For a moment, Harry could not quite wrap his head around it. "What would I think?"
"Or let us try another assumption..." Headmaster Dumbledore said unhurriedly. "Harry, if you did not know about the prophecy, how would you view Voldemort?"
Harry fell silent, and the dream from two years ago surfaced in his mind.
At first, that dream had been beautiful. He had been wrapped in swaddling clothes, with parents who loved him dearly, until the green light of the Killing Curse appeared and tore the warm dream into cold, silent darkness.
Endless darkness came crashing down, and he remembered the nightmares the Dementors had brought him. In those dreams, apart from boundless blackness, there had only been plea after plea, and a green light that silenced those pleas.
Sirius Black's face appeared before his eyes again, Sirius Black beaming at him...
That smile was like sunlight tearing through dark clouds, ripping open the blackness in the nightmare.
That brilliance warmed Harry's heart. Harry felt as if flames were burning in his chest, and the scorching, surging heat they brought kept rising until it reached his throat.
He opened his mouth and said, "I'm going to stop Voldemort! I'll do everything I can to stop Voldemort!"
"Just like after I started school, when I found out Voldemort's target was the Philosopher's Stone!" His tone grew firmer and firmer. "I still wanted to stop him!"
"No matter what, for my parents, for Sirius Black, I'm still going to stop what Voldemort is doing!"
"You see..." Dumbledore smiled. "You are not bound by the prophecy. This is the choice you made after thinking it through. But Voldemort is different..."
"When he heard the contents of the prophecy and immediately chose to follow it, making you the one chosen in the prophecy, he