Why Harry with the Philosopher's Stone?

[Grey Wolf]

No: HPFGUIDX 47519

Anne wrote:
> I think I must be completely missing something here.  Why would 
> Dumbledore want to prepare Harry to follow Quirrell past all the 
> obstacles and into the mirror room?  Or was he actually thinking that 
> Harry would wind up there anyway and was just preparing him to cope 
> if he did? 

You are looking at this the wrong way about, probably because, when one 
has been in the list for a while, one tends to build theories on top of 
other theories, and if you don't know the theory that serves asd 
foundation, you get lost. As I said in a previous post, the "defenses" 
of the PS in the first year have little to do with MD, and in fact the 
theory that I was using was around before MD started. The problem is, 
you see, that you look at the "defenses" and have to wonder "what sort 
of incompetents set up, to protect the most valuable object in the 
world, a bunch of defenses three 11 year-olds could easily pass?".

Quite some time back, someone proposed that question, and that put 
several people to thinking. And it got even better, because someone 
pointed out that, in fact, those "defenses" seem especially tailored to 
Harry and his friends (including Neville, who was conviniently awake 
that night and that could've been convinced to go with them instead of 
totally petrifying him). So, it looks like the "defenses" where not 
designed to stop anyone - just to prepare Harry and co. Train them, if 
you will. The idea behind this was originally metathinking (i.e: this 
are books called "Harry Potter and... " and the narrative gives him an 
education in the traditional sense of just hard enough), but it can be 
extended to a non-metathinking environment, by use of MD or some other 
theory in which Dumbledore is preparing Harry for the future 
confrontations with the DE (why Harry? because he is the boy who lived, 
has some of Voldemort's powers, so he is promising, and several other 
reasons we could come up with)
 
> I guess where all this is leading for me is why exactly Dumbledore 
> would want to set up a situation where Harry end up with the stone in 
> his pocket and alone with Quirrell!mort?
> 
> Anne

You have to consider that, as I said, the stone wasn't that much in 
danger at any point. You suggest that Quirrelmort could've used his 
wand, but I doubt that: for all we know, Harry still had full love 
shield at that point and any spell directed at him from Voldemort 
(which in my eyes would include Quirrelmort) would rebound and hit 
them, just as trying to touch Harry burned them. He could've tried 
accioing the stone, but Harry can stop that by putting his hand at the 
end of the pocket. And, conveniently, Dumbledore was close enough to 
arrive in the nick of time, so if thigs really got dangerous he was 
around to save the day.

Now, to go back to your question, you are mixing two situations that 
happen at the same time and that makes you think they are related. I 
proposed that Harry was being watched to determine his moral sense, and 
that his quest to save the stone and his ability to extract it from the 
mirror are proof of that. This does not include that Dumbledore had 
planned it this way: he can determine Harry's moral sense by pasivelly 
observing him go into all that trouble, without pushing him into it. 
But since I do believe that the "defenses" were though as a training 
excercise, it's logical to assume that Dumbledore had the little moral 
test at the end (after having tested resourcefulness, bravery, 
intelligence, knowledge, etc. etc.).

And on the other hand, Dumbledore wanted (by his own words) give Harry 
a chance to face Voldemort once again. I take this as literal truth, 
but what it means is open to interpretation (as most of Dumbledore's 
words are). You can believe in the bait version, in which Dumbledore 
admits that he was facing Harry and Voldemort to see if the love shield 
could destroy Vapourmort, or you can believe the non-bait version where 
it is just a way of helping Harry confront the past and learn to not 
fear Voldemort (unlike all those unthinking wizards which fear even his 
name).

Whatever the reason, however, you can see that they can be viewed as 
independent situations from each other, which happen nonetheless at the 
same time.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf