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

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 151282

Amiable Dorsai:
*(snip)*
> The tragedy of Dumbledore, as I see it, was that he couldn't bring
> himself to be enough of a bastard.

Ceridwen:
I love this line!  I think you're right.  And maybe that's what is 
bothering me.  If you are right, then this is one of those points 
where JKR has set up the stereotypical only to knock it down, and it 
puts me off-balance.  But, this tragedy is most certainly Dumbledore 
not being able to be enough of a bastard, which works well with the 
way I perceived him through books 1-4.

Amiable Dorsai:
*(snipping again)*
> 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.

Ceridwen:
Yes, I think that would have been the logical thing to do.  It would 
certainly have been fair to Harry to let him know what was heading 
his way!  But as I read it, Harry was eleven, and completely 
unfamiliar with his new world.  I assumed that Dumbledore was 
allowing him time to assimilate himself.  But now that you brought it 
up, he did indulge Harry some, giving back a small portion of what he 
had missed by being raised with the Dursleys.  In your perspective, 
then, Dumbledore talking to Harry at the Mirror of Erised was a brief 
attempt to get things back on track, without spoiling the brief joys 
of childhood.

And, yes, things do creep up on all of us when we put things off.  
I'm very good at that, putting things off until the last possible 
minute.  Occasionally this means that I am overstressed, and slightly 
more rare, I miss deadlines and find myself doing a fancy tap-dance 
to straighten things out.  Not as often now, I'm working on the 
procrastination.  But, I can see how Dumbledore might have allowed 
his indulgence to wrongly dictate a false timeline of security.

Amiable Dorsai:
> 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.

Ceridwen:
Yes, this is likely if your reaction to the scene and all that went 
before, is correct.  I can certainly see it this way.  I'll have to 
read things over with this in mind to see if it plays out for me in 
the actual story.  But for now, it sounds logical.  It's just a shame 
that it had to play that way, if it did.  And it brings Dumbledore 
back into a more coherent character without resorting to Puppetmaster!
DD, which is, I think, a bit over the top.

Ceridwen.