I HAD A DREAM OR HOW I REALIZED THAT I MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG./ PART 2 sort of

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 167059

Alla (April Fooling): 
> > This is a sad day for me, people. I have to go and absorb the 
> > Dumbledore who could ask Snape to do that. Bye.
> > 
> > Alla, shrieking in the Shack.
> > Alla:

Pippin:
Well, I have to admit I took Alla's post seriously. If I had not been busy
preparing a Seder dinner following a weeklong family emergency, I would
have embarrassed myself handsomely. :)

But as it is, I think the joke's on you, Alla, because your comment above
started me thinking about what *I* would expect Dumbledore to do if
he ever supposed, even remotely, that he might have to order Snape to kill
him. He would have prepared Snape, and that would be why Snape
also shows no surprise. But he also would have prepared Harry.

Dumbledore had ample opportunities, most prominently
when he was having his chat about ways and means with Draco. If he
had thought it might ever be acceptable to take one innocent life 
in order to save another, that would have been the
time to mention it. But he never does.

What Dumbledore does emphasize, though, is that if Draco were
a killer he would have acted immediately, as soon as he saw that 
Dumbledore was defenseless. That makes it very strange that
SupposedKiller!Snape did not do so. He took in the situation, was told 
that the boy doesn't seem able, he pushed Malfoy out of the way --
and *then*, it seems,  he hesitated, long enough to gaze at 
Dumbledore, long enough for Harry to register with shock that 
Dumbledore was pleading. 

It's easy to understand why DDM!Snape hesitated -- he was waiting
first for orders, orders which he received but then hesitated to obey.
But why should OFH! or ESE! Snape hesitate at all ? If he has already 
decided that he will kill Dumbledore, and that he must do so to
survive, what on earth would he be he waiting for?

Enquiring minds want to know.

But what was Dumbledore's command?

Hitherto, I've been open to the idea that Dumbledore might
have ordered Snape to kill him, though I never liked it and I didn't
think it fit with the evidence that shows Dumbledore survived his
fall. But now I've got to rule it out. There may have been a ruse on the 
tower, but I don't think there can have been a killing. Harry wasn't
prepared for it, and that to me means that Dumbledore never
envisioned a scenario where a loyal Snape would have to kill him.

However, Dumbledore's lessons, all of them, are exercises in the art of 
craftiness and deception, and not only on the part of the baddies. 
Dumbledore makes it clear that, like parseltongue (and isn't it 
interesting that to speak with a forked tongue means to practice
deception), craftiness and deception are also used by the great
and good. I think Dumbledore made it obvious that both  he and
Snape would be perpetrating deceptions in order  to fool the enemy, 
and that they might not have an opportunity to take Harry into their 
confidence before doing so. 


The text itself does not give us any justification for thinking that
Dumbledore would ask to be killed. Characters do ask to be killed, but
only when they are in intolerable pain, or when they think it would
somehow appease the killer, who would then not seek another deaths. 
But neither of those circumstances apply on the tower.

While thinking about the circumstances in which characters plead
to be killed, I wondered once again about Lily.  She pleads as if her death 
would appease Voldemort -- as if he were  attacking to slake his
bloodlust or to take revenge on the Potters for defying him. In
the Shrieking Shack, Sirius imputes a similar motive to Voldemort;
he says that no one will dare to accuse Peter of treachery to the
Dark Lord if he delivers up the "last of the Potters." In other 
words, it doesn't sound as if either of them knew about the Prophecy.

I'd been certain that Dumbledore *must* have told James and Lily.
But now I wonder. Lily's plea "Take me instead " makes no sense if she
knows that Voldemort considers Harry an enemy in his own right.
Either she was so distraught that she made no sense, which would
undermine the idea that her choice was  powerful because she 
undertook it knowingly, or she was unaware of the prophecy.

That reinforces the idea that Sirius, who didn't seem to know about the
prophecy in PoA, later learned of it from Lupin, and that Lupin 
could not have learned  about it from James -- or from Dumbledore.


I think  that although JKR does want us to think about whether it's ever 
right to take one life to save another, she's already telegraphed her 
position by having the evil Narcissa be the first to think Dumbledore must 
die in order to save Draco. I think in Book Seven this may be the moral error
which led the real villain to the Dark Side -- a belief that it would be
justified to take other lives in order to save those who are dearest to him. 

This isn't an evil belief, exactly...
even Dumbledore couldn't help valuing Harry's life and happiness
more than those of innocent strangers. I think JKR shows us that 
this is a normal moral instinct, and without those instincts we
would have no more reason to pursue goodness than Voldemort
does. 

But I think JKR's thesis is that moral instincts are not 
enough. The world we have created for ourselves, like that
which JKR has created for her characters, is too complex to be
navigated by instinct alone. At some point we have to step beyond
instinct and act, consciously and counter-intuitively, for the 
common good, doing what is right instead of what is easy, or
we will end up destroying the lives that we hoped to save.

Pippin