Harry: "I WANT THE TRUTH!" (Was: Seeking the truth )--LONG

[cubfanbudwoman]

No: HPFGUIDX 177753

Carol, Jen and Alla did much working getting this thread going and 
prompting me to force out those thoughts which have been tootling 
around in my head for the last 2+ months.  Thanks, guys.  I needed 
that push, because this issue really matters to me. :)

What follows is ridiculously long, and for that I apologize. But 
this one's sort of my personal journey with the book & series, you 
know?  And ya gotta do what ya gotta do sometimes.

 

Something which distressed me tremendously upon the first reading of 
Deathly Hallows was Albus Dumbledore.  Not so much discovering that 
he had had a bit more seemly & checkered past than I'd ever realized 
or guessed... not really that.  But rather, discovering that he was 
more of a puppetmaster than I had ever wanted to believe, and that 
he kept so very much from others, most notably from Snape and from 
*Harry.*  (Yeah, color me naïve.)  

I posted about this issue here and elsewhere, I got some response, I 
felt better.  And yet I still found myself not wholly convinced that 
DD had acted correctly when it came to information dissemination.  I 
kept thinking, "But Harry had a right to KNOW, to know it ALL."  And 
I knew in my mind that Harry had *said* he wanted to know it all.

So I embarked upon read #2.  I started looking for places where 
Harry had expressed this desire, this need, as well as places where 
that intersected with revelations about DD.  I feel like this was a 
fascinating thing for JKR to have included in her final volume, this 
juxtaposition of our discoveries about Albus Dumbledore's failings & 
weaknesses and Harry's very strong desire for *all* the answers -- 
for what I'd call the Whole Truth.  (Yeah, capitalizing that is 
probably cornball, but there you have it.)

What we discover in DH is a DD who has "a thing" about power, as in 
a thing about a desire for power, a desire to be The One who calls 
the shots, who decides what should be done, who determines who 
should get the information – and not just who but when, how and how 
MUCH information.  It really became clear to me that Harry's quest 
for the whole truth really was tripped up very much by this trait of 
DD's, and I really wanted to know:  Who was right?  Who was right 
about just how much of The Truth Harry needed/deserved to know, and 
about when he should know it?  

Harry *claimed* to want to know it all, and once he knew he was 
lacking aspects of it, he wanted to know it right then.  DD believed 
that the Whole Truth was too much for Harry, was simply too much, a 
burden he could not have taken on and still pushed forward.  Who was 
right?  Who was *in* the right?  Was DD correct about what Harry 
could handle?  Was Harry right to pursue the *whole* truth?  Was DD 
simply manifesting, again, his lust for power & control in getting 
to be the one who determined who got what and how much?  IOW, was DD 
right or was he giving into his weakness for power in hanging onto 
the truth he should rightfully have handed over in its entirety?

Carol has talked about Harry's quest for the truth in terms of his 
also being a Seeker.  I admit that, although I am one who can see 
Harry rather as Everyman on his Christian Journey (and, thus, *that* 
kind of a Seeker), I haven't seen this particular final-book 
searching & grasping for the truth in a Christian sense.  I do like 
the parallel to his being a Quidditch Seeker, though.  

I like thinking about Harry in terms of his skill & perseverance as 
a Quidditch Seeker paralleled in this seeking for the Whole Truth 
about Voldemort, the Prophecy, his mission and their destinies – but 
I see it as more of a pragmatic seeking, if that makes sense, rather 
than any kind of Christian seeking of God's will or whatever.  In a 
way, I guess I see Harry's seeking for the whole truth as a personal 
seeking – some might call it even a selfish seeking, a personal 
quest, while others might call it a sort of self-actualizing seeking 
or as a means of more fully understanding what it is he `needs' to 
do in order to make this more his OWN decision to do.

I wanted to look back through DH to find all the places I could 
where references to this quest for truth came in.  Bear with me, if 
you're interested in this.  Probably move on right now if you're 
not. ;)  This will take awhile.

***************************************
"Could DD have let such things happen? ...Harry thought of Godric's 
Hollow, of graves DD had never mentioned there; he thought of 
mysterious objects left without explanation in Dumbledore's will, 
and a resentment swelled in the darkness.  Why hadn't DD told him?  
Why hadn't he explained?  Had DD actually cared about Harry at all? 
Or had Harry been nothing more than a tool to be polished and honed, 
but not trusted, never confided in?" [DH, US hardback, p. 177]
**************************************

Wow.  For me, these are The Big Questions.  Why did DD withhold some 
of these things?  Why hadn't he shared more?  Why did he once tell 
Harry (at the end of OotP) that he needed to and would now tell him 
*everything* and yet, so obviously at this point, ended up telling 
him much less than everything?  Did he keep things from Harry for a 
good reason?  DID he care about Harry?  Was caring the motivation 
for not telling him? Or was being in control, being the one with the 
power, what was motivating his telling and his not telling?  Did he 
TRUST Harry?


*************************************
"It's not just that," Harry said, still avoiding looking at 
her.  "Muriel said stuff about Dumbledore at the wedding.  I want to 
know the truth...."

He told Hermione everything that Muriel had told him.  When he had 
finished, Hermione said, "Of course, I can see why that's upset you, 
Harry--"

"I'm not upset," he lied, "I'd just like to know whether or not it's 
true or--"

"Harry, do you really think you'll get the truth from a malicious 
old woman like Muriel, or from Rita Skeeter?  How can you believe 
them?  You knew Dumbledore!"

"I thought I did," he muttered.

"But you know how much truth there was in everything Rita wrote 
about you!  Doge is right, how can you let these people tarnish your 
memories of DD?"

He looked away, trying not to betray the resentment he felt.  There 
it was again:  Choose what to believe.  He wanted the truth.  Why 
was everybody so determined that he should not get it? [US, p. 185]
**************************************** 

So who's right here?  Usually Hermione is our "voice of reason" when 
Harry's unreasonable or overreacting.  Yet this time it turns out 
there was truth in Muriel's and Rita Skeeter's words.  Is it fair of 
Harry to feel resentment?  Is it fair of him to say everybody's 
determined he should not get the truth?  (I confess I was right with 
Harry on that one.)


***************************************** 
"I don't get it, Harry – do you *like* having this special 
connection or relationship or what—whatever--"

She faltered under the look he gave her as he stood up.

"Like it?" he said quietly? "Would *you* like it?"

"I—no—I'm sorry, Harry, I didn't mean--"

"I hate it, I hate the fact that he can get inside me, that I have 
to watch him when he's most dangerous.  But I'm going to use it."

"Dumbledore--"

"Forget Dumbledore.  This is my choice, nobody else's.  I want to 
know why he's after Gregorovitch."  [US, p. 234]

***************************************** 

Forget Dumbledore.  Is that harsh?  Is that fair?  What *would* DD 
have thought about Harry's saying, "Forget it – I WANT TO KNOW"?  
Would he have been upset, or would he have been pleased?



**************************************** 
Harry's scar was burning now.  He thought that there was so much 
they did not know:  Lupin had been right about magic they had never 
encountered or imagined.  Why hadn't DD explained more?  Had he 
thought that there would be time; that he would live for years, for 
centuries perhaps, like his friend Nicolas Flamel?  If so, he had 
been wrong...." [US, p. 279]
*************************************** 

So why HADN'T DD explained more?  He knew all of Harry's 6th year 
that he (DD) was dying, that his time was almost up, even worked it 
out with Snape to ensure that that end would come with some degree 
of control on his part.  He did use that time to explain and teach 
many things.  But why didn't he explain more?  Why didn't he spend a 
weekend, say, with Harry, tell him every possible thing he could 
think of, knowing he would shortly no longer be there?  Did Harry 
not need or deserve to know?  


*************************************** 
Some inner uncertainty had crashed down inside him; it was exactly 
as he had felt after Ron left.  He had trusted DD, believed him the 
embodiment of goodness and wisdom.  All was ashes:  How much more 
could he lose?  Ron, Dumbledore, the phoenix wand.... [US, p. 360]
************************************** 

Here we see JKR putting a thought into Harry's mind which mirrors, 
quite closely, what she herself once said in an interview about DD:  
that he was the `epitome of goodness.'  So what do we make of the 
fact that Harry is *questioning* that characterization of DD?  Was 
he right to question it?  Or is he simply on the way to finding out 
that, in spite of the questioning, DD really did fit it?  

Was this the crux of why DD did not tell him the Whole Truth -- 
because Harry was already saying, "How much more can I lose?," that 
he would *not* have been able to handle knowing he was also likely 
going to have to lose his own life?  


************************************
"Harry, I'm sorry, but I think the real reason you're so angry is 
that DD never told you any of this himself."

"Maybe I am!" Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his head, 
hardly knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect 
himself from the weight of his own disillusionment.  "Look what he 
asked from me, Hermione!  Risk you life, Harry!  And again!  And 
again!  And don't expect me to explain everything, just trust me 
blindly, trust that I know what I'm doing, trust me even though I 
don't trust you!  Never the whole truth!  Never!"

His voice cracked with the strain....

