GH re-re-revisited

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 115607



Hannah wrote:
> IMO DD knew in advance, or was confident in his guess of, 
> what was going to happen at GH (disregarding any time travel, which 
> just makes everything too complicated).  There may have been an 
> eyewitness too, but he had to have some kind of prior knowledge.  
> Because he dispatched Hagrid to the scene with instructions of where 
> to take Harry *remarkably* fast.  
> 
> Hagrid gets there 'before the muggles start swarming round.'  That 
> has to be fairly soon after an entire house blows up.  I don't see 
> how DD could have found out what had happened, been all shocked 
> about it, decided what was best to do with Harry, and then sent 
> Hagrid off, all in such a short time frame.  
> 
> He also must have been confident that LV had gone.  Because why else 
> would he send Hagrid, who has only rudimentary magical knowledge, 
> unless he *knew* that all Hagrid had to do was rescue the baby, not 
> face the all powerful Dark Lord.
> 
> DD knows much more than he lets on, at least I hope so, 'cos I want 
> answers at some point, and I don't know who else can provide them.  
> I definitely don't believe his protestation of innocence to 
> McGonagall at the start of PS.  DD's 'truth is preferable to lies' 
> comment doesn't mean that he can't or won't lie, or at least bend, 
> amend, omit or conceal the truth.  I don't think he's ESE! but he's 
> definitely not a bearded personification of all things good either.

Carol responds:
I agree that DD knows more than he's telling but not because he knew
exactly what was going to happen or engineered it. I think he
suspected that the Secret Keeper plan would fail (perhaps because he
didn't trust Sirius, whom James had told him would be the SK in place
of DD himself), and he worked with Lily on a contingency plan--a
desperation measure to be used if the Fidelius Charm failed and
Voldemort found them at Godric's Hollow. IMO, he told Lily exactly
what was involved in the "ancient magic," not only her self-sacrifice
but whatever charm and/or incantation would need to be performed on
Harry in advance. He would have known, too, that the charm, in
combination with the self-sacrifice, would not only save Harry and
rebound onto Voldemort but cause some of Voldemort's powers to rebound
onto Harry. He would also have planned to extend the blood protection
through a second charm of his own to protect Harry while he stayed
with Petunia, and he would have written to Petunia *before* Harry
appeared on her doorstep to inform her of this possibility and
persuade her of its necessity.

That kind of planning takes care of most of the problems with the GH
scene, except for the pseudo-problem of the "killing curse" somehow
not being an AK, which I'm not even going to discuss, and the very
real problem of how DD knew what had happened so quickly. IMO, the
simplest explanation is that Snape was already teaching at Hogwarts
and he reported the fading of his Dark Mark to Dumbledore. (There may
have been more to it; some sort of nightmare that woke him or some
sort of pain in the Mark that preceded its fading and woke him up.)
There's also the possibility that Dumbledore suddenly knew *again*
that the Potters were at Godric's Hollow, which would mean that the
Fidelius Charm had been broken. Or both of these things happened
together, and he immediately dispatched Hagrid to the scene, with
explicit instructions not to give baby Harry to Sirius Black or anyone
else. How did he know that Harry was alive? Because of the "ancient
magic" he had taught Lily to perform. At least that makes sense to me.

How Dumbledore persuaded the rest of the WW that that's what happened
is a matter for another post.

Carol