Dumbledore's pleading/What Horcruxes Dumbledore and Harry destroyed?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 141495

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at y...> 
wrote:

> 
> Just send Harry away, especially since DD specifically made Harry 
> promise to leave him  if he says so, and Dumbledore can die in peace.
> Why go to Tower in the first place, if Dumbledore is planning to 
> sacrifice himself?

Pippin:
Because the purpose of the sacrifice, IMO, was to save Draco and to confirm
to Voldemort that Snape was not Dumbledore's man. Merely dying would
leave Draco thinking that he was an incompetent murderer rather
than a reluctant one,  and Voldemort thinking that Snape had managed to 
slither aside once again. 

Destroying the horcruxes will not bring Harry any nearer to being
able to defeat Voldemort in combat -- he will still be an inferior duellist,
crippled by his inability to close his mind. 

His only hope is a secret weapon, and that weapon, IMO, is Severus Snape, 
a weapon so secret that Harry himself has no idea what it is, just as he
had no idea that the wands would lock or that Voldemort's attempt to
possess him would fail.

Alla:
> I still think though that Dumbledore was talking to Draco as someone 
> who intended to be in charge of hiding him and his family if needed, 
> NOT as someone who intended to drop dead the minutes after.

Pippin:
Oh, that would inspire loads of confidence in Draco -- "It happens I
am going to be dropping dead in a few moments Draco, but my friends
in the Order will be sure you had nothing to do with it and will be happy
to help you and your mum go into hiding." Right. All the same, Dumbledore
doesn't say *he* can protect Draco. He says that he can *help* him (true)
and that he can send members of the Order to Draco's mother that night
(also true, since Harry is there to relay the order), but he says 
that *we* can hide Draco and *we* can protect Draco's father too. 

Dumbledore died with a contented look on his face, so he must have got 
his request. I refuse to believe that he spent his dying breath saying 
something that wasn't important.  When a major character 
falls dead with a cryptic comment on his lips, the reader is entitled to an 
explanation, whether the comment is "rosebud" or "Severus, please." 
Neither the most obvious answer (if so, then why be cryptic at all?)
nor a lack of explanation will do. If JKR made him sound weak merely
to make his death more pathetic, it would be a betrayal, IMO, 
far more grievous than any treachery in her books.

Pippin
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men" -- Charles DeGaulle