"He loved you," Hermione whispered.  "I know he loved you."

Harry dropped his arms.

"I don't know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me.  This 
isn't love, the mess he's left me in.  He shared a damn sight more 
of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever 
shared with me."  

...

He closed his eyes at [Hermione's] touch, and hated himself for 
wishing that what she said was true:  that DD had really cared.  
[US, p. 362]
******************************************* 

Is Harry right??  Was what DD asked of him, while simultaneously 
leaving him *without* the whole truth, unfair? Was it something 
different than – something less than – love?  Or is Hermione right?  
Does Harry deserve that Whole Truth?


And now I turn to a portion of the book which Jen recently 
highlighted:  the discovery of the truth about the Hallows.  

****************************************** 
Harry understood and yet did not understand.  His instinct was 
telling him one thing, his brain quite another.  The DD in Harry's 
head smiled, surveying Harry over the tips of his fingers, pressed 
together as if in prayer.

You gave Ron the Deluminator.  You understood him....  You gave him 
a way back....

And you understood Wormtail too....  You knew there was a bit of 
regret there, somewhere....

And if you knew them... What did you know about me, DD?

Am I meant to know, but not to seek?  Did you know how hard I'd find 
that?  Is that why you made it this difficult?  So I'd have time to 
work that out? [p. 484]
********************************************* 

Meant to know and not to seek.  Is this it?  Did DD know how Harry 
would be tempted?  Did he know enough to know Harry needed *time* in 
order to be able to know but not seek?  Was it just luck, chance, 
happenstance?  We don't get answers to Harry's musings
 and yet the 
juxtaposition of those things DD *did* know about Ron & Wormtail
 
are we supposed to assume, as Harry is assuming, that DD did know 
all of this?  Does this get DD off the hook for not telling Harry 
everything?  Is it true that Harry was NOT ready for the Whole Truth 
before?

Still... there's that revelation about Harry having to die that's 
still coming....  And there is more to learn, to cause doubt....

********************************************** 
"I can't leave," said Harry.  "I've got a job--"

"Give it to someone else!" [said Aberforth]

"I can't.  It's got to be me, Dumbledore explained it all--"

"Oh, did he now?  And did he tell you everything, was he honest with 
you?"

Harry wanted with all his heart to say "Yes," but somehow the simple 
word would not rise to his lips.  Aberforth seemed to know what he 
was thinking.

"I knew my brother, Potter.  He learned secrecy at our mother's 
knee.  Secrets and lies, that's how we grew up, and Albus
 he was a 
natural."  

...

Harry kept quiet.  He did not want to express the doubts and 
uncertainties about DD that had riddled him for months now.  He had 
made his choice while he dug Dobby's grave, he had decided to 
continue along the winding, dangerous path indicated for him by 
Albus Dumbledore, to accept that he had not been told everything he 
wanted to know, but simply to trust.  He had no desire to doubt 
again; he did not want to hear anything that would deflect him from 
his purpose....

"Professor DD cared about Harry, very much," said Hermione in a low 
voice.

"Did he now?" said Aberforth.  "Funny thing, how many of the people 
my brother cared about very much ended up in a worse state than if 
he'd left `em well alone."  [pp. 562-3]
********************************************** 

So Harry had made his choice, he didn't want to hear anything to 
bring back those doubts.  He had decided to *accept that he had not 
been told everything he wanted to know, but simply to trust.*  Is 
this the key? Is this what Harry was *meant* to do?  Was it 
the `right answer?'  Or was he supposed to listen to Aberforth, was 
he supposed to continue to challenge for his right to know all?

At the end of Aberforth's stories – about Ariana, about Grindelwald –
 this occurs:

****************************************** 
"How can you be sure, Potter, that my brother wasn't more interested 
in the greater good than in you?  How can you be sure you aren't 
dispensable, just like my little sister?"

A shard of ice seemed to pierce Harry's heart.

"I don't believe it.  DD loved Harry," said Hermione.  [Why is it 
always *Hermione* insisting this??]

"Why didn't he tell him to hide, then?" shot back Aberforth.  "Why 
didn't he say to him, `Take care of yourself, here's how to 
survive'?"

"Because," said Harry before Hermione could answer, "sometimes 
you've *got* to think about more than your own safety!  Sometimes 
you've *got* to think about the greater good!  This is war!"

"You're seventeen, boy!"

"I'm of age, and I'm going to keep fighting even if you've given up!"
...
"I don't say I like it, but it's the truth!"

