They got the wizarding hero they deserved.

Or.. the wizarding hero they thought they needed?

They thought they needed to deserve.

The one they thought they wanted to deserve- Augh screw it, they got BATMAN.

[Batman Effects]

[Film Theorists Theme Song Plays]

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...

[Music Stops]

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 ugh, "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."

The fifth book was always my least favorite.

Too much of all HP whining about being special.

Oh suck it up! Anyone would love to have magical powers.

So your 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's the chosen one.

He's the one that's gonna 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 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? Lets break down the prophecy!

We know that the Dark Lord refers Voldemort, the evil wizard with the unfortunate nose job,

But the rest of the thing is really unclear.

We know that "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord" must have been "Born to those who have thrice defied" ol' 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 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-boy, 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.

[Triumph Horns]

And Harry's birthday is July thirty-first, so thats 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 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 an 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 Dealthy Hallows: Part 2.

Ugh, really? "Love is the Power.."

Can we.. can we get anymore clichéd here?

It could've been something cool like uh.. I don't know, Laser beams.

Ok, so lets take a second to step back here and look at the terms of the prophecy objectively.

If we're being completely honest, if we were able to find another kid who was born at the end of July,

Had Do-Gooder parents,

And was loved at some point in his life, you actually have yourself a pretty darn valid canidate for hero of the wizarding world.

Well, make that one very specific hero candidate.

You would have yourself;

Neville Longbottom. Wait, that's him? This guy?

Oh wow, he actually turned out to be quite handsome. Did he.. It is strictly

Platonic I'm hey, I'm able to appreciate his handsomeness and in a strictly

Platonic way.

Don't be getting ideas. Now I get the confusion. In the movies, Neville was

worse than the third wheel, he was a fourth wheel to the Harry Ron Hermione

tricycle, and yeah the idea that he's a hero seems like one of those bits a

far-flung fan fiction that surfaced in some dark corner of Reddit but if you

go with me on this one for a minute, I think you'll be surprised

by what we find. Let's go back to the prophecy. Born as the seventh month dies;

That was the biggest at least vague stipulation of the prophecy, and one that

would be really difficult for me to fudge.

Funny thing is though, I don't have to Neville's birthday was on July thirtieth

one day earlier than Harry's, and based on the vague wording I'd say we have at

least a few days window here. Especially if the prophecy is okay writing off "Love

is the power he who must have sleep apnea knows not."

Ok, Next. "Born to those who thrice defied him."

So Lily and James Potter may have done their share of old defying. Again, there

are really no clear examples given to us, but look at Neville's parents Frank and

Alice Longbottom.

These two were aurors. It's basically like being a professional Harry Potter,

but less pouty and with better pay. Their backstory kind of gets the shaft in most

of the books and definitely in the movie, but they were a serious power couple who

would clearly have been on the front lines of Dark Lord defense they were so

important in fact that Voldemort's followers captured and tortured Neville's

parents using the Cruciatus curse to leave them permanently insane.

One of the attackers Barty Crouch jr. even disguised himself as a teacher and

made Neville watch him torture a spider with that same curse.

Anyway if we're going to assume that the Potters somehow defied Voldemort three

times, I think we can give that same consideration to the Longbottoms so

that's two major check marks

maybe there's something to this thing after all; Which leaves us with our last

two criteria for being the chosen one: Being marked by Voldemort as his equal and

having a power that Voldemort doesn't . I said earlier that this missing power is

clearly meant to be the power of love. Que that Hewey Lewis!

All right that's enough, we don't want to challenge copyright police and the

movies and books drive the love point home, but it's unreasonable to rule out that

this power could also belong to Neville. We've already established that his

parents parallel the dedication of James and Lily Potter, maybe even more so as

the only way to disable them was to torture them beyond recognition.

A prolonged period of torment as opposed to Lily's snap decision to save her son.

