody’s supposed to change time, nobody!”18 She adds later, “Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time.... Loads of them ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!”19 If we trust a trustworthy character reporting on another trustworthy character’s statements, then in Harry’s world the past can be changed. That would mean time isn’t fixed.
It’s highly unlikely that McGonagall is lying or that Hermione misinterprets her or lies about it to Harry. It’s possible (but still unlikely) that the Ministry of Magic has spread misinformation about a guarded magical subject and that even McGonagall doesn’t know the truth. Some may find that a stretch. But the alternative, if the stories are to be consistent, is to take “time travel” in cases of changing the past as possibility-travel and not time travel.20 They travel to another possible time line. The one time-travel case in the novels does seem to be genuine time travel, so it’s not clear what mechanism would make it possibility-travel in only past-changing cases.
Aside from these puzzles about time travel, perhaps the most compelling argument for fixed time is that it fits best with current physics. Absolute space-time is often considered incompatible with special relativity. An open future requires an absolute present moment, after which little is fixed. But there is no absolute present. What we call the present is relative to a frame of reference. There can
’t be an absolute future if special relativity is correct.21
With a fixed future and prophetic access to it, Trelawney’s first prophecy doesn’t just happen to get it right, despite being unlikely. It is guaranteed to be right, even if many of the events along the path to fulfilling it seem unlikely. We might even conclude something stronger than simply that the future is fixed. Many unlikely events happen to lead to a prophesied event. A lot of chance events could have gone the other way to prevent the prophecy’s fulfillment.
Harry and his friends defeat Voldemort and his followers, despite overwhelming odds, partly from sheer luck, and it fulfills a prophecy. That’s hard to make sense of without a stronger connection between the prophecy and the actual future. It seems lucky that Harry and his friends have spent time in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom making Polyjuice Potion, which helps them locate the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. They might have tried something different to figure out what Draco Malfoy knew or might have brewed the potion elsewhere. Their choice of that bathroom allows Harry to find the Chamber, save Ginny Weasley’s life, destroy a Horcrux, make the Sword of Gryffindor capable of destroying further Horcruxes, leave behind the basilisk fang to destroy the Cup Horcrux, and alert Dumbledore to the fact that Voldemort must have made more than one Horcrux. A fair amount depends on where they happen to choose to brew that potion.
Many other events that could have gone otherwise are crucial to things working out in the end. Harry’s luck from Felix Felicis accomplishes a lot more than he realizes, including seemingly unlucky things such as Dumbledore’s death but also his obtaining Horace Slughorn’s memory of Voldemort wanting to divide his soul into seven pieces by making exactly six Horcruxes. Harry had that potion because he had received Snape’s former Potions book, and that occurred only because Dumbledore failed to inform Harry that he could take Potions, and Harry’s change in circumstances with Potions depended on Slughorn coming back to teach.
In the second half of Deathly Hallows, Harry and his friends happen to be captured by the group that had Griphook. They arrive at Malfoy Manor during Voldemort’s absence, after the fake Sword of Gryffindor was stored with a Horcrux whose location they didn’t know. Snape had gotten the real sword into their hands for it to be there for Bellatrix Lestrange to see it and freak out, leading Harry to suspect that the hiding place of the fake sword also contains a Horcrux.
Harry later arrives at the Shrieking Shack just as Voldemort is about to kill Snape, allowing Snape to convey Dumbledore’s last message to Harry. All of these events rest on luck. You might wonder whether some force guided things along to ensure that the prophecy would be fulfilled. The fact that so many chance events led to the prophecy’s fulfillment might suggest the influence of some divine being.
This would be a stronger destiny than merely a fixed future, because it involves the deliberate intentions of an intelligent being. Many Christians, for example, have interpreted the Potter books to reflect a strong view of divine providence, with God having a plan for the universe. That might mean God predetermines all of our actions by means of prior events causing them. But it could as easily involve libertarian freedom, as long as God knows what people would do in all possible circumstances and therefore knows infallibly what free choices they may make.
These lucky circumstances seem far too easy if there isn’t someone guiding events toward certain outcomes. Such a view may not fit what Rowling intended to say when she denied destiny and what Dumbledore says when he insists that Harry or Voldemort could have done something contrary to the prophecy. It’s hard to be sure what Rowling meant (and what she meant Dumbledore to mean). But the story makes better sense if there is a deeper, providential explanation of the lucky occurrences. If not, Harry and his friends are just incredibly lucky!22
NOTES
1 Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 426.
