"An old man's mistakes"

[Merry Kinsella]

No: HPFGUIDX 138916

Queen Jennifer wrote:
I know that this topic has been touched on many, many times, but it just seems that JKR was preparing us all through HBP for what Snape did.  Not that any of us expected for him to kill Dumbledore, mind you, but for the fact that Dumbledore could have been mistaken about him.  He made several comments about, "an old man's mistakes.......", but you thought he was always just referring to Harry.  He always said he had no question as to where Snape's loyalties lie, but never said why.  I could be way off on this idea, but I was just wondering.....


Merry:
I feel "an old man's mistakes" was a red herring for both Harry and the reader.
 
As with most red herrings in HP, this one is true about certain things we've seen in the books - it's just not true of the main thing.
 
I don't believe JKR gave away Snape's whole raison d'etre in Chapter 2 at all.  Nothing close.
 
I think Dumbledore's mistakes were, in Book 5, the whole thing he did about keeping distant from Harry, not telling him everything that was going on, because he wanted to protect him.  This strategy upset Harry more than it was worth.  Or so I concluded.  That's one old man's mistake.  I think Dumbledore even called it that.
 
In Book 6, it was opening the gates of Hogwarts to Tom Riddle.
 
Doing that gave Harry reason to believe Dumbledore had bollixed it again where Snape is concerned - and led us on to believe it too.
 
I just don't think this great wizard is that stupid.  
 
I believe Dumbledore has an ironclad reason to trust Snape, and I never believed him so much as when he told Harry that Harry should consider maybe Dumbledore understands the whole Snape thing better than HARRY, and maybe Harry should shut it when he bleats that Dumbledore doesn't "understand" the import of what Harry tells him.

Merry Kinsella