Dumbledore and the Dementors WAS: Lupin visiting Sirius in Azkaban

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 112848

Bookworm wrote:
> Way back in February (msg 91517) I said:
> << Personally, I think Dumbledore knew about the change in Secret-
> Keepers. He never said Sirius Black was or wasn't. His comment was 
> that he had given evidence to that effect. What evidence? To whom? 
> When? Dumbledore may not lie, but he doesn't always tell the whole 
> truth.>>
> 
> I will add to that: he knows *much* more than he lets on. How did he 
> know Harry was visiting the Mirror of Erised? Or what Ron saw in 
> it?  Somehow, Dumbledore just knows things.  It won't surprise me
> at all that the switch in Secret-Keepers is one of those things.
> 
> If Dumbledore knew that Sirius was not the S-K and knows the details 
> of what happened the Halloween night, visiting Sirius in prison 
> might have revealed information to the DEs. It would definitely 
> have caused speculation about why Dumbledore would visit a known 
> murderer. (No, I don't know *what* information. I'm
> speculating and am sure JKR will be keeping the details of that 
> night to herself until book 7.)

Carol:
*If* Dumbledore knew that Sirius was not the Secret Keeper, then his
testimony to the contrary, which led directly to Sirius's
twelve-year-imprisonment, is morally reprehensible--unless, possibly,
Dumbledore thought Sirius guilty of Peter's murder and that of twelve
Muggles. And even then, Peter would not have been an innocent victim.
But if DD knew as much as you suggest, he would not have thought any
such thing; he would have known that Scabbers was Peter and that he
had escaped to live for twelve years with the Weasleys as a child's
pet. But DD says that he did *not* know that Peter, Sirius, and James
were animagi. His words and actions throughout PoA suggest that he's
telling the truth. Why allow the student body, and particularly Harry,
to be endangered by Dementors when all he needed to do was force
Peter/Scabbers to transform into his human self, proving Sirius
innocent of that murder, and then bring in Fudge (as he did with
Crouch!Moody) to see the transformation and hear the testimony, using
veritaserum if necessary?

I can't reconcile the idea of Dumbledore knowing Sirius's innocence on
either count with Dumbledore's behavior in PoA, and arguments based on
speculation about what he *seems* to know simply are not convincing.

It makes no sense to me that Dumbledore as Chief Warlock and Supreme
Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards (SS/Ps Am. ed.,
p. 51) could not have found a way to question Sirius before he was
sentenced to Azkaban if he had any doubts whatever regarding his
inocence or overrule the decision to use the abhorred Dementor guards
at Hogwarts if he had not seen them as necessary protection against
Harry's would-be murderer. And a conniving Dumbledore who allows an
innocent man to spend twelve years in prison does not fit JKR's
expressed view of Dumbledore as "the epitome of goodness."

I do agree that he doesn't always tell the full truth and that he
knows a great deal, but he doesn't know *everything* and he is capable
of error, as he himself admits in OoP. I think his *apparent*
omniscience is the wisdom of age and experience, natural astuteness
(both logical and intuitive), and power as a wizard, combined with a
network of spies that includes both portraits and people. (As an
example of such non-omniscient wisdom, I think he feared that the
Fidelius charm would fail and took additional precautions by
instructing Lily in "ancient magic" as a fallback measure.) But he's
not omniscient or omnipotent. He's human and capable of error, and in
this case, IMO, he was wrong about Sirius. That is much easier for me
to accept and much more in keeping with what JKR has revealed about
Dumbledore than the unprovable assumption that he "must" have known
about the change in Secret Keepers and allowed Sirius to suffer
because it served his own ends. A major theme of the book is that the
end does *not* justify the means, and Dumbledore is the chief exemplar
of that philosophy.

Carol