[HPforGrownups] Re: The Greatest, the Chosen and the Brightest/Dumbledore and other leaders

[Lee Kaiwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 180025

Betsy Hp:

> distasteful conclusion that DH was an unmitigated mess and Dumbledore
> an unbelievable asshole.

Please! Jerk. Idiot. Manupulative, uncaring, ego-centric control freak. 
But there are no assholes in children's literature :-)

bboyminn:

 > Corruption in the Ministry had made sure Harry would be captured
 > if you used Floo or Apparation to escape.

Hmm? OK, Floo I can understand. You need MoM approval to put a 
destination on FlooNet so maybe they have some way of tracking who's 
using it and when (do we learn this in the canon?). But I didn't think 
the MoM could track apparations, let alone intercept them.

But even if the Ministry could track apparations, all they would learn 
was where Harry apparated from and to, and DE's already knew that.

 > Harry's protective enchantment broke, they, the DE's, were
 > very likely to come swooping in. So, the attack was inevitable.

If Harry & Co. had simply apparated out, they would have been attacking 
an empty house, AND had no idea where they'd gone in the process.

bboyminn:

 > Was it the perfect choice, maybe and maybe not, but it was
 > the best choice that Dumbledore could come up with on
 > such short notice. And it must have been fairly good because
 > Harry is alive and victorious

Harry is alive and victorious because JKR contrived the story so that at 
he would be. However, she left a large number of plothole behind in the 
process. I think the whole Seven Harrys plan was one of them, but this 
can largely be attributed to the ad-hoc nature of the magic she 
invented. Magic in the WW certainly strikes me as at times not well 
thought-through, and I think here is a case where JKR had backed herself 
into a corner. She needed an exciting episode, so she wrote one, 
neglecting or forgetting that she had already invented magic that would 
have served equally well or better.

Other (non-magical) solutions might have been to move Harry early 
(perhaps even months early), rather than wait until the last minute when 
they KNEW the house would be besieged. Imagine the DEs' consternation to 
discover the house had been vacant for days or weeks (they disguised 
Ron's absence for weeks from the MoM, after all. Why not Harry's?).

I also haven't heard a good argument for not simply smuggling Harry out 
under his cloak. Further, if the Order could enchant a house well enough 
to keep LV out, why not enchant something with, say, wheels and just 
drive Harry to safety?

Sure, the plan worked, but it very nearly didn't. Harry WAS nearly 
killed, surviving (once again) through blind luck; not BECAUSE of, but 
IN SPITE of, DD's plan.

CJ