The Art of Love according to Albus Dumbledore (was:Harry left at the Dursleys)

[iris_ft]

No: HPFGUIDX 118239


Forgive me if I start my message without quoting any former post.
I hope I've read the whole thread correctly.
 Dumbledore is currently paddling in my Pensieve, so I take the 
opportunity to try to clarify my own speculations, with your help if 
you will.
On that point, I can only make suppositions; I'm unable to choose 
which interpretation is the most relevant.


It's true that Dumbledore's position towards Harry seems rather 
contradictory. 
On one hand, we have what he tells him at the end of OotP, that he 
loves him.
On the other hand, we have his decision of leaving Harry, who was at 
the time a helpless and wounded baby, on the doorstep of 4 Privet 
Drive. Doing that, he perfectly knew that Harry would be given a 
very hard time; Minerva Mac Gonagall had warned him.
Dumbledore himself is giving us a hard time, because we can't see 
easily how we could conciliate what looks like a cold, necessary 
decision, and the love he feels towards Harry.
How can you decide to leave an innocent baby with people who are 
going to make him suffer, say it's for his own good, and then, 
fifteen years later, tell him you love him?
Well, it depends on the point of view, but both elements are not 
necessarily incompatible


It's true that at first glance, Dumbledore's decision of leaving 
Harry at the Dursleys, though he knows they are able to make him 
suffer,  seems incompatible with the kid's own interest, even if 
there's that matter of blood protection; and of course, it also 
seems incompatible with the idea of love.
Except if you consider it from an alchemical point of view.
I know what I'm going to write may sound completely contradictory 
with common sense and with the way we consider our duty towards 
children.
But Alchemy has its own logic, and it is logic beyond logic.
If we consider the end of the very first chapter of the series, we 
can see it describes not only the beginning of Harry's adventures, 
but also the beginning of an alchemical process.
We have Albus Dumbledore playing the part of the alchemist. As his 
work needs to be secret, first he puts every light out from Privet 
Drive. And then he waits for the time to start working. He doesn't 
wait alone. He's with a person named Minerva, after the goddess of 
wisdom. In that chapter, Minerva Mac Gonagall portrays on one hand 
the patience of alchemical wisdom: transfigured into a cat, she has 
been able to spend a whole day waiting on a wall. But more 
especially, she represents on the other hand the limits of "common 
wisdom". She appears full of sense; she warns Dumbledore and tells 
him the Dursleys are not precisely the kind of persons a wizard 
would rely on; she criticizes Hagrid's carelessness. 
At the same time, she admits Dumbledore belongs to a dimension she 
doesn't understand plainly, when she says things like "And I don't 
suppose you are going to tell me why you are here, of all places?" 
or when she prefers not to counter Dumbledore's decision 
( "Professor Mc Gonagall opened her mouth, changed her mind, 
swallowed and then said, `Yes- yes, you're right of course.") Thanks 
to her, to her objections, JKR manages to let us understand there's 
something concerning Harry that doesn't necessarily belongs to our 
common logic and wisdom.
Another clue is Dumbledore's watch,  that he checks before telling 
Mac Gonagall he wants to leave Harry alone with the Dursleys, and 
that doesn't work like the other watches. JKR writes "It must have 
made sense to Dumbledore". In other words, what is going to happen 
next doesn't make sense to everyone, even to a wise witch like 
Minerva Mac Gonagall.
Then comes Harry, with his scar on his forehead. He comes from the 
sky, in the hands of a giant. Do you remember what JKR writes when 
she describes Hagrid's hands? She says they are "the size of dustbin 
lids". It's a rather strange image, not particularly flattering. 
Except if you remember that in Alchemy, the Materia Prima, the raw 
material, is described as "vile, despised", and that it has to 
suffer "putrefaction" in order to become the Philosopher's Stone.
The image of Hagrid's hands looking like "dustbin lids" gives the 
impression that the baby they hold is a poor and vile little thing. 
However, the three wizards handle him with care, making us 
understand we mustn't trust his humble aspect.
Here is Harry associated with the Materia Prima, that has 
been "opened" (he's wounded) in order to start its successive 
transfigurations. In that story, Harry first plays the part of the 
Materia Prima. He will be playing it for ten long years, and then he 
will also play the part of the apprentice (when he comes to 
Hogwarts).
Here we can feel tempted with calling Dumbledore a cold manipulator. 
But he is not. He only owns a wisdom that doesn't belong to our 
common sense. He's an alchemist, and his logic is not ours. But it 
doesn't mean he has no moral, and he is ready to do reprehensible 
things because they serve his purpose. 
Do you know the other name of Alchemy? The Art of Love. 
The Alchemist works because he loves the nature and wants to help it 
to improve. And though he has to make his raw material suffer in the 
fire of his melting pot, he loves it, and he acts for the best to 
help it become the Philosopher's Stone. I admit that's something 
difficult to understand, especially when "the raw material" happens 
to be a helpless little child, and not a mineral entity. But that's 
where Dumbledore becomes interesting. He's an alchemist working on a 
human subject. He wishes Harry good luck before leaving him.
Can we call him a coward or a false-hearted alchemist, who let the 
Dursleys do "the dirty job"? They abuse Harry, they make him suffer, 
but Dumbledore doesn't move. Is he indifferent, or as cold as 
Voldemort?
I don't think so. The chapter of OotP called "The lost prophecy" is 
there as an evidence.

