Fate vs Free Will

I could easily write a whole paper on this subject. I believe in free will, and think that fate is just an illusion. I believe that what Dumbledore says in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sums my point up nicely: nothing would've happened if the prophecy hadn't been made. Prophecies don't conclude anything, they are merely catalysts for their own endings. The point of prophecies are to make sure certain major things come about. Prophecies aren't made on mundane things such as dropping a pencil on the floor and picking up again, they are made for big things: in Harry Potter it's to bring about the end of Voldemort's reign; in The Matrix, it's to bring the end of the machines domination; in Oedipus Rex and Macbeth, it has to do with kingship. In other words free will dominates the usual everyday decisions. But notice, everything that I've mentioned comes from books and movies, not from real life. Prophecies and fate are merely writer's creations, something that they wish existed, and (based on how well known all of these references are) something we wish existed. We have always wanted a guiding hand in life, someone to steer through the treacherous waters for us, but fate does not exist. It seems to me that the total interactions of so many people with free will end up looking like and being mistaken for fate.