[HPforGrownups] Dumbledore's plans in HBP again WAS: Re: Cohesion

[Sherry Gomes]

No: HPFGUIDX 162305

Carol responds:

Dumbledore knew that he, not a student, was Draco's intended victim.
He had a man on the staff who could handle just such emergencies as the
cursed necklace--Snape. (Snape would also have handled the poisoning
incident easily, in contrast to slughorn; it was he, both as a teacher and
as the HBP, wh taught Harry about bezoars in the first
place.) And he was watching Draco through Snape, and after Snape talked to
Draco, Draco made no more "amateurish" attempts that could go astray (it was
too late to stop the mead, which Slughorn would already have bought). As
long as Draco confined his efforts to whatever he was doing in the RoR, no
students were in danger except Draco himself, who would be killed by
voldemort or the DEs if he failed. Dumbledore had every conceivable
protection in place--no owls, no Floo network, no brooms, no Apparition,
students checked going in and out of Hogwarts, the Order in Hogsmeade. Both
the students and their parents knew that these protections were necessary
because Voldemort was back. And yet the parents chose to send their children
there. A few made their children return home after the Katie Bell incident,
but some, such as the Patil twins (or at least Parvati) talked their
children into letting them stay. And Katie's own parents allowed her to
return to the school after some five months in St. Mungo's.




Sherry now:

I'm not going to discuss Snape, since you and I know we completely disagree
about him.  But once a student was hurt, the stakes were raised too high for
Dumbledore's complacent attitude of let everything happen as it will.  In
the real world, it doesn't matter if a student means to shoot the principal
and accidentally gets a fellow student too.  It's still a crime.  Oh well,
we're not going to agree on that one either.  But an objective, outside the
story, look at Dumbledore's actions does not make him the epitome of
goodness and wisdom for me.  I can accept his actions as the needs of the
story, but still be thankful no real life children are under his headship.  

Sherry