Back to the cave and Dumbledore's screams

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 137555

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "vmonte" <vmonte at y...> wrote:
> KJ wrote:
> I don't believe that Dumbledore has ever in his life done anything 
> that would make these memories his and it would certainly
> explain why Dumbledore knew beyond a shadow of a doubt where
> Snape's loyalties lay.
 
> vmonte:
> I hope your right, but I was just thinking that Dumbledore's words
> could be JKR's way of giving DD his last confession. Dumbledore
> has been set-up by JKR to be almost Saint-like from the first
> book. But is he? <snipping> We are so busy considering everyone
> else's motives that we never even look into Dumbledore's role in
> all this. Where did he come from, and what is his stake in all
> this? Was he given another chance by someone? Is that why he gives
> everyone else second chances? Was his soul saved? Is part of his
> penance that he has to convert others? Does Dumbledore represent
> St. Paul?

Jen: I'm going to start at the potion and work backward. Thinking 
about the way Voldemort's mind works, what kind of potion would he 
make? One suggestion from Merrylinks I *really* liked, but couldn't 
quite make fit in my own mind, was that Voldemort would make a 
potion that forces a person to see his/her own death. That would be 
LV's idea of the worst nightmare! But DD doesn't fear death and if 
he was seeing his own death, he would have seen clues about the 
experience on the Astronomy Tower. I don't believe that happened.

So back to the potion, if it's not facing death, Voldemort's next 
favorite would be experiencing fear. But not just feeling great 
fear, the person would have to be defenseless, possibly in pain and 
unable to perform any magic.

I do think Dumbledore's episode in the cave, and later on the 
Astonomy Tower, must be the boggart experience JKR mentioned in the 
TLC/Mugglenet interviews:

ES: "What would Dumbledore's boggart be?"

JKR: "I can't answer that either, but for theories you should read 
six again. There you go."

We know from Lupin in POA a boggart will "become whatever each of us 
most fears." So Dumbledore wouldn't be seeing memories so much as 
his greatest fear after drinking the potion.

My guess to his greatest fear is the fact that he's spent his life 
defending and safeguarding many people and creatures in the WW. 
People depend on him, go to him in emergenices, expect he will have 
the right answers. And most times he does. But what a huge burden to 
carry! So many people depending on him, and what if he lets them 
down, makes one of his 'correpsondingly huge mistakes'? One that 
leads to the torture and death of his students, say. 

Basically what we saw on the Astronomy Tower was very similar to 
what Dumbledore experienced in the cave (without the same 
particulars of course). He's weak, defenseless, hears his students 
are dying. He can do nothing to stop the DE's himself. If Fenrir is 
let loose on the student body, or the DE's raid the castle and kill 
the weaker students, there's nothing Dumbledore can do. And it was 
*his* mistake in part that allowed the DE's to get into Hogwarts 
that night. He didn't listen to Harry before they went to the cave, 
didn't suspect Draco of planning anything more than trying to kill 
him. I think we saw his greatest fear being played out there, and we 
saw Dumbledore react as he did in the cave--'don't hurt them, kill 
me instead.'

Jen