Albus Dumbledore and the Socks in the Mirror (of Erised)

[msbeadsley]

No: HPFGUIDX 80385

siriuskase wrote:
> What a wonderful post! ....... We can only hope DD survives to 
> enjoy this world and be given socks for Christmas in the last scene.
> Sue B

sbursztynski wrote:
> I agree with Sue, great post.

Thanks.  As a matter of fact, although I really *wasn't* going to say 
anything:  Steve Vander Ark thought so, too, and my little essay 
(lightly edited) is now at the bottom of the Lexicon's Dumbledore 
page.  My head has just about subsided now (unless I've gone right 
off the mark into delusions of grandeur) from the dramatic swelling 
it did over that (got Steve's email last Saturday).

> I'd like to comment on the timing of this.  He would no longer be 
> able to answer Harry's question this way.  At that time, for all he 
> knew, Voldemort wouldn't appear for many years, he had many years 
> to enjoy Harry and prepare him for the future which was still out 
> there somewhere in the distance.  I'd like to think that at some 
> point, Dumbledore's concerns about Voldemort and Harry and the yet 
> to be fulfilled prophecy will be over and someone (Harry?) will 
> give him some socks.

So, as of OoP, what would Dumbledore be seeing in the Mirror?  
Himself sitting companionably with Harry as a middle-aged father, 
surrounded by a passel of young 'uns, ala Arthur Weasley, and so 
obviously happy and healthy that there could be no doubt he won?  I 
don't know how else a world where Voldemort was nothing more than 
history would be represented.  (And if the passel's mother were 
shown, it would certainly solve some of the shippers' questions--but 
wait, the Mirror doesn't show the future...does it? <g>) [That could 
be an argument for the G/H shippers, by the way, that Harry, who 
never knew his family and saw himself in the Mirror surrounded by a 
big one, would choose the wife more likely to be unfazed at the idea 
of that passel.]

And I'd love to see in the "and they all, the ones who were left, 
lived happily ever after" chapter, that Harry and Dumbledore 
celebrate a tradition where Harry gives DD at least one pair of socks 
for Christmas each year.

Sandy, aka "msbeadsley," eyeballing shelf space appropriate for her 
Hugo, Pulitzer, and Nobel prizes...