It makes no sense otherwise. Why would the mirror in the first book been accessible to harry, even more since it's SO dangerous. Why would every trail there be exactly with puzzles that harry and friends had possibilty to solve.

How come harry always turned out in the place where he needed to get info about voldemort and his "friends".

And how come they sent, what, 12 year olds to that scary extremaly dangerous forest with vicious creatures, and hagrid even made 2 of boys go and walk there alone xd

How come dumbledore was watching harry so much, as he said but didn't care about breaking the rules that actually could get him killed.

My reasoning is, he was using him to get to voldemort. Playing chess in 4D putting him through all those stuff so he could make the prophecy take action but keep him alive to make sure it was harry that survived not ms. V.