Catching up: MAGIC DISHWASHER

[Grey Wolf]

No: HPFGUIDX 45318

I said:
> > Sirius accepts that. Dumbledore has a little chat with him, in
> > which I expect many things got explained. The thing he dislikes 
> > most of his circunstance, I think, is not being able to take Harry 
> > with him, but that would've been impossible anyway, since Harry is 
> > taken to the Dursleys for protection. Notice that, at no point 
> > (except, as with Snape, when shaking hands with him) does Sirius 
> > express any sort of disconfort about his circunstance. He
> >understands the necessity of it, and accepts his place in the plans.

Marina answered: 
> He may accept it after the fact (what choice does he have, anyway?),
> but no one consulted him before the fact.

Before that, Sirius was a suspected murderer. I don't think Dumbledore 
was all that sure of Sirius inocence before the SS (why else would he 
agree to the dementors, and directed the various mobilizations of 
teachers during PoA?). Dumbledore will not respect his enemies's 
rights, since that sort of action tends to loose wars (and I supose now 
you'll tell me that Dumbledore is Evil because he doesn't give 
Voldemort's right to freedom).

I said:
> > You cannot blame Dumbledore for the actions of Voldemort, anymore
> > than you could blame anyone else.

Marina wrote:
> I sure as heck can, if Dumbledore deliberately engineers Voldemort's
> return while knowing perfectly well it will be years before the final
> confrontation.  Even if we accept the idea that Voldemort can never
> be defeated unless he is re-embodied by one, and only one, specific
> method (and there is no solid canonical support for such an
> assumption), there was still no need to let Wormtail escape on PoA. 
> Wormtail is not the only servant available to Voldemort.  There are
> plenty of "Death Eaters who walked free" still hanging around, and
> according to DISHWASHER's own claim, Voldemort has been in touch
> Lucius Malfoy since at least as far back as the summer before CoS.  

You seem to believe that Dumbledore is omnipotent, Marina, which is 
obviously not the case. Of course, if Dumbledore was omnipoitent, you 
could blame him for things over which he has no control, but, as I say, 
you cannot blame him for the actions of his enemies. Let me run this 
through yet another time: Voldemort *will* come back, sooner or later. 
Because he is *immortal* while in Vapour form. From the point of view 
of eternity, sooner or later, he would come back. And sincerely, it 
doesn't even look such a especially difficult thing to do. If Harry 
were more protected, then Voldemort would only have to use any other 
wizard, get the flesh of any other servant and find the ashes of his 
father - or even of his mother, or grandparents, or even Salazar's, for 
all we know and, voilá!, he's back when no-one expects him or even 
remembers him.

So, Dumbledore prefers to control the situation as far as possible, by 
pushing Voldemort in the right direction. He cannot pretend to control 
the timing of Voldemort, but he manages to make Voldemort do what is 
best for Dumbledore. For which, he needs Harry and a servant with, 
hopefully, a life debt to Harry. So, the SS Scene is engineered to put 
both possible followers of Voldemort in a position were Harry could 
save their worthless lives. And he does, out of free will, too, I have 
to point out - as always, Harry didn't *have* to get involved (although 
it could be argued that *Sirius* forced Harry into action by taking 
Ron. I supose *that's* Dumbledore's fault too, isn't it?).

We don't know when was Dumbledore planning to let Harry donate blood 
for Voldemort's potion. My guess is that as late as possible in Harry's 
training, but no matter, since Voldemort wins the next round and *his* 
plans overule whatever Dumbledore could have planned.
 
> And here's another thought -- having arranged for Wormtail's escape,
> Dumbledore must know that Voldemort will want to try for the potion
> as soon as possible, which means that Voldemort will be redoubling
> his efforts to go after Harry.  If the re-embodiment is not to happen
> too soon, security around Harry must be tighter than ever before.  
> So, knowing this urgent need for heightened security, what does
> Dumbledore do?  He holds a Triwizard Tournament, filling Hogwarts
> with hundreds of strangers, including an entire Durmstrang delegation
> of Dark Arts students headed by a known Death Eater.  Real tactical
> genius at work there.

You forget to mention that he gets the best Auror ever to watch over 
Harry and the rest of the people involved. Pitty Voldemort is faster 
and substitutes that Auror by one of his own men, but nevermind. I'm 
sure that if the real Moody had been there, he would've been able to 
discover any other inseider that Voldemort could've put in. And 
Dumbledore (and I, too) believes that it is more important to look for 
allies than any breach in security - and that is the real reason behind 
the TWT: to create ties between wizards and witches of the three 
nationalities.
 
Marina one last time:
> The characterization of Snape as a man who knows his duty is in no
> way unique to MAGIC DISHWASHER, nor is it in any way incompatible
> with the face-value reading of the final chapters of PoA.
> 
> Marina

Your point is...? I said those things about Snape because Richard had 
said that he didn't like that characterization of Snape. I neither 
claimed that characterization as my own, nor as exclusive of MD, nor 
said that it was incompatible with other theories. I only said that, if 
his reason for disliking MD was based on that fact, there was nothing I 
would do to try to change his mind.


Pippin wrote:
>   If this is a war of spies, and one in which Harry Potter is being 
> groomed to play a major role (not meta-thinking as there is 
> plenty of canon evidence that Dumbledore is preparing him) it 
> seems very odd that Harry is being taught to *hate* spies: 
> Snape, Myrtle, Pettigrew, Mrs. Norris.

It seems odd in MD because...? It looks odd to meta-thinking eyes: you 
must be thinking "Umm, if JKR is doing a book like this LeCarre, she 
would make spies the heros". That is not like it in RL: Dumbledore 
might not like spies either, but he knows they are necessary. I don't 
like homework, or work in general, but I know it's necessary. 
Dumbledore knows that, to finish Voldemort, he'll have to know things 
about him: hs plans, his weakness(es), his position, etc. Since 
writting him a letter isn't going to work, he needs spies. To believe 
that that should make the spies the heros, or that Harry would come to 
respect them, is meta-thinking. And I do not occupy myself in that sort 
of arguments.
 
>  And Harry's own attempts at  spying are  unproductive (CoS)

I have to point out (totally outside of MD) that learning that one's 
ideas are wrong isn't bad: we learn more from mistakes than from lucky 
guesses. Besides, Ron learns about the secret stash of the Malfoy 
Manor, so it wasn't a totally lost situation.

>  In PoA,  spying is shown to be completely counterproductive, 
> from Harry's point of view, since if Lupin had never gone out to 
> the Shack, Snape wouldn't have followed him and Pettigrew 
> wouldn't have escaped.

Re-read MD's first post (30662): they wanted Peter to escape.
 
> Knowing that Voldemort was after them didn't save the Potters.

No, knowing that Voldemort was after them could've saved them, IF they 
had also known who was the traitor.
 
> Also, I am unclear as to why Dumbledore should dread 
> Voldemort in spirit form so much. Malevolent spirits are nothing 
> unusual in the Potterverse. One wonders why the Bloody Baron 
> or some other ghost has not made himself ruler of the magical 
> world if live wizards are so ready to follow a disembodied leader 
> as  Magic Dishwasher would have us believe.
> 
> Pippin

No ghost can resurrect. And I covered the danger of Vapour!Voldemort in 
both my previous post (45279) and in this one (as well as probably a 
dozen others). I repeat enough as it is, so I'm not going to go through 
it again.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf