Blood on DD face again WAS: Re: Is Snape good or evil?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 149056

> > Pippin:
> > I hate to let the facts get in the way of a good story, much less 
> a good argument. But barring Flints, it's conclusive  that an 
> Unforgivable Curse didn't kill Dumbledore (and thanks, Nora, 
for pointing out the thematic significance of that.) 

The closed eyes and the blood are facts on the ground. 
> Literally.  
 The BANG on the tower has been undermined already, by JKR herself. 
> > <SNIP>

Nora:
It is conclusive to *your* interpretation, which may or may not be 
true.  But to assert it as bald fact is to grossly overstate your 
position.  Unless by Flint you mean "Something which I consider to be 
a Flint, but may actually be the result of my incomplete knowledge of 
the mechanics of JKR's world, which she holds in reserve as do many 
authors, in order to be able to spring things on us."

Pippin:
Um. Are you saying I shouldn't have used the word 'conclusive' 
because a future revelation about the mechanics of the Potterverse
could explain why the blood looked and behaved the way it did?

You're saying no matter how well a theory explains effects, one 
cannot know that the theory is true, since an omnipotent JKR has 
the power to produce the effects in some other way? 

E pur se muove. Besides, with that argument, I could bring
back vampire!Snape. <veg>

Alla:
> Conclusive? Sorry, but who determined with absolute certainty that 
> Dumbledore's body who was just killed with Avada ( that is just my 
> opinion of course) cannot bleed right after the fall. In fact, who 
> determined that such thing never happens in RL? 

Pippin:
Trouble is,  it wasn't right after the fall that Harry found him.

"Harry walked alongside him, feeling the aches and pains in his
face and his legs where the various hexes of the last half hour
had hit him, though in an oddly detached way, as if someone
was suffering near him." --HBP US p 608.

So, half an hour after Dumbledore supposedly was AK'd...

"Harry reached out, straightened the half-moon spectacles upon
the crooked nose, and wiped a trickle of blood from the mouth with
his own sleeve."

I ask you, how could the blood have dried if it's a  trickle?
How could it have dried if Harry wiped it with his sleeve?

It feels really strange to find a non-ambiguous
clue in the text, almost like cheating. But I just don't see any
any ambiguity there.

You could say that she meant a 'dried-up trickle' and that she 
forgot blood already dried in Dumbledore's beard wouldn't
wipe. Or that she forgot blood would dry in half an hour.
But that's Flinty, IMO. 

If  we allow empirical proofs from the text at all, then
Albus was living until just a moment or two before 
Harry found him. 

Or it wasn't real blood, and that's a whole 'nother kettle of newts. 

Not to mention that "as if someone was suffering near him"
reads differently if Dumbledore is in fact dying just as Harry
approaches. Harry did think that Dumbledore was still
alive as he fell, which seems odd if he'd seen DD close his eyes
and prepare for death. And Harry believed that if only he could 
get Snape and bring him to Dumbledore he could reverse
what happened. Ooooh!

Pippin