Thoughts on Dumbledore letting Voldemort into the school

[Marie Jadewalker <marie_mouse@hotmail.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50969

Hi!  The points raised in this thread relate to an idea that's been 
bouncing around in my head for about a week.  I think that Magic 
Dishwasher is a really interesting theory, but I don't pretend to 
have read all the posts about it, so if this has been suggested and 
discredited before, please forgive me.  

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Melody <Malady579 at h...>" 
<Malady579 at h...> wrote:

<snips a bit at the beginning>  
 
> Well that is a bit unfair.  Quirrell did an awful job hiding his
> changed status.  Wearing a big purple turban.  Oh yeah.  *That* is
> conspicuous.  Wore garlic to hide the smell.  Adopted a stutter.
> Hmm...Dumbledore is a terrible spymaster if he missed all that.
> Terrible indeed.

I agree.  Quirrell wasn't exactly the height of discretion, and 
Dumbledore probably noticed.  I also wonder if Hagrid might have 
mentioned seeing Professor Quirrell in Diagon Alley when he took 
Harry school supply shopping -- that's conjecture of course, but 
possible. 

Christopher said:
> >1) We know the Quirrell talked to Snape (who, as we learn from book
> > 4, was a DE and later a spy).  Could part of the idea be to allow
> > Snape a chance to get back into Voldemort's good graces?
>Melody replied:
> Yes I think it can be.  Snape's words are vague enough there to make
> us believe he may still be on Voldie's side, so it may of convinced
> Voldemort.

Me: That is one possibility -- needing to maintain Snape's supposed 
loyalty to the Death Eaters.  But even if Quirrellmort was convinced 
by this (which I agree with Melody that he probably was not), it 
raises another point.  Since, as we learn in GOF, Dumbledore trusts 
Snape and his abilities to be a spy, I don't think it's likely that 
Snape would have hidden his knowledge that Quirrell was going after 
the Stone.  (I suppose we could argue that this mistake is what Snape 
did with his "first chance," but Snape being a former Death Eater 
seams a lot more likely for that.)  I don't know whether Snape knew 
Voldemort was actually cohabitating with Quirrell, but he certainly 
knew who Quirrell was working for -- in which case, Dumbledore must 
have known.  Actually,  I will assume that they knew Quirrell was 
Quirrellmort, since it does not seem like he did a brilliant job of 
hiding it from Dumbledore and Snape – they would not have been duped 
into believing Snape was the evil one since they at least know 
his "true" allegiance.  

<Snip>  

Christopher again: 
> >3) could Dumbledore have been hoping that if Harry touched
> > Voldemort, it would kill him for good?  Therefore, he want to a
> > great deal of trouble to get the  two foes together in an
> > all-or-nothing situation and keep them away from the rest of the
> > school, just in case.
> Melody:
> Yes!  That is my theory.  Did you just read my previous post?  No 
> not that one, the one about the stone.  Yes, that one.  I completely
> believe Dumbledore knows Quirrel is Quirrelmort.  I also believe 
> that Dumbledore is trying to bring about Voldemort's downfall, and 
> the only thing that has worked on Voldie so far is Harry.  So 
> therefore, Dumbledore is trying to orchestra the plan to bring them 
> together, away from the other school kids that cannot blister evil 
> people with their hands, and see if Voldie finally dies.
> 
> Unfortunately, he does not, but Dumbledore is there to save Harry.
> How convenient really.
> 
> So, I say....Dumbledore had Voldemort right where he wants him.  He
> had him under watch and baited.  Right where you want your enemy
> really.  Voldemort was no real threat to the students.  I guess he
> could of caused some problems, but that would blow his "cover".
> Voldie was mind-bent on the stone.  Dumbledore knew this.  
> Dumbledore used this.  Yes, it was a bit of an elaborate plan, but 
> not as much as in the main of MD, and I have not problem making 
> those leaps.
>
> Melody

I absolutely agree that Dumbledore could be thinking that it's 
prudent to keep your enemies close to you.  I also agree that he 
wants to set up a confrontation between Harry and Voldemort -- in a 
situation where he can intervene if necessary.  (I don't know if he's 
aware that Voldemort can't touch Harry before the incident, but I 
agree that since Harry worked once before, testing their limits 
against each other might be a good idea.)  However, my theory has a 
slight twist.  

