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Originally posted by James
IF Harry wasn't the subject of the prophecy than he wouldn't have been able to pick it up. Its the nature of the magic that only the people that are in the prophecy may take it. Otherwise she is breaking her world rules. The magic wouldn't have been fooled.
Talking about how Voldemort in a way may have chosen Harry might being giving more a reference to the idea that trying to escape fate can seal it. His actions in avoiding his downfall cause his downfall. Pretty classic theme.
I think the prophecy is important because now we know that Harry HAS to kill voldemort. We always knew that Harry WOULD kill Voldemort, but now it looks like he might be the only person that can. Its important for Harry to know also because he probably never thought beyond being part of the fight against Voldemort.
Also, from a fiction writing perspective, it would violate the concept of the Hero if Neville turns out to be the person that Voldemort should have been after all the time. Most readers will probably feel betrayed, and feel that Harry went through a lot of nonsense basically as a kind of cosmic joke.
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But the prophecy in the Department of Mysteries was not the prophecy itself, it was only the physical manifestation of the prophecy that was created by the Ministry of Magic. It was created by the people who worked there, probably after Voldemort had decided that it applied to Harry. Just because the people working in the Department of Mysteries decided to label the prophecy as applying to Harry (and thus allowing him to touch it) doesn't mean that that's necessarily true.
I agree that I don't think that, at the end of the story, Rowling is going to pull a major switch and say, "Oh wait, prophecy applies to Neville, Neville kills Voldemort, Neville is the hero . . . haha, you thought it was Harry the whole time!" But I do think that Neville is going to be very important in the later books and probably the final battle because of that prophecy. Rowling has said that so far, nobody has really guessed the ending of the stories . . . so that means there's going to be some kind of twist at the end, and not a predictable one.
I think there is more to the prophecy than meets the eye, or else it wouldn't have been given such a big buildup. And knowing how many secrets are concealed in the HP books (Rowling still insists that there are a lot of big things about Book 2 that nobody has guessed at, that will become important in later books) I wouldn't be surprised if the full extent of the prophecy doesn't become clear until later.