DD and the rat (was:Re: Minerva McGonagall-/Dumbledore)

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 115587


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "carolynwhite2" 
<carolynwhite2 at a...> wrote:

> <snip>

Carolyn:
> So, in his distress, and worry that this is the stupidist plan he'd 
> ever heard of, does he go to the strongest person he could think of 
> to protect him - Dumbledore, and confess what he'd been doing up to 
> now? Or did Dumbledore get wind of the plan, and intercept Peter 
> and run him through the old 'it's our choices' routine? 
> 
> Or neither, and Dumbledore, accepting he could not change the 
> actions of three headstrong people, or give courage to a coward, 
> quietly hoped that his other surmises - the possible effects of 
> sacrificial love, plus Voldie's wand (containing Fawkes' tail 
> feather) not working properly against Harry might save the day?

Or, canonically, does Peter go to Voldemort for whom he's been the 
spy (he doesn't bother to deny it in the Shack, and unless you're now 
positing Sirius as *also* lying about having heard people screaming 
things in Azkaban...well, analysis gets harder and harder when you 
start cheerfully discounting all information given), tell the secret, 
and have Lily and James slaughtered?  Putting Dumbledore *in* on this 
renders DD morally repugnant, shrugging off the deaths of Lily and 
James with a 'Well, I hope this works' or even deliberately 
sacrificing them.  While we've got that ambiguous canon for DD being 
willing to put Harry's life above others, that was more in a sense of 
*neglect* for others--never in a more active sense, as this scenario 
would imply.  I think it's one of DD's moral principles that all life 
is important, and that's coming straight from JKR--the thing she 
finds most repugnant and immoral about Voldie is that he kills early 
and often.

> Carolyn:
> You've said above that you thought it was Sirius's plan, that James 
> and Lily went along with. Whatever, Dumbledore made no effort to 
> clear Sirius' name, or even visit him in prison to hear his side of 
> the story. He'd managed to hush up the Shrieking Shack incident 
> when MWPP were at school, but this time Sirius was an adult, and 
> could take the consequences of his rash, impetuous decision.

This is the same DD who, however, deeply disapproves of the Dementors 
on principle, and has never liked them guarding Azkaban.  This is the 
DD who does not, generally, believe in the kind of 'you're being 
punished for what you deserve' approach to justice.  He gives second 
chances.  It's been hypothesized that DD was not allowed to go to 
Azkaban, so I won't drag that long argument up out of the archives.  
I think that this is, perhaps, another one of the Big Mistakes that 
DD has made--putting two and two together and getting five but 
thinking he has four, and not bothering to examine it more closely.

But are you saying that DD *knew* about the SK switch, got the result 
that he wanted with Vapor!Mort, and then let Sirius rot in jail for 
what he deserved for 'killing Lily and James'?  I think, until proven 
wrong and supplemented with a lot of evidence, having DD know about 
the SK switch screws things up very, very badly, in terms of trying 
to read DD's character, as well as the events in question.

My 'epitome of goodness' doesn't do things like that deliberately.  
But I know that's not provable at present.

-Nora thinks theorizing, both accurate and more wishful, is driven by 
the reading of ambiguity into everything; problem is, not everything 
is ambiguous