It's always interesting to me that while JKR says our choices make us what we are when she's supposedly quoting Dumbledore, in canon she has him say our choices *show* who we are, which is different. It seems like the books are consistently showing the way Dumbledore says it, that it's about showing, not making. Not just because people don't change, but because people aren't shown really suffering the consequences of their actions by *learning* from them.

It's just a slightly different thing, where people might suffer for the way things worked out, and they might be responsible for it because of what they chose, but that really doesn't effect their personality or their destiny. That I think is partially why I've lately been hearing so much how Harry might "make mistakes" and "do bad things" but he always does the right thing "when it counts." There's no connection between those choices and other more important choices. Or with Snape, for instance, his choice to protect Harry doesn't lead him to the kind of redemption one might expect where he becomes a different man.