I think they destroyed the Stone much earlier in the year.  At the 
end, when Dumbledore is telling Harry that the Stone was destroyed, 
here's the exchange, beginning with Dumbledore (long quote for 
context):

------------------------------------------------------------------
"I feared I might be too late."  

"You nearly were, I couldn't have kept him off the Stone much longer-"

"Not the Stone, boy, you -- the effort involved nearly killed you.  
For one terrible moment there, I was afraid it had.  As for the 
Stone, it has been destroyed."  

"Destroyed?" said Harry blankly.  "But your friend -- Nicolas Flamel-"

"Oh, you know about Nicolas?"  said Dumbledore, sounding quite 
delighted.  "You *did* do the thing properly, didn't you?  Well, 
Nicolas and I have had a little chat, and agreed it's all for the 
best."  

"But that means he and his wife will die, won't they?"  

"They have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and 
then, yes, they will die."  
----------------------------------------------------------------------
That's p 369 in my American paperback edition.  First of all, 
Dumbledore never tells us *when* the Stone was destroyed, which is 
the crux of my theory.  I think my impression that this destruction 
hasn't *just* happens has to do with verb tenses, so forgive me if 
that's unpleasant for anyone <g>.  Dumbledore says the stone "has 
been destroyed" and that "Nicolas and I have had a little chat."  
According to my grammar book, the former is in present perfect 
progressive tense, and the latter is in the past perfect aspect, (I 
know different books have different names for these designations, but 
that's not the point) both of which associate things that happened in 
the past to something at a later (in this case current) time.  So all 
we really know is that the chat and the destruction happened prior to 
Dumbledore's chat with Harry, and that Nicolas is presumably still 
alive at that time.  

So why would they have destroyed the Stone, and why would Nicolas 
still be around if they had destroyed it early in the year?  The 
second question is actually easier -- it might have taken quite some 
time for Nicolas to *get* his affairs in order, so he might have had 
quite a bit of Elixir of Life stored up.  That cache of the Elixir 
wouldn't be a threat if Dumbledore *knew* that Voldemort was busily 
occupied at Hogwarts -- supposedly after the "grand prize" of the 
Stone itself.  

Now, why destroy the stone?  Well, we know Harry and Hagrid knew 
about the attempted break in to the Gringotts vault where the Stone 
had been, so it's pretty safe to assume that Dumbledore (a man who 
reads Muggle Newspapers in GOF) knew this as well.  For that matter, 
there was some reason he had Hagrid get the "You-know-what" out of 
the vault in the first place.  So they knew the Stone could be used 
by Voldemort, and after the break-in, they knew for sure that someone 
was making a serious effort to get it. (And if Hagrid mentioned 
Quirrell being around and/or Dumbledore already suspected him, he 
probably has a prime suspect.)  So it's possible that Dumbledore 
decided after this attempt that keeping the Stone was too big a 
liability, so he chatted with Nicolas and destroyed it around the 
beginning of the school year.  

Alternately, after Halloween when Snape had seen Quirrellmort trying 
to get at Fluffy (and, I assume, dutifully reported that to 
Dumbledore) Dumbledore came to the same conclusion -- after two 
attempts, even Hogwarts wasn't safe.  

Either way, the Stone was destroyed by November at the latest by this 
theory -- and they probably put a fake Stone in its place.  Why the 
secrecy?  Two reasons.  While Quirrellmort is at Hogwarts, he's 
contained.  He's not causing other mischief when he's perusing the 
Stone – which he seemed to do with single-minded drive, in keeping 
with his quest for immortality.  With the real Stone destroyed, there 
is minimal risk since even if he were to get the Fake Stone, it would 
do him no good.  So Dumbledore can observe his activities and keep 
him occupied at a fool's errand for quite a while – both of which are 
good for Spymaster!Dumbledore.  (Although this does mean Dumbledore 
can't prevent Voldemort from killing Unicorns, which disturbs me a 
little.)  