"No, it isn't," said Harry.  "Your brother knew how to finish You-
Know-Who and passed the knowledge on to me.  I'm going to keep going 
until I succeed—or I die.  Don't think I don't know how this might 
end.  I've known it for years."  [US, pp. 568-9]
******************************************** 

Okay, if Harry is of age, why didn't Albus give him the FULL truth?  
Harry claims to have known for years how this might end... but what 
he doesn't know is that DD believed he knew not just how it *might* 
end in Harry's death but that it *would* end in Harry's death.  So 
why didn't he give that to Harry?  Why didn't he trust him with that?

Even *with* this declaration to Aberforth, Harry's not done with his 
doubts!  Soon, Neville, Seamus & the others want information.  Harry 
is disinclined to tell them.  But suddenly...

********************************************** 
"Dumbledore had warned him against telling anyone but Ron and 
Hermione about the Horcruxes.  Secrets and lies, that's how we grew 
up, and Albus... he was a natural....  Was he turning into DD, 
keeping his secrets clutched to his chest, afraid to trust?  But DD 
had trusted Snape, and where had that led?  To murder at the top of 
the highest tower.... [p. 583]
********************************************** 

... and he decides to NOT be like DD; he decides to NOT keep the 
secret, but to share with the DA members.  Was that the right 
choice?  Was Harry right to characterize DD's secret-keeping as a 
lack of trust?  After all, Harry's still *wrong* about the trust in 
Snape and what it led to!  Is this a way of showing that DD really 
did know what was best -- when it was best to reveal & when to not?

So let us turn to Snape.  (As all things must, ha!)

******************************************
"The Dark Lord will return, and Harry Potter will be in terrible 
danger when he does."

There was a long pause, and slowly Snape regained control of 
himself, mastered his own breathing.  At last he said, "Very well.  
Very well.  But never—never tell, Dumbledore!  This must be between 
us!  Swear it!  I cannot bear
 especially Potter's son
 I want your 
word!"

"My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?"  DD 
sighed, looking down into Snape's ferocious, anguished face.  "If 
you insist..." [p. 679]
******************************************* 

Here DD keeps a secret, hides the truth, because he is asked to, 
because he vows to!  

However, more on Snape....

****************************************** 
"If you don't mind dying," said Snape roughly, "why not let Draco do 
it?"

"That boy's soul is not yet so damaged," said DD.  "I would not have 
it ripped apart on my account."

"And my soul, DD?  Mine?"  [p. 683]
***************************************** 

True, they go on to discuss whether, in fact, an act of mercy will 
actually harm his soul, but this all on the heels of DD's encounter 
with the ring, with the temptation of too much power....  It 
invites, for me anyway, the old questions about how much DD toys 
with being "The One with the Power" and how much he is 
the "embodiment of goodness and wisdom."

And we're still not done with Snape.

***************************************** 
"Information," repeated Snape.  "You trust him... you do not trust 
me."

"It is not a question of trust.  I have, as we both know, limited 
time.  It is essential that I give the boy enough information for 
him to do what he needs to do."

"And why may I not have the same information?"

"I prefer not to put all of my secrets in one basket, particularly 
not a basket that spends so much time dangling on the arm of Lord 
Voldemort."

"Which I do on your orders!"

"And you do it extremely well.  Do not think that I underestimate 
the constant danger in which you place yourself, Severus.  To give 
Voldemort what appears to be valuable information while withholding 
the essentials is a job I would entrust to nobody but you."

"Yet you confide much more in a boy who is incapable of Occlumency, 
whose magic is mediocre, and who has a direct connection into the 
Dark Lord's mind!"
...
"You refuse to tell me everything, yet you expect that small service 
of me!" snarled Snape, and real anger flared in the thin face 
now.  "You take a great deal for granted, Dumbledore!" 
...
"Harry must not know, not until the last moment, not until it is 
necessary, otherwise how could he have the strength to do what must 
be done?"

"But what must he do?"

"That is between Harry and me.  Now listen closely, Severus.  There 
will come a time—after my death--"  [and he tells of a time when 
Voldemort will be keeping Nagini closely by his side]
"...then, I think, it will be safe to tell Harry."

"Tell him what?"

DD took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"Tell him that on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, when 
Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse 
rebounded upon LV, and a fragment of V's soul was blasted apart from 
the whole, and latched itself onto the only living soul left in that 
collapsing building.  Part of LV lives inside Harry... And while 
that fragment of soul, unmissed by V, remains attached to and 
protected by Harry, LV cannot die."
...
"So the boy... the boy must die?" asked Snape quite calmly.

"And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus.  That is essential."

Another long silence.  Then Snape said, "I thought... all these 
years... that we were protecting him for her.  For Lily."