2 Ibid., p. 109.
3 Order of the Phoenix, p. 603.
4 “On Interpretation,” chap. 9, reprinted in Aristotle: Introductory Readings, edited by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), pp. 11-15.
5 Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 426.
6 Order of the Phoenix, p. 841.
7 Half-Blood Prince, p. 510.
8 Ibid., p. 512.
9 Ibid., pp. 195-196.
10 Ibid., p. 543.
11 Order of the Phoenix, p. 842.
12 Alexander’s “On Fate,” 30-31, reprinted in Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader, edited by Julia Annas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 46.
13 Order of the Phoenix, p. 842.
14 Ibid., p. 843.
15 Volkskrant, November 2007. The interview is in Dutch, but it has been translated into English at www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/11/19/new-interview-with-j-k-rowling-for-release-of-dutch-edition-of-deathly-hallows (or http://tinyurl.com/ypazb4). My discussion relies entirely on that English translation.
16 For an excellent defense of the compatibility of foreknowledge and libertarian freedom, see Gregory Bassham’s chapter, “The Prophecy-Driven Life: Fate and Freedom at Hogwarts,” in Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, edited by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), pp. 223-225.
17 Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 324.
18 Ibid., p. 398.
19 Ibid., p. 399.
20 For a more in-depth discussion of time travel in the Potter novels, see Michael Silberstein, “Space, Time, and Magic,” in Harry Potter and Philosophy, pp. 192-199.
21 This objection is developed in much more depth in Theodore Sider, Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 42-52. This chapter also discusses other difficulties that arise if you deny the fixed view of time.
22 Thanks to Winky Chin, Jonathan Ichikawa, Peter Kirk, Ben Murphy, Tim O’Keefe, Samantha Pierce, Rey Reynoso, and Brandon Watson for comments at various stages of this chapter’s development.
PART TWO
THE MOST POWERFUL MAGIC OF ALL
4
CHOOSING LOVE
The Redemption of Severus Snape
Catherine Jack Deavel and David Paul Deavel
Although Harry “felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape” for Sirius Black’s death, easing his own sense of guilt, he can’t get Professor Dumbledore to agree.1 In fact, Dumbledore finds Severus Snape completely trustworthy, despite all appearances to the contrary. It might be tempting to chalk up Harry’s suspicion to emotional immaturity, but, other than Dumbledore, no members of the Order of the Phoenix trust Snape wholeheartedly. After Snape kills Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall murmurs, “We all wondered ... but [Dumbledore] trusted . . . always.”2 She continues, “He always hinted that he had an ironclad reason for trusting Snape. . . . Dumbledore told me explicitly that Snape’s repentance was absolutely genuine.” 3 With so many lives at stake, how could Dumbledore be so certain that Snape is loyal and trustworthy?4
In a word, the answer is love—not Dumbledore’s love for Snape, nor Snape’s for Harry, but Snape’s love for Lily Potter, Harry’s mother. Although Lily doesn’t reciprocate Snape’s romantic love, Snape never stops loving her, and that love eventually leads, however circuitously, to his redemption.
Enlightened contemporary readers might smile indulgently at the rhetoric of love and redemption, chalking it up to J. K. Rowling’s sentimentality. After all, why think that love is a good reason to trust Snape? Clearly, Snape dislikes, even hates, Harry, Sirius, and others. Shouldn’t Dumbledore worry that this malice might win the day? Furthermore, why think that Snape has been redeemed? Isn’t his hate already evidence to the contrary? If he were redeemed, one might argue, then these feelings would be gone. Appeals to love and its transforming power are, of course, ubiquitous in literature, but aren’t such notions, at root, just old-fashioned, quaint, and simplistic? What would a philosopher say about such a thing? As it happens, philosophers have had quite a lot to say about love. They have explored the nature of love
, the varieties of love, and even the way love can blind us and lead to mistakes in judgment. The Potter series, and Snape in particular, offers us a chance to explore these issues as well.
Snape and the Many-Splendored Thing
From Plato (around 428-348 B.C.E.) to C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), love has been a recurring and prominent theme among great thinkers. Whatever its source or ultimate significance, the many-splendored thing of love has served as the inspiration for poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists, philosophers and theologians. The prominence of love as a theme in the Potter books is hard to miss. Lily’s love saves and protects Harry. Harry’s love defeats Professor Quirrell and prevents Lord Voldemort from possessing Harry’s soul. And Voldemort’s fatal weakness, Dumbledore tells us, is that he never understood that love is the most powerful magic of all.
The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles Page 6