Snape's Final Straw

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 150908

Jamie:

> I'm throwing this out for discussion as 
> someone said this to me...has anybody 
> considered/discussed whether DD was REALLY 
> DD and not someone else using Polyjuice potion 
> to be him? It's not a theory I subscribe to 
> but it is an interesting idea and would allow 
> JKR to bring him "back to life."

houyhnhnm:

I have considered it.  I think there are some arguments or at least
suggestive pieces of evidence that can be put forth in favor of that
theory.  There are also some problems with it, so I am keeping an open
mind.

What first led me to consider the possibility that it might not be
Dumbledore on the tower was Dumbledore's pleading.  Like for so many
others, for me the idea that DD would plead for his life doesn't even
merit consideration.  My conclusion, again like that of many others,
was that DD had to have been pleading for something else, for Snape to
have the courage and will to sacrifice him for the greater good or for
Snape to keep his promise to look out for Harry.  When you have
eliminated the impossible (DD pleading for his life), whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

But it eventually occurred to me that there was an another possible
explanation for the pleading.  It wasn't Dumbledore.  Someone else who
had been inveigled into posing as Dumbledore, but hadn't been informed
of the extent of the sacrifice that would be required (I can't see DD
going along with that) or someone who had given his informed consent
but got cold feet at the imminent prospect of being cursed off the tower.

A second discrepant behavior was DD's hallucinatory raving in the
cave. I haven't seen an explanation or been able to think of one
myself that is really satisfying. The drinker could experience someone
else's memories contained in the potion, I suppose.  It is also
possible that the potion is a sort of essence of dementor, and that
Dumbledore, who *would* take all upon himself, is tortured by guilt
for the evil deeds that have been done, because he wasn't able to keep
them from happening.  But to whom is he speaking?  And "make it stop"?
 Make what stop?  It sounds like someone being tortured.

Then there is the way Dumbledore takes to the icy sea "with the sudden
agility of a much younger man".   It could be one more example of the
way Dumbledore calls upon his last reserves of strength because he
knows his time is running out.  Or it could really be a younger man.  

The impersonation couldn't have been accomplished with polyjuice
potion, though.  I'm not sure what time Harry and DD left Hogwarts. 
It was "gathering twilight"-9:30-10:00 somewhereabouts?  Harry
encountered Trelawney outside of the RoR 15 minutes before
curfew--whenever that is.  They returned around midnight.  So, they
were gone too long for the effects of polyjuice potion to be
maintained.  "Dumbledore" is not shown to drink anything other than
the green potion in the stone basin. If someone was posing as
Dumbledore it would have to have been by means of some other kind of
magic.

Transfiguration, perhaps.  We have never seen a person transfigured to
appear as another person, but a person has been transfigured into an
animal on one occasion, and an inanimate object (chair) on another.

And that occasion leads directly to Slughorn. ("Dauntless the
slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
came.'"  I can't get it out of my mind)

Slughorn taught Tom Riddle, too.  He would also "know his style". 
(Slughorn, in his own persona, echoes this later.  "I taught him!  I
thought I knew him!")  He is not *much* younger than Dumbledore, but
he is a Slytherin, a  Piscean whale type, IMO.  He might be more at
home in water than on land.  We don't know that Slughorn was ever
tortured by LV but he could have been.  He seems to be very much
afraid of the Dark Order.

And if the comfort-loving, epicurean Horace Slughorn really had been
through the events of that night, drinking the poison, fighting off
inferi, being fake AKed off the highest tower at Hogwart's, exchanging
places with DD on the ground before anyone comes out,  slipping back
inside undetected with a battle raging, transfiguring himself back
into himself, etc., he would definately be "the most shaken, pale and
sweating".

I'm not really trying to sell this.  It's just speculation for fun.  I
feel a little stronger about the possibility that Dumbledore may be
alive, though.  I didn't when I finished HBP, or for several months
thereafter.  I grieved for Dumbledore. I got way past denial.  I got
all the way to acceptance. (It's a little easier when it's not a real
person, even if you *are* bewitched by a story.) Then I left the
Potterverse alone for awhile, and when I came back to it, I started
wondering if DD's death was not a little too convincing.  A Wronski
feint perhaps?  We are supposed to be left with no hope.  We are
supposed to feel the finality of the loss the way Harry feels it.  We
have to come to terms with the reality of Dumbledore's death the way
Harry does.

If Dumbledore *is* still alive at the beginning of book 7, I think we
will see his real death by the end of the book, but it will be a death
that Harry, the WW, and we the readers can accept as suitable for the
greatest wizard of his time.