Characters and Consequences? /What does Dumbledore wanted on the Tower?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 141695

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> If you are right, I don't think JKR made this message clear at all. 
> IF Harry only needed to know that Dursleys were lesser of two Evils. 
> The part of " I knew you would suffer and I knew you were facing ten 
> dark difficult years " ( paraphrase) does not make Dursleys sound 
> like lesser of two Evils to me. 
> Am I making sense? If Dumbledore would have only said that the only 
> reason I left you there was because otherwise you would be dead, 
> then sure, lesser of two Evils it was. But he did not make that 
> clear to me.

Pippin:
What part of "You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but myself realized. 
Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters -- and many of them 
are almost as terrible as he--were still at large, angry, desperate and violent. And I had to 
make my decision too with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was 
gone forever? No. I knew not whether it would be in ten, twenty, or fifty years before he 
returned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure too, knowing him as I have done, 
that he would not rest until he killed you." isn't clear?

In Dumbledore's eyes, the choice was between the Dursleys and a lion's den. Dumbledore 
did not know who else Voldemort might have told about the prophecy. In any case Harry 
has been attacked yearly since he returned to the WW, several times within the walls of 
Hogwarts itself -- he doesn't need to have Dumbledore elaborate on the dangers.

Dumbledore knows that he can't be sure some of his closest and most trusted allies aren't 
secretly Death Eaters -- so even if he keeps Harry with him, Harry won't be safe. Nor did 
he even know, when he left Harry, that he himself could provide a loving home -- he says 
that he never expected to feel drawn  to Harry and regarded it as a danger. So, from that 
standpoint, he would be a hypocrite if he exacted  more of  the Dursleys than he thought 
he could give himself. He asked, he hoped, that they would love Harry. But he knew that 
even if they did, they wouldn't be very good parents. And there was nothing, within the 
scope of his authority, that he could do about that.

I think that Dumbledore, like Gandalf and Galadriel, believes that power without rightful 
authority can never be used for good. Dumbledore makes it very clear to Tom that by 
choosing to attend school and enter the wizarding world he has accepted Dumbledore's 
authority and that of the ministry. Only then does he attempt to change Tom's ways. 

Dumbledore has no rightful authority over the Dursleys, and going through the Muggle 
authorities would not have been a good idea -- the DE's would surely have liked nothing 
better than to see the Dursleys declared unfit parents and Harry taken away from them, 
and we've seen they're not above interfering in Muggle affairs. 

Alla:
> I prefer to see Dumbledore as someone who would not take a risk of 
> destroying the soul of another human being, even at the time of war, 
> even if that human being soul was already hurt before.

Pippin:
But if Dumbledore believed that Snape's curse would fail, would he not want Snape to 
pretend to do it, so as to preserve his cover? Wouldn't that be the same situation that 
Harry faced in the cave, where he fed Dumbledore the potion on Dumbledore's assurance 
that it wouldn't kill him? Doesn't the shared look of hatred and revulsion support that 
interpretation of events?

 Of course it would create problems between Snape and Harry, to say the least. But isn't 
that *exactly* the situation we saw in the Shrieking Shack, where Snape had such a hard 
time believing that Sirius could be innocent and the testimony of so many eyewitnesses 
honestly mistaken? And yet most are adamant that Snape should have given Sirius the 
benefit of the doubt, and at least heard him out. Doesn't Snape deserve as much? Is it only 
Muggles whose eyes can deceive them? If we believe that, what does that say about us?

Pippin