So, we have just as much evidence to believe that Neville has powerful love

juice pumping through his veins just like Harry, or then again maybe

everyone's wrong and the power Voldemort knows not is Herbology. Let's face it

that's one Neville really excels at, and Harry eh green thumbs

he has not but then what about Voldemort marking Neville as equal? The lightning

lightning bolt scar [trademarked], and the spell that merged Harry and Voldemort's souls

together are pretty solid evidence for Harry being the chosen one. Nevel doesn't

seem to have that sort of a connection.

So have we hit a brick wall here? Is it even possible to make a case for Neville

with this one piece of evidence blocking our way?

Well as it turns out we've been asking the wrong question.

It's not whether Harry or Neville are the chosen one.

They're both the chosen one at the same time. Over that to make them the chosen

two I guess? I don't know. Anyway without any of us realizing it, JK Rowling has

been teaching all of us Potterheads a little bit of quantum physics.

There's a well-known quantum physics principal called the "Many-Worlds"

interpretation which was coined by Bryce Dewitt. As we go through time, there are

many possible futures for us while we're waiting for the future to happen, every

possible future is real.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let me put it this way I might have cereal for

breakfast tomorrow or

who knows i might have leftover cake. Both of those futures are real events,

but the "Many-Worlds" theory says that I decide which one of those real futures i

participate in by making the choice to eat that awesome slice of cake.

Because, let's face it. We all know that that's the future i'm going to choose

because chocolate icing rocks, and yeah sure, I'll regret for the rest of the day,

but that alternate future, the one where I'm super lame and choose to eat cereal

and probably do some push-ups or whatever

Ehh

sucks just thinking about it, but yeah that's still real too - I just chose not to

participate in it so screw you health! It was the point where I made the choice to

obey my sweet tooth that determined the path that I went down but history and

future still have all those other choices within them. Think the past and

future like a tree with a whole bunch of branches all the way through

we choose which branch to follow but the whole tree still exists; And that brings

us back around to the problem of Harry and Neville. Harry, according to the

prophecy is the Chosen One. Neville

according to the prophecy is also the Chosen One.

Think about it we just went through all the reasons either can fulfill the

prophecy.

There's nothing so remarkable about Harry that makes him more likely of a

hero of the wizarding world than Neville. Except for one thing,

one choice. In this case the only person who had the ability to choose between

these two was Voldemort himself of the two equally real chosen ones, he could

have decided to attack,

he chose Harry Potter. He could have just as easily chosen Neville Longbottom but

in choosing harry he gave him an entire future, an entire identity, as "the boy who

lived" in a weird way.

Harry should be thanking Voldemort otherwise he would have just been well

Nevel; And if you think this theory sounds a bit far-fetched, well, listen to

someone you do trust "Mr. I Knew The Answer The Whole Time and Just Chose Not

to Share it With You Until the Very End,"

Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore actually explains this theory to Harry noting

that it could have gone either way, between who Voldemort chose to attack,

Harry or Neville. In fact from the very beginning of the series we can see

Dumbledore understanding of these parallels. In a way Dumbledore and

Hogwarts Proper treat both of these kids like they could be the chosen one.

Probably because Neville and Harry both represented equally likely branches of

history. in the very first installment Dumbledore recognizes Neville's

contributions and awards him points for his bravery and standing up to his friends

these points, not Harry's, end up being the deciding factor in Gryffindor's win

over Slytherin for House Cup (Idc I'm a Ravenclaw.)

What seemed like Dumbledore playing favorites was actually him catering to

the other chosen one.

Nevel's also only one of two individuals we know for a fact to have actually had

a conversation with the Sorting Hat about which house to go into. Only he and

Harry have the self determination to do this.

Following their first year, Neville repeatedly demonstrated he was both

smart and capable, in a lot of cases more capable than Harry himself. He provided

Harry with gillyweed in year four, saving him from failure in the Triwizard

Tournament, helping the quote on quote "chosen one" fulfill his destiny.

While Harry was moping around in the wilderness for most of movie seven and

seven part 2