Dumbledore on the Dursleys in OotP (was:Re: Old, old problem.)

[amiabledorsai]

No: HPFGUIDX 151281

> Betsy Hp:

> > >>Lupinlore:
> > <snip>
> > It has been suggested that she may have been trying to echo       
> > certain cultural tropes having to do with British stereotypes, but 
> > if that is the case those echoes certainly fell on deaf ears as    
> > far as many of us are concerned -- and I do think that is an      
> > example of poor writing, falling in the category of being too     
> > clever for your own good.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Well, if you're not familiar with British culture, then yeah, I 
> guess it can seem a bit foreign.  But a British writer writing her 
> British characters as acting in a British manner doesn't strike me 
> as being "too clever for [her] own good".  It strikes me as JKR 
> writing what she knows.  Which is what writers are supposed to do.

Amiable Dorsai:
Well said!

Betsy Hp: 
> But this does raise a question for me, especially for those who 
> disliked the scene: Did Dumbledore seem out of character here?

Amiable Dorsai:
I liked the scene quite a bit, I thought it showed us a new side of
Dumbledore--one I found quite believable.

Up until this moment, we've seen a Dumbledore who was on top of his
game--even when confronted by Fudge and Umbridge in his ofice, he was
in command of himself and the situation.  In the scene with Harry at
the end of OotP, I think we're seeing something else entirely. we're
seeing a man whose good intentions have just blown up in his face, a
man who is feeling every one of his 150 years.

The tragedy of Dumbledore, as I see it, was that he couldn't bring
himself to be enough of a bastard.

At the end of the first Voldemort War, he was forced to make a
horrible decision--he had to put a baby into a home where he knew that
baby wouldn't be loved, in order to save that baby's life.

It was the right decision, or a right decision, anyway.  It did keep
Harry alive, if not happy.  It did preserve the Prophecy Child for his
 inevitable rematch with Voldemort.  The logical next thing to do
would be to tell Harry his destiny as soon as he hit Hogwarts, to
immediately start training him for his destiny.

That would be the logical thing.  

But then, I think, Dumbledore found that he couldn't do it, couldn't
bring himself to spoil Harry's joy at discovering magic, couldn't
resist allowing Harry a just little bit of a happy childhood, then
just a little bit more, and a little bit more, until suddenly it was
too late--he couldn't even look Harry in the eye without awakening the
Voldemort connection, much less sit him down and tell him what he
needed to know.   

Similarly, once Harry found Sirius, Dumbledore tried to keep him safe
for Harry's sake, rather than do the logical thing, the thing Sirius
wanted to him to do: send him out to battle Voldemort and his Death
Eaters.  

And then, that night at the Department of Mysteries, all Dumbledore's
sins of compassion came home to roost.

I think when he talked to Harry that night, he was exhausted,
emotionally, physically, and morally, and was as sick of keeping
secrets as Harry was of being kept in the dark.  Perhaps, as a result,
he said a little more about Sirius than he should have.

Amiable Dorsai