Dumbledore's mistakes

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 75182

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "T.M. Sommers" <tms2 at m...> wrote:
> Richelle Votaw wrote:
>  >
>  > 1) Not telling Harry about the prophecy to begin with.  A
>  > mistake?  Maybe.  May also have been a mistake to tell an
>  > eleven year old ...

> T.M.:
> Telling him would have, among other things, played right into 
> Voldemort's plans by making Harry curious ...edited...
> 

bboy_mn:

This is going to sound odd at first, but Dumbledore's mistake was not
'telling Harry' or not 'telling Harry', it was taking an all or
nothing approach. See, I told you it was odd.

The logical and safest and least tempting toward mischief would have
been to use a graduated approach. Again another odd one, he should
have told Harry the whole truth from the beginning, just not ALL of
the whole truth. Is any of this making sense?

In the beginning, he should have told Harry a generalized version of
the whole truth, or to look at it another way, a superficial version
of the whole truth. Then as each year went by and Harry became more
mature, Dumbledore should have fleshed it out with a few more details.
That way Harry would have alway had some idea of what was going on,
but at the same time, he wouldn't have had to know the full exteme
meaning.

So, I guess you could call that a layered approach; each year adding
another layer of details to the basic truth. 


>  > 3) Seemingly not noticing (or not doing anything about it)
>  > that Sirius was rapidly deteriorating while basically kept
>  > caged.


> 
> Since when is that Dumbledore's responsibility? ...

bboy_mn:

Since when is it any friends responsibility to notice when a friend is
sinking into dispare, especially, when you as a friend are
contributing to that dispare (obvious hint of sarcasm)?

We can all look back and say he should have done this or he should
have done that, but that is the luxury of hindsight on our part. On
the other hand, we would like to think that Dumbledore has some gift
of foresight, but sadly, by his own admission, he dropped the ball on
this one. 

To err is human, to forgive is divine.

Just a thought.

bboy_mn