Dumbledore and the slaughtered pig, also featuring logic, Snape, and camping

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 175110

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "eggplant107" <eggplant107 at ...> 
wrote:
> 
> If what you say is correct and "Showing Harry a memory
> seems the best way to prove that what Snape is saying is true" then
> why on Earth show him a memory of Snape's, a memory of Dumbledore
> flapping him gums? Why didn't Dumbledore give Snape a bottle
> containing a memory of his own and tell him to give it to Harry when
> the time was right?

va32h:

Fair enough. Why didn't Dumbledore do that, then? Why did Dumbledore 
require Snape to be the bearer of this particular message in the 
first place? It's the most important thing for Harry to know - ever! -
 and it's crucial that he believe the message and follow through on 
it. So Dumbledore gives this job to....the one person Harry actually 
hates *more* than Voldemort?

I'm not asking rhetorically, either - I really don't know! I might 
have thought that Dumbledore wanted to teach Harry (and Snape) a 
lesson about forgiveness instead of vengeance. You know, force them 
to work together the way the camp counselors force the feuding twins 
in "A Parent Trap" to spend the night in the same cabin. (which 
creates an amusing mental picture at least). 

But that doesn't seem to be where JKR is going with Snape, based on 
her post-DH comments. 

And while your argument is certainly logical - when has JKR ever been 
shown to use logic in her plot twists? The whole premise of the 7 
Potters is ridiculous, IMO, because it would have been much more 
logical to simply have Harry put on his invisibility cloak and get in 
the car with the Dursleys, and be dropped off at some secure location 
from which he could Floo or even walk to the Burrow. 

But of course that would be far less interesting than a deadly 
pursuit by a swarm of Death Eaters and a Sudden!Shocking!Death!

That's one of my chief complaints with DH actually - that it's too 
obvious that things are being done for the sake of the book and not 
the sake of the story. Does that make sense?

Take GoF - a common argument has been that Fake!Moody should have 
just made a book or a quill into  portkey and used that to get Harry 
on the first or second day of class. The whole triwizard tournament 
is a contrivance. Which is certainly true *but* -- valid arguments 
can be made that it really is logical for Voldemort to wait all year 
to get his hands on Harry. I won't bother rehashing them, because I'm 
sure we've all read those discussions, yes?

In Deathly Hallows, however, we have many situations that have no 
purpose other than to keep the book moving along, or to give us 
something more interesting to read than "Hermione put up the tent 
again. This time they were on a rainy hillside and oh by the way, 
it's now March."

For example - Hermione accios a bunch of books on Horcruxes. That was 
such a wtf moment for me. JKR needed the trio to know how to destroy 
horcruxes so poof! they get a book all about horcruxes. That struck 
me as a cheap, lazy way to move the book along, and wasn't an 
explicable part of the story. 

Well I seem to have got off track a bit. Summing up: Dumbledore 
expecting Snape to show Harry Snape's own memories (including one 
that features a less-than-flattering speech of Dumbledore's) is no 
less logical than Dumbledore giving Snape the job of telling Harry 
all this in the first place which in turn is no less logical than 
pretty much anything else that happens in Deathly Hallows. 

va32h