Some Dumbledore ranting

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 179221

> Alla:
> I am talking of you know, telling Snape that Harry should die, just 
> like that.
> 
> Do I want to believe that Dumbledore knew that Harry would not die? 
> Sure. Am I sure? Not at all.
> 
> Yes, I say this is destroying the life of innocent for greater good.

zgirnius:
Who put the soul bit into Harry? Dumbledore is just the guy who 
discovered this unfortunate occurrence, and had to figure out what to 
do about it. The situation as of GH was as follows:

-Dumbledore knows Voldemort is not dead and will be coming back. His 
insistence on protecting Harry, both by placing him with the 
Dursleys, and by getting Snape to commit to the task, suggest it in 
case you will not take the man at his word.
-Dumbledore knows this cannot be prevented while Harry lives, becuase 
Harry's soul bit is anchoring Voldemort to life.
-Dumbledore knows that when Voldemort comes back, he will again seek 
to kill Harry (OK, let's call this assumes/supposes rather than 
knows, but it is what I think any reasonable person familiar with 
Voldemort would think).
-Dumbledore does not know any way short of killing Harry to remove 
the soul bit.

So what should he have done (about the main problem, I mean, not 
Sirius etc.)? He did not decide then and there to kill Harry or have 
him killed by Voldemort or any other person or creature. Instead, he 
placed the boy in a living arrangement designed to do the opposite, 
to protect him from Voldemort.

It does not make sense to suppose that the plan to have Harry 
sacrifice himself to be killed by Voldemort was in place before the 
end of GoF. Why use such an elaborate plan? The death of Nagini at 
the hand of Neville proves that any old killing by any old person 
would do to rid the world of Harry!crux. The reason it had to be 
*Voldemort* and no other in the plan, was because this was the one 
way Dumbledore saw for Harry to survive the deHorcruxing process. Not 
a sure thing, perhaps, but far better than the chances Dumbledore had 
seen for Harry before that time (again, through no fault of 
Dumbledore's, the combined actions of Snape, Lily, and Voldemort made 
this mess possible). This is also the only way Harry can survive at 
all in the long term. Otherwise he would be hunted by Voldemort until 
eventually, he would slip up and be killed.

So it seems to me instead that Dumbledore arranged for Harry to grow 
up safely, and set about educating him, while knowing what his 
eventual fate must be and hoping a better solution would suggest 
itself. One did, in the form of the plan we saw, to exploit the blood 
protection by having Harry allow Voldemoert to kill him. In my 
opinion, Dumbledore would have kept on looking for an even better 
solution than that, except he ran out of time. Between the end of 
OotP and the start of HBP, he made the fatal mistake of exposing 
himself to the Ring's curse, and had to go with the best plan for 
Harry that he had thus far been able to devise.

Alla:
> And yes, to me "guilty till proven innocent" as what I believe DD
> pursued towards Sirius counts as destroying a life.

zgirnius:
What did he pursue towards Sirius? He arranged to protect Harry, and 
didn't do anything for Sirius. This is not the deliberate destruction 
of anything. He did not know Sirius was innocent, he sincerely 
believed the opposite by the time the Muggles and (supposedly) Peter 
were lying dead in the street.

> Alla:
> Oh, oh and further proof of that IMO is that Dumbledore did not 
even 
> **bother** to convince Ministry of Sirius' innocence. I know, I 
> know, needs of the plot.

zgirnius:
This was explained in the books, but you can of course choose not to 
believe the explanation. He did arrange to help Sirius find a place 
to hide in GoF, and did not report him to any authorities, which is 
entirely consistent with a belief in his innocence and inability to 
prove it. Keeping him away from Harry would have just required not 
helping him escape in PoA. The Dementors would have solved this 
alleged 'problem' for him. Or if he preferred Harry less traumatized, 
he could have given the Aurors a tip about a certain black dog living 
in a cave on the outskirts of Hogsmeade.

> Alla:
> Fudge did not seem to need much convincing to me to clear up the 
> dead Sirius' name in OOP.

zgirnius:
Coming face to face with Voldemort seemed reason enough for a change 
of heart, to me.