Dumbledore Does Lie - On the Tower and Before.

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 159955

---  "sistermagpie" <belviso at ...> wrote:
>
> > Pippin:
> > Thank you for illustrating the sort of pressure that 
> > got Sirius, Hagrid, Barty Jr, and Stan Shunpike thrown
> > in jail regardless of the evidence because Something
> > Must Be Done. ...
> 
> Magpie:
> But who said anything about throwing him in jail?  
> Dumbledore does know that Draco is guilty--it's not
> like at the end he says anything about holding off 
> until he got proof.  He's not looking for proof--
> he's not looking to act on Draco's "crime" in any way
> but to protect him and try to get him on a better path.
> He *does* share Harry's suspicions of Draco--they're 
> actually more than suspicions for him. And Dumbledore's
> never been a particular mouthpiece for needing 
> evidence to know what's going on. 
> 

bboyminn:

Magpie, in general I think you make a lot of good points, 
and while I may not support them down to the last detail,
overal I think they are very reason. However, that said,
I do want to raise a couple of small side points.

We are all taking in by Dumbledore's seeming omniscience
or at least his attempt to make everyone believe he is
omniscient. At the top of the tower Dumbledore speaks 
very casually as if he has always known everything, and
has simply chosen not to act on it. However, I suspect 
that a lot of that is just 'Dumbledore cool'. We don't
actually know that Dumbledore has continued on-going 
knowledge of what Draco was doing. It is very possible
that Dumbledore is just in that very moment pulling the
pieces of the puzzle together and understanding what 
happened. 

Now as I implied, Dumbledore speaks as if he has always
known, but I think that was for Draco's benefit. He is
trying to make Draco think he is, as always, the wise 
all-knowing Dumbledore, and that he is now offerring 
Draco one last chance to change course and save himself.
That I think is Dumbledore's priority, to turn Draco around.
So, he must speak to Draco in a certain way, a way which
may not reflect the true immediate reality.

So, all I am saying is at least consider the possibility
that Dumbledore didn't know everything he claimed to know
and didn't know if for the amount of time that is implied.
I really think Dumbledore is pulling all the pieces 
together on the spot. Yes, he certainly knew Draco was up
to something; something big, but it may not have been that
clear exactly what it was until that very moment. And,
Dumbledore, in conversing with Draco so casually, gets 
Draco to reveal far more details of the plot than Draco
would have ever intended. Which in turn gives Dumbledore
more pieces of the puzzle to put together. 

I also think that knowing that he, Dumbledore, is in grave
peril, he is having his conversation with Draco for 
Harry's benefit. He needs Harry to know details, to carry
these details away from the meeting and relay them to 
other people. Harry now also knows that Dumbledore 
offerred Draco a chance to change course, a second chance,
and Harry saw that Draco was tempted by it, but the 
timing of the arrival of more DE's robbed him of the 
chance to act on it. Yet having seen Draco's reluctance 
to kill Dumbledore, and seen Draco's frustration with 
being a DE, stuck with Harry, and may influence how Harry
reacts when he and Draco confront each other in the 
future. 

So, on the issue of whether Dumbledore should have acted
earlier, I don't think we can take Dumbledore direct and
implied statements at that moment on the top of the tower
as an indication of what he has always known. Again, I 
think he is piecing it together on the spot. Because of
this and the general civil rights issues, plus the point I
made before that you can't help someone who doesn't want
to be helped, I find it hard to condemn Dumbledore for not
acting. 

I really don't think he had as much foundation for acting
as he seems to imply in that moment, and I don't think 
earlier intervention would have been productive. I think
he had to let Draco come to a crossroads, and had to have
Draco face a choice about his future and the path it was
going to take. 

Since I don't see Dumbledore as all-the-time all-knowing
as he tries to make us and Draco believe, I really don't 
see him having enough information to take action against
Draco at an earlier point in the story.

Certainly, I think if Harry had explained to Dumbledore 
what happened to Trelawney, he might have responded 
differently, but I think we also need to understand that
at the moment, Dumbledore is very distracted. He is on the
threshold of a critically important and very dangerous 
mission, he probably didn't see this as the time to be 
distracted by tangental problems like Draco. Consequently,
even if Harry had explained, I suspect, being so narrowly
focused at the moment, Dumbledore would have carried out 
the Horcrux Mission with the intention of dealing with 
Draco later. That is an easy tatical error to make. You 
simply can't be in all places all the time doing all 
things. You have to set priorities, and at the moment,
minus a clear and direct threat, Draco could wait, but 
the Horcrux could not.

I think a lot of these secondary factors come into play, 
and I think it is wrong to base our speculation on our
total knowledge after the fact or on characters total
knowledge after the fact, and use that to determine what
a character should have done before all the after-the-fact
facts became known. 

I think a great deal of Dumbledore's all-knowingness is
bluff. It's just like your mother always knowing when and
how you screwed up when you were a kid. Sometimes she knew
things that were downright spooky, but I think she 
probably knew far less that you imagined, and I think you 
gave away far more than you suspected. Dumbledore is 150
years old, he has been working with kids for many many 
decades, he probably doesn't even need to use Legilimency
to guess what they are up to and when, which to a kid would
make him appear all-knowing, but would fall far short of 
that impression.

Don't know how or if that affects the conversation, but 
there it is.

Steve/bboyminn