"Why didn't Dumbledore try to kill Voldemort...?"

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 113773

Harriet wrote:
> JKR says that that is one of the two questions that people should ask 
> but haven't asked.  Well, I feel the reason why people haven't asked 
> it is because the answer is given to us in the Prophecy in Book 5...
> 
> JKR  tells us that only Harry can kill V and D knows it.  I feel that 
> D is stalling when he stands up to V in the MoM, when he tells V that 
> there are things "worse than death".  He can only defend Harry by 
> putting things in the path of V's would-be death curse.  We all know 
> that D cannot kill V.
<snip>

Carol adds:
Of course, there's also the inconvenient fact that LV was possessing
Harry much of the time, so to kill LV he'd have to kill Harry, too, at
that point. I do agree that Dumbledore knows (or believes) that only
Harry can kill Voldemort but he doesn't want Voldemort (who has only
heard part of the Prophecy) to know that. He has to be sure that
Voldemort continues to fear him. (And it's probably true that there
are fates worse than death, including, just possibly, the inability to
die--a nice little lesson for "Tom" to think about if he will, though
he probably won't.) We also see Dumbledore's greatness--he is
demonstrating to both Voldemort and Harry that he can quite easily
defend both himself and Harry without resorting to an AK (aside from
thae fact that the AK wouldn't work, which DD doesn't want Voldemort
to know).

But we seem to be forgetting McGonagall's words about Dumbledore in
SS/PS chapter one: that he has powers he's too noble to use. Even if
he could be sure of killing Voldemort with an Avada Kedavra, he
wouldn't do it, IMO, because it's an evil curse, an Unforgiveable
Curse, and Unforgiveable Curses, as we've seen through Voldemort and
Barty Jr., corrupt the caster. Quite possibly Dumbledore is also
illustrating *mercy* as an example to Harry (who has used it himself
in the case of Wormtail). I won't argue this point since I may be
projecting Gandalf onto Dumbledore, but I do think it's possible.

At any rate, even though Dumbledore's *primary* reason for not killing
Voldemort is that only Harry will (one day) be able to destroy him, I
think his motives are (as usual) more complex than they appear. And I
also think the scene foreshadows a complex final confrontation between
Harry and Voldemort, which will not, IMO, involve an AK or any
Unforgiveable Curse from Harry. That would be too simple, on the one
hand (setting aside the brother wands problem), and it would blur the
line between Good and Evil on the other.

Carol