Dumbledore's Game Explained: Reasons for Preventing Voldemort from Hearing the Prophecy

If you were paying any attention whatsoever, then you've noticed that the mysterious prophecy that started the entire The Boy Who Lived story has been pretty hyped up by the time we got to learn its contents.

This prophecy got Lily and James Potter killed, Voldemort dissipated, and Harry alone with a weird scar.

It really seemed like a lot depended on the prophecy, and when we got to actually listen to what it said it was… Underwhelming, to say the least.

Despite Voldemort failing to get his hands on the prophecy, he didn't miss out on much: the prophecy was utterly useless and had nothing that could've helped the Dark Lord.

Still, one question stands. Why did Dumbledore allocate so many of the Order's resources to protecting the prophecy if he knew how pointless it was?

The answer will surprise you: he did so precisely because he was well aware of how useless the prophecy was.

Albus Dumbledore could be called many things but not a fool, so he had his reasons to guard the prophecy — first and foremost, he wanted Voldemort to believe it was important.

Why, you may ask? Let's see what the Headmaster's game really was.

Imposing caution

After what happened both times Voldemort tried to kill Harry, he was more cautious in his approach. He reckoned something was amiss.

Dumbledore wanted to maintain his enemy's delusions and have the Dark Lord remain uncertain and cautious to postpone scaling the conflict further and win more time for the Order of the Phoenix.

Division of resources

Voldemort was totally focused on getting the prophecy the moment he learned its whereabouts. Once again, this was great for the Order: the harder it was for the Dark Lord to achieve his current goal, the more resources he threw at it.

This effectively meant he was spending far less time and effort on actually growing his power.

Providing the bait

For Dumbledore, the heavily-guarded prophecy stored in the depths of the Ministry was perfect. The Headmaster assumed that if nothing else helped, Voldemort would eventually come out of the shadow to take the prophecy himself, and that would reveal him to the Ministry wizards.

Curiously, the last step almost failed. Voldemort tricked the Headmaster with an outplay of his own: instead of going to the Ministry himself, he tricked Harry into doing that for him.

Had the Dark Lord not grown impatient at the end, he would've remained hidden, and Dumbledore's plan would've failed in this department.

In the end, the Headmaster's shenanigans still work out as it typically goes. Voldemort stayed cautious, spent way too much precious time trying to get to the prophecy, and eventually revealed himself to the Wizarding World.

Now, was it a bit cruel to use the Order's wizards while keeping them in the dark? Perhaps, it was.

But those were all adult fighters ready to sacrifice their lives to defeat Voldemort, and they would've been risking their lives all the same even if they knew — so Dumbledore simply hedged his bets and turned out right at the end.