Help me understand Dumbledore's actions....

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 141681

"staffordbly" wrote:
>
> There's a couple of things that don't add up to me in HBP :
> 
> 1) Why didn't Dumbledore boot Draco from school after poisoning two 
students? 
<snip>
> If, as Dumbledore says, he KNEW what Draco was up to, why allow him 
to get that far?

zgirnius:
I think DD was relying on Snape to ensure that Draco's attempts would 
not get out of hand. And in fact, I would argue that while Snape 
failed to gain Draco's trust, he *did* convince Draco to cease his 
random and dangerous attacks at Sluggie's Christmas party, after the 
cursed necklace nearly killed Katie Bell. (The poison that got Ron 
was probably put in place before this conversation. Draco has hoped 
Sluggie would give it to DD for Christmas.) There were no new 
attempts (except for the ongoing effort to fix the cabinet). And I 
believe DD 100% when he says he believed it was impossible to get DEs 
into the castle. 
DD's motives were first, concern for Draco, including a hope that he 
could be 'turned around'. It is possible also that the Malfoy family 
may have some importance to DD that we do not know about yet. (Do 
Lucius, Narcissa, or her sister Bella know anything about any other 
Horcruxes, for example?) This (completely hypothetical, at this 
point) value of the Malfoys could also help to explain why Snape 
agreed to a UV at Narcissa's request, and why DD appeared ready to 
put the entire family Malfoy in his own version of a witness 
protection program.

> 
> 2) Why did Dumbledore immobile Harry when they raced back to 
Hogwarth's at the end? If 
> he knew it was Draco, as he implies, certainly he and Harry could 
of taken care of 
> him...and even had a fair chance at handling the unknown amount of 
DE's, since Phoenix 
> memebers were on hand...plus Snape would help.

zgirnius:
I think he knew it was *only* Draco. He believed (rightly, IMO) that 
he could handle Draco even wandless (I don't mean wandless magic, I 
mean the power of persuasion and DD's moral force). He was sure of 
his ability to talk Draco out of murder, out of the DEs, and into 
hiding. (It seemed to me he succeeded...and immediately thereafter 
Fenrir and 3 DEs showed up, natch!) But he could *never* do this if 
Harry was there. Can you imagine Harry staying still while Draco 
enters the scene? What made that conversation work was that DD was 
truly defenseless, Draco knew it, and this made him have to face the 
fact that he really did not want to kill DD. Facing Harry and an 
armed DD, he would be certain he would fail, and the realization he 
*wants* that would never come.