That chapter is in my opinion like a mirror reflecting the memory of 
what happens at the beginning of the series. They have Dumbledore's 
tears as a connection. To the tears he manages to hide in the "Boy 
who lived" chapter ("Dumbledore gave a great sniff") respond the 
tears he doesn't manage to control at the end of the "Lost prophecy" 
chapter.
We generally admit that Harry's story is a tragedy. It also applies 
to Dumbledore's.
During the "Lost prophecy" chapter, Dumbledore says he didn't dare 
tell Harry the truth before, because he loved him and he wanted to 
spare him.
I confess that, like Harry, I was upset with Dumbledore when I read 
that chapter. But at the same time, I could feel how lonely that old 
man had been for sixteen years, with a terrible secret he was the 
only one to know. Can you tell a young kid he has to die?  Or do you 
prefer to let him ignore what's coming up? Personally, I don't know 
what I would have done if I had been in his shoes.
How can you view the departure of a child?
How could Dumbledore view the departure of the child he had hold in 
his arms fifteen years before?
Love is something that can hurt, especially when death is lurking 
around.
Dumbledore didn't tell Harry the truth because he wanted to spare 
him psychologically, but also because he wanted to spare himself.

One more time, we need to come back to that very first chapter of 
the series, and to one parameter we tend to neglect: as Minerva Mac 
Gonagall told Dumbledore, the Dursleys were unable to understand 
Harry.
Sometimes I wonder if that incapacity to understand the kid wasn't 
an efficient protection too. 
Or better said: an unexpected magical device.
A protection for both Harry and Dumbledore.
Let's imagine what Harry's life would have been if he had lived 
amongst wizards. They would have been in charge with the kid who had 
defeated the Dark Lord. Harry would have grown up with people 
observing him, trying to understand how he had managed to survive 
the Avada Kedavra, while other people, including his parents, had 
died.
Consider now what Dumbledore tells Mac Gonagall in the very first 
chapter:
"It would be enough to turn any boy's head. Famous before he can 
walk and talk! Famous for something he won't even remember! Can't 
you see how much better off he'll be, growing up away from all that 
until he's ready to take it?" 
These words come to a particular light now we can read OotP. We can 
see plainly that they announce the "Lost Prophecy", and the burden 
Harry has to take as "the one with the power to vanquish the Dark 
Lord". 
At the beginning of PS/SS, Dumbledore already knows what the 
prophecy says. And when he leaves Harry at the Dursleys, it's not 
only to protect his life. It's also to protect him against the 
burden waiting for him. Being "the Boy Who Lived", Harry would have 
been too close to "The One with the Power to Vanquish the Dark 
Lord". Maybe Dumbledore wanted to protect him not only from the Dark 
side, but also from his fate. That's what we can suppose if we trust 
what he tells Harry at the end of OotP. He didn't know how to do it, 
and how to answer the question Harry would probably ask him soon or 
later. 
We can wonder if Dumbledore didn't feel completely helpless with 
that prophecy concerning Harry. 
I know that in a former post, I speculated on the prophecy possibly 
being a part of Dumbledore's operations in order to transfigure the 
Wizard World.
I'm absolutely unable to decide whether that prophecy was made 
independently from Dumbledore's will, or not. 
Whichever option is relevant, there's however something we can 
nearly give for sure, if the old man is sincere: Dumbledore probably 
didn't expect he would love Harry so much, and that his work with 
him would turn out to be so difficult.
We can consider he has been manipulating people (Trelawney, 
Voldemort, Harry, everyone
), controlling the game in order to reach 
his goal.
We can also consider that on the contrary, he has only been acting 
for the best, following events he couldn't control.
Harry is there every time, making things harder than expected.

But Dumbledore knows what it is like to face Harry, because he 
previously faced himself.
Every thing he tells the boy in the "Lost prophecy" chapter, when 
Harry shouts, destroys his office, shows that he probably passed 
through similar sufferings.
"The fact you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."
"What don't I know?"
"Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is 
part of being human-"
"You do care. You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to 
death with the pain of it."
He couldn't know so well if he hadn't suffered himself.
Maybe he's telling us what he felt fifteen years ago.
But you can also notice he remains very quiet while Harry is 
shouting. It's not indifference. Simply, Dumbledore masters his own 
emotions, just like he did with Mac Gonagall fifteen years before. 
He reacts on the "alchemical level", using his own suffering and 
turning it into compassion, in order to give Harry the possibility 
to understand what being human means.
He empathises with Harry, following the alchemical process of 
analogy. He knows Harry's pain, and in that pain, he recognizes 
himself. It could be a definition for love, in its more universal 
and noble dimension.
And he also knows Harry has to bear that pain, to master it alone, 
as he did himself before him. That's also what the master has to 
share with his disciple.
Maybe Dumbledore wasn't there when the Dursleys were abusing Harry. 
But when the boy really needs him, i.e., when he faces plainly for 
the first time the hardest trial, the trial of his burning human 
consciousness, he is with him. He doesn't do Harry's work. But he is 
there to tell him it's possible. That's what a true master has to 
do, before the disciple becomes a master himself.
"I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined", 
Dumbledore says before telling Harry the truth.
 In other words: "I was there before you, I've passed through the 
same trials; and for that reason, I'm always with you, though you 
don't realize."
These are the words of the Alchemist considering his work, his 
disciple; but also of the tragic characters (fictional or not) 
moving along with us since the beginning of human history.


Just the way I see it, of course,

Amicalement,

Iris