There's a second benefit too: Harry.  Harry may well be special; 
Voldie couldn't kill him as a baby and there may even be an Heir of 
Gryffindor prophecy of some sort.  Given this, I see a trend that 
Harry is being groomed for an eventual showdown with Voldemort.  The 
encounters they have in the early books are tests of a sort.  This 
one particularly – we don't know how soon Dumbledore got there.  (For 
that matter, since he says he can be invisible without a cloak, he 
could have been there all the time – pure speculation, I know.)  The 
more often Harry deals with Voldemort in a weakened state, the more 
prepared Harry will be for the final battle – and the more Voldemort 
will fear Harry.   So I think it's very possible that Dumbledore 
wanted to give Harry a chance to battle Voldemort this way.  

Others have pointed out that the "tasks" guarding the Stone seemed to 
be tailored to the skills of Harry and his friends.  If the Stone 
were a fake, then maybe these obstacles were more for the kids than 
for actual safety measures.  (I wonder, could a grown wizard have 
done a counter charm on the Chess set?  Accacioed the flying key?  
Done a freezing charm on the flames?  Surely Devil's Snare wasn't 
much of an obstacle, nor was Fluffy if you knew how to handle him.  
For that matter, Harry and Ron had already gotten the best of one 
Mountain Troll.  And how wise is it to supply someone with brooms 
when they're trying to steal something and make a quick getaway?)  If 
they were set up more for Harry's benefit than to actually guard the 
Stone, they (a) made it *look* like there was something worth 
guarding and (b) reinforced the idea of teamwork to Harry.  

Added to this we have the invisibility cloak – which we know 
Dumbledore sent Harry – and the Mirror of Erised.  Although it's not 
absolutely pivotal to this theory, I think Dumbledore gained 
something else by having Harry learn to use the mirror.  As I said 
above, I think Harry is special.  But there are also disturbing 
similarities between him and young Tom Riddle (as Riddle points out 
in COS).  We found out in GOF that Mr. Ollivander had owled 
Dumbledore about Harry's wand right away, which adds to the 
coincidences.  It's even possible (though speculative) that the 
Sorting Hat told Dumbledore how well Harry could have done in 
Slytherin.  Given all of that, Dumbledore might have a vested 
interest in knowing Harry's deepest Desire.  He might want to re-
assure himself that Harry isn't so ambitious that he's likely to 
become another Voldemort; Harry's desire to know his parents is 
mostly reassuring.  Then the mirror has the added benefit of making 
the Stone seem more protected to Harry (the Brilliant idea).  

Why hide all of this from Harry?  Well, we know that whatever reason 
Voldemort had for coming after Harry, Dumbledore didn't think Harry 
was ready to hear it yet at 11.  If Dumbledore did, in fact, set 
Harry up for this encounter that put Harry's life in considerable 
danger, he's not likely to admit that at this point when he doesn't 
think Harry is able to handle things about his own past.  At this 
point it is probably considered more important for Harry to gain 
experience, magical skills, and some amount of trust in authority 
than for him to know the whole story – though the lines from Book 5 
may mean Dumbledore later reconsiders this.  

Thanks for letting me babble about my little pet theory, and 
apologies again if it has been mentioned before.  Basically it boils 
down to:  Dumbledore had the Sorcerer's Stone destroyed early on 
during Harry's first year because it was too dangerous.  He made a 
fake to keep Voldemort occupied and surrounded it with "obstacles" to 
both emphasize that it was important (to Voldemort) and challenge 
Harry and his friends.  From this Dumbledore gained delaying 
Voldemort's quest for immortality and domination and a clearer view 
on Harry's potential.  

Marie