For a moment, Harry could not quite wrap his head around it. "What thoughts would I have?"
"Or let us change the premise..." Dumbledore said unhurriedly. "Harry, if you did not know about the prophecy, how would you view Voldemort?"
Harry fell silent, and a dream from two years ago surfaced in his mind.
That dream had begun beautifully. 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 apart into cold, silent darkness.
Endless darkness descended around him. He remembered the nightmares the Dementors had brought him. In those dreams, apart from the boundless darkness, there had only been desperate pleas, one after another, and a green light that extinguished those pleas.
Then Sirius Black's face appeared before him again, Sirius Black smiling at him brilliantly...
That smile was like sunlight tearing through dark clouds, ripping apart the darkness of the nightmare.
That brilliant warmth filled Harry's heart. It felt as though flames were burning in his chest, their searing, stirring heat surging upward until it reached his throat.
He spoke. "I want to stop Voldemort! I will do everything I can to stop Voldemort!"
"Just like after I started school, when I learned that Voldemort was after the Philosopher's Stone!" His tone grew firmer and firmer. "I would still want to stop him!"
"No matter what, I still have to stop what Voldemort is doing—for Mum and Dad, for Sirius Black!"
"You see..." Dumbledore smiled. "You are not bound by the prophecy. This is a choice you made after thinking it through. But Voldemort is different..."
"The moment he heard the prophecy and chose at once to follow it, making you the person chosen by the prophecy, he became different from