Acceptable Abuses?

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 96253

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
> Or maybe he was telling, for once, the simple truth. Privet Drive 
> was the only place where Harry would be safe. It's the bizarre 
> nature of Harry's enemy that keeps us from appreciating the 
> situation Dumbledore was in. One of my own children was born 
> extremely premature, a life-threatening condition  for which the 
> only treatments were isolating, hazardous,  painful and likely to 
> leave emotional scars. 
> 
> The fact that I wasn't going to be the one living in pain or dying 
> peacefully was irrelevant--I still had to make the choice for my 
> child. All anyone can do in such a situation is choose the way 
> you hope someone would choose for you. I think that's what 
> Dumbledore did.
> 

Jen: By his own account, Dumbledore didn't consciously choose to be 
the one to hear the Prophecy that rainy night at the Hogshead, and 
I'm certain there have been points along the way when he wished 
someone else was asked to take on the burden of keeping Harry alive, 
watching Harry in pain, agonizing over Harry's future. That tear in 
OOTP was very telling to me, the tip of the iceberg of all the 
emotion DD's invested over the years, the love he feels for Harry. 

I think Dumbledore was also speaking of his own circumstances, of 
how he came to be Harry's 'guardian' & the difficult choices he has 
had to make when he says "the consequences of our actions are always 
so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is very 
difficult business, indeed."