Depth? Things to take on their face value (Was: Sirius' loyalty)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 139929

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:

<snip>

> Now, unless I missed something ESE!Lupin hasn't confessed
> as yet to any of his real crimes, so he hasn't expressed genuine
> remorse. He hasn't shown much capacity for turning over new
> leaves, either. Dumbledore's principles are not tested by
> this example, because Lupin never gave him a chance to 
> apply them.

Hmmm, let's see.  Being as most of ESE!Lupin's 'real' crimes have 
received little to no actual mention in canon or require very oblique 
readings to come into existence, that's not shocking. :)  But IIRC, 
Lupin's actions in the Shack are considered a major screw up, no?  
Dumbledore seems to have fully accepted Lupin back into the fold 
after those, bringing him up at the end of GoF as a place for Sirius 
to go.  I suppose you can argue that thus Lupin is never in a 
situation for real trust yadda yadda or real remorse, but we're all 
building cloudcastles in the area of DD and Lupin.

> Thirdly, of course in either scenario Dumbledore is fallible. 
> But Nora argued herself that we are to take his major ethical 
> pronouncements at face value. If so, he should be fallible
> because he fails to apply them, not  because the principles 
> themselves are faulty.  And Dumbledore shouldn't be failing to 
> apply them in glaringly obvious ways. 

But there is no logically necessary connection here between "DD is 
right to hold his principles" and "DD's trust in Snape is going to be 
borne out".  DD may well be ethically correct to hand out second 
chances, but the failure of one instance of this action (Snape, in 
this construction) does not invalidate the principle itself.  It 
would just invalidate your preferred illustration of this principle.  
It's the same argument as teaching the kiddies good moral lessons, at 
root. :)

> Dumbledore can make a mistake or two, just as textbooks do.  But 
> however huge they are once their consequences have multiplied, they 
> should not be so obvious in the beginning that a gormless teenager 
> could spot them in embryo. 

Oh, I don't know.  I think there's an increasing and increasingly 
interesting thematic thread with Dumbledore, and it's connected to 
the kinds of mistakes that he makes.

Dumbledore makes mistakes because he is isolated, and because he does 
not fully comprehend what actions can mean to specific people.  
Dumbledore can keep on Snape and allow him to teach as he does 
because the kids need to learn to deal with it, but DD isn't in the 
inferior spot in the power relationship.  I think he's chronically 
underestimated Harry's feelings and those of others, consequently.  
Easy to brush that off when you're in the top slot and looking at the 
big picture.

I also wonder about Dumbledore's assumption of the right to judgement 
and forgiveness with Draco, where DD seems to take that right and 
power onto himself for Katie and Ron.  In loco parentis maybe, but 
it's actually a little troublesome for me.

Dumbledore, thinking on the scale and thinking with the aspects that 
he does, may well have bought a (genuine or not) repentance story, 
but overlooked or chose to consider lesser the character and 
personality aspects which Harry pegged onto quickly, with their 
exercise upon him.  This does fit in with her comments about how 
aware children are about these things:

"I think children are very aware and we are kidding ourselves if we 
don't think that they are, that teachers do sometimes abuse their 
power and this particular teacher does abuse his power."

I grant you that it's indeed a skip and a leap from abuse of power 
quickly discerned by Our Hero to scumsucking murderous traitor, but 
it's not like the latter hasn't been potentially foreshadowed.  A 
small initial mistake, growing and mutating over the course of the 
books, hitting specifically at Dumbledore's blind spots?  One route 
in a garden of forking paths.

> What we don't know, of course, is how Dumbledore determined
> that Snape's remorse was genuine, or  whether he ever 
> treated Lupin's breach of trust in not informing him about Sirius 
> with  the, er, seriousness that it deserved.

Maybe not much was made of it because Dumbledore didn't consider it 
as the deathly grave event that you do? :)  Open questions, of 
course.  Genuinely remorseful Snape 16 or whatever years ago still 
doesn't invalidate the possibility that Snape turned on Dumbledore 
for whatever reason.  That would be genuinely interesting--we're all 
obsessed with the past as key to the present, when the action could 
hinge completely upon the present.

-Nora yawns and stretches and tries to wake up