"We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, 
to raise him, to let him try his strength," said DD, his eyes still 
tight shut.  "Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever 
stronger, a parasitic growth:  Sometimes I have thought he suspects 
it himself.  If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that 
when he does set out to meet his death, it will truly mean the end 
of Voldemort."

DD opened his eyes.  Snape looked horrified.

"You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?"

"Don't be shocked, Severus.  How many men and women have you watched 
die?"

"Lately, only those whom I could not save," said Snape.  He stood 
up.  "You have used me."

"Meaning?"

"I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger 
for you.  Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter's son 
safe.  Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for 
slaughter--" [pp. 684-687]
**************************************** 

Here, of course, is the crux of my difficulty with DD and with 
Harry's search for the Whole Truth.

I do notice a certain resemblance between Snape & Harry complaining, 
at the start of this segment. ;)  But seriously, DD says that they 
will need to give Harry ENOUGH information "for him to do what he 
needs to do," *not* that they will need to give him ALL the 
information. In this – as well as in what he does and does not tell 
Snape -- *DD* gets to parse out the goods as HE sees fit.  Is this 
right?  Is this justified?  Is this DD's ongoing struggle with power 
and control?  Or is he right that, else "how could he have the 
strength to do what he needs to do?"  

Was DD using Snape?  Was DD using Harry?  Did he raise Harry like a 
pig for slaughter?  Or was it simply that he KNEW all, that he KNEW 
what had to happen and he was helping it to happen?  Where are we 
coming down, here, on that issue of DD as "the embodiment of 
goodness and wisdom"?

And the biggest question of all, for me:  Is DD *right* that Harry 
would not have had that strength to do what he needs to do?

In my gut, I tend to think that Harry would have had that strength.  
It's true that, when he DID learn it, when he did realize that it 
wasn't just the *chance* of death he faced but a "certainty" of 
death, it *was* hard for him to go on.  His heart pounded in his 
chest.  He was afraid.  And yet, even with little time to take it 
all in, he made that choice, that choice most of us have known he 
WOULD be able to make.  Why
 with all that DD did know (about Harry 
and about others, like Ron & Hermione)... why did he doubt that 
Harry, suspect that with earlier knowledge of the Whole Truth, he 
would be unable to have the strength to do what he needed to do?  

Personally, I doubt that, had Harry found out that Whole Truth – 
that truth that DD suspected Harry would need to die, too – that he 
would have balked, at least in the long run.  I don't think he would 
have!  He might have wrestled with it, long and hard, but would he 
have walked away, run away, gone into hiding, said, "F--- this!  
It's my life and I'm saving it!"?  I don't believe it.  

So why did DD wait?  Why did he keep it from him?  Did Harry have a 
right to it?  Or was DD correct and Harry and I wrong on this one?


************************************* 
"Harry!"  Neville looked suddenly scared.  "Harry, you're not 
thinking of handing yourself over?"

"No," Harry lied easily.  "'Course not... this is something else.  
But I might be out of sight for a while."

...

But he pulled himself together again:  This was crucial, he must be 
like DD, keep a cool head, make sure there were backups, others to 
carry on.

...

He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he 
was there, he wanted her to know where he was going.  He wanted to 
be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home....

But he *was* home.  Hogwarts was the first and best home he had 
known.  He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all 
found home here....

Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand.  
With a huge effort Harry forced himself on.

...

At the same time he thought that he would not be able to go on, and 
knew that he must.  The long game was ended, the Snitch had been 
caught, it was time to leave the air...."
[pp. 696-698]
********************************************** 

Here we are.  The Seeker has caught the Snitch – he has the Whole 
Truth – and he moves on with it in the way he knew that he should 
and must.  He chose the hard choice.  Is this the way his Seeking 
the Truth should have played out?  Was he entitled to have known 
earlier?  Or was this what had to happen?  Was Dumbledore right all 
along, that Harry wouldn't have been able to bear the burden earlier?

Was it, in fact, that DD kept it from Harry because he guessed – 
GUESSED but did not KNOW – that Harry would actually *survive?*  Was 
that why he kept the truth from him?  

Or is it actually the case that Harry never truly did get that Whole 
Truth until *this* moment – in King's Cross—after it was all over?  
When DD said, "You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of 
death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do.  Your 
courage won, your wand overpowered him" [p. 711], was that the key?  
Did DD have to tell Harry 99% of the truth but retain that other 1% 
that he also knew, because Harry *had* to believe that he would die, 
rather than that he *could* die, in order for it all to work?

I wish I knew.

Siriusly Snapey Susan, hoping for some insights from you all!