Omniscient Dumbledore (Was Re: Snape's AK Failed!!!, and DADA responses)

[juli17 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 134957

 

Julie wrote:

> DD pretty much does what will help him achieve  his goals,
> period, thus he put Slughorn and more particularly  Snape
> *exactly* where he wanted them both, IMO.

Now  Janeway:
I'm curious to know why so many folks seem to believe in an  all-
knowing, all-powerful Dumbledore (or nearly so), when there's soooo  
much canon pointing to his mistakes. It hardly seems necessary to  
reiterate what they are, as most of them form the plots of the 
previous  books: LV!Quirrel, TR!Ginny, Spy!Pettigrew and Innocent!
Sirius,  Polyjuice!Barty, and the big reveal of OOP that DD blames 
himself for Sirius  death because he didn't trust Harry with the 
truth about the prophecy. You  have to do some pretty hard theorizing 
to explain away all of these mistakes  (not that I haven't tried!!). 
So it surprises me that many people seem to  base their belief in 
Good!Snape wholly or partly on their belief that DD  could never make 
a mistake like that.

What's the evidence for an  all-but-omniscient Dumbledore? 

(BTW, I don't mean to suggest that Julie  thinks that DD is 
omniscient, or that she thinks DD could never have made a  mistake 
about Snape. Her post was just a trigger in my mind for this more  
general question.)
 
Julie now:
Actually I don't believe in omniscient Dumbledore, and from the
posts I've read there aren't many people on this list who do. 
We know that Dumbledore has made mistakes, and he has
no problem admitting them. The distinction may come down 
to the magnitude of mistakes, and having misjudged Severus 
throughout 16+ years of constant contact with him would be 
a mistake of enormous magnitude and consequence. And
when we consider Dumbledore's abilities--Occlumency,
Legilimency, and probably every other -mency known to
the WW--it seems doubly absurd that he couldn't have seen
through Snape, as he quickly saw through Tom Riddle. 
 
I'd also add that some of the mistakes you list above, like
TR!Ginny and Spy!Pettigrew and Innocent!Snape, weren't
exactly mistakes. Dumbledore lacked the knowledge and
the close contact to recognize these situations for what
they were. He has had an enormous amount of close 
contact and probably more knowledge than he'd like when
it comes to Severus Snape. 
 
So while I agree that Dumbledore isn't omniscient, I do think
he is a powerful wizard and fairly astute when it comes to 
judging character. I think he's made mistakes, misjudged 
situations and sometimes people, but the one mistake I
don't think he made was in trusting Severus Snape. 


Julie  again:
> 
> > And it's not like Dumbledore has hired teachers  with the most 
> competence, especially in DADA, given that he let that  dimwit
> Lockheart teach DADA one year. And Quirrell didn't seem  all
> that great either (certainly Umbridge wasn't though DD had 
>  nothing to do with that).

Janeway again:
Julie, first thanks for  reading and replying thoughtfully to my 
excessively long post! Second,  aren't you trying to have it both 
ways here? DD does just what will help him  achieve his goals, but he 
sometimes hires incompetent teachers? I guess one  could argue that 
hiring incompetent teachers *did* help him achieve his  goals in 
these particular cases, or that the incompetent teachers at least  
didn't *prevent* him from achieving his goals. I think it makes more  
sense to recognize that DD has the normal limitations of a 
headmaster in  finding good teachers and sometimes has to make  
compromises.

JMO,
Janeway
 
Julie now:
I do agree DD has limitations as headmaster, in not only can
he not spend a lot of time with his prospective teacher, but 
because there is often a lack of qualified teachers to choose
from. DD said that in CoS, basically admitting he brought
Lockhart to Hogwarts because there was no one else qualified
for the position. I do think, though, that DD became quickly
aware that Lockhart's qualifications on paper were very misleading.
 
But I also think that there are some matters fairly inconsequential
to DD's goals, and who was teaching DADA was one of them.
As long as the teacher had the qualifications and wasn't 
obviously a danger to the students, there were other matters 
of much greater importance. Up until Year 6 at least, when 
Snape got the position, perhaps in part to teach Harry the
nonverbal spells. 
 
Julie


 


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