Dark Book.

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177128

Carol earlier:
> 
> > Dumbledore could have gone the way of Gellert Grindelwald

Eggplant responded: 
> It could be argued that Gellert Grindelwald was also redeemed in
book 7, he tried to stop Voldemort by lying about the Elder Wand. <snip>

Carol again:

Actually, I agree with you here. I was talking about the younger
Grindelwald, who was tempted to use his power to rule Muggles "for the
greater good." I agree, based on what DD says in "King's Cross" about
hoping and believing that Grindelwald felt remorse, that he had some
sort of redemption in the end. At any rate, however many people he
killed (and it must have been a large number), he had evidently not
made any Horcruxes (another of my predictions gone wrong!), so his
soul didn't end up as a maimed and mutilated baby. Hard to say how
someone like that would spend eternity.

BTW, I rather liked the fearless, toothless old man taunting and
defying Voldemort to the last even though he, too, had been a Dark
wizard and mass murderer (not to mention all the people he had
imprisoned and, presumably, tortured). Still, unlike Voldie, he wasn't
afraid of death, and he knew what the Hallows were, so he'd have known
better than to put part of his soul into a Horcrux. (How he knew who
Voldie was is unclear. Was he allowed to read the newspaper in his cell?) 

And I wonder what went wrong to turn that brilliant, merry-faced boy
into a Dark wizard. It can't be Durmstrang alone. Durmstrang produced
Viktor Krum--and Durmstrang expelled Gellert Grindelwald. He must have
done something really bad, far worse than whatever Mulciber attempted
on Mary Whatshername.

Carol earlier:
> > Not a single Slytherin student fights for Voldemort 
> 
Eggplant:
> Crabbe and Goyle do.

Carol again:
I meant, not a single Slytherin goes into battle to fight on voldie's
side despite Voldie's lie to Lucius. All of them, even the older ones,
were evacuated. Crabbe and Goyle slip out of line and Draco follows
them (IIRC, to make sure that they don't kill or torture Harry).

I don't recall Goyle casting a single spell; it's all Crabbe, who at
first intends to capture Harry and then decides he wants to kill
people, starting with Hermione. But they're not in the battle fighting
on Voldemort's side, which is what McGonagall (mistakenly, IMO)
believes or fears that the Slytherins in general intend to do. 

Carol earlier: 
> > Draco stops Crabbe from killing or Crucioing Harry.

Eggplant:
> Because of Voldemort's orders.

Carol again:
That's the reason he states, true, but Snape used the same reason to
stop carrow from torturing Harry in HBP, and we know now that Snape
was protecting Harry. I don't think Harry shares your view, or he
wouldn't have risked his life to save Draco (who, in turn, saves Goyle
with Ron's reluctant help). I realize that the passage is open to
interpretation, but I see Draco throughout DH as a most reluctant DE
who no longer wants to hurt people. Notice how many times he prevents
Crabbe from hurting Harry. If his goal were to capture Harry and turn
him in to Voldemort, he would simply have Stunned him. (Another reason
he's in the RoR, I think, is to get his wand back, which, of course,
doesn't happen. I wonder if, after it's all over, Harry returns
Draco's wand to him. He doesn't need it, after all.)
> 
Carol earlier:
> > the narrator ceases to be unreliable. No more comments about Snape
as the man Harry hated.
>  
Eggplant:
> I don't believe the narrator was ever unreliable, at one time Harry
did hate Snape as much as he hated Voldemort.
>
Carol again:
Certainly Harry hated Snape, but that doesn't make the narrator
reliable, as I've illustrated repeatedly in earlier posts. Take "He
would never forgive Snape. Never" in OoP or "Snape was going to Crucio
him into insanity" (HBP). Neither statement is true; Harry does
forgive Snape, and it's Carros, not Snape, who's Crucioing Harry
(Snape stops the Crucio long before Harry reaches insanity).

This view of Snape, which is both Harry's and the narrator's because
the narrator generally reflects Harry's pov, continues into DH until
"The Prince's Tale," in which the shift is so subtle that we barely
see it. Harry, the narrator, and the reader all understand Snape at
the same time as they learn the truth that JKR knew the whole time:
Snape is Dumbledore's man, not Voldemort's, protecting Harry because
he loved Harry's mother and killing DD on DD's own orders (which is
not to say that the chapter isn't open to interpretation--of course,
it is).

The point is, once Harry understands and forgives Snape, any further
statements about Snape from either Harry or the narrator reflect JKR's
own view of him. There's no longer a clear distinction between author
and narrator (except that the narrator is still limited to Harry's
pov) because the narrator and Harry see as JKR sees, at least with
regard to Snape (and Draco and the Elder Wand).

Carol: 
> > No more assertions that Dumbledore betrayed Harry.
> 
Eggplant:
> And there can be little doubt that Dumbledore did betray Harry, he
had to for the greater good.

Carol again:
I disagree that he "betrayed" Harry, which is Harry's bitter view as
he prepares to sacrifice himself. He has to put aside that view as he
puts aside revenge and face Voldemort with nothing but love in his
heart. (It's interesting that DD is not one of the loved ones that
Harry calls with the Resurrection Stone; I think he's forgiven DD but
still thinks he's betrayed him at that point. He accepts Snape's view
that Harry is a pig to the slaughter."

However, DD knows about the shared drop of blood, which will not let
Harry die while Voldie lives, and he hopes or believes that the AK
will kill only the soul bit and not Harry himself. When Harry and
Dead!DD meet in King's Cross and Harry learns the truth, he no longer
sees DD as betraying him (though he doesn't deny that he's been
manipulated). What DD apologizes for, and Harry quite willingly
forgives, is not fully trusting Harry and telling him the truth (DH
Am. ed. 713). And later, when he knows the full story, with all its
revelations of DD's human frailty, Harry lloks up at DD and smiles:
[H]e could not help himself. How could he remain angry with Dumbledore
now?" (720).

"Betray" is a strong word. It's what Peter Pettigrew did to his
friends, revealing the Secret that would lead to their deaths (and, as
he and LV thought, to Harry's death, too). DD doesn't betray Harry; he
merely conceals information so that he will willingly sacrifice
himself and destroy the Horcrux through sacrificial love without dying
himself.

Carol earlier:
> > naming his second son for two 
> > flawed but brilliant headmasters 
> 
> Yes, it shows that Harry has forgiven both of them.

Carol:
My point exactly. But he's not forgiving Snape for being a loyal Death
Eater who murdered Dumbledore on LV's orders, which is the view he had
of Snape until he entered the Pensieve in "The Prince's Tale." He's
forgiving the man he misunderstood and mistakenly hated all these
years. He's forgiving the eavesdropping and forgiving or forgetting
the detentions and docked points because those things no longer
matter. What matters is Snape's courage and loyalty to the man who
treated him much as he treated Harry, revealing only as much as
thought needed to be revealed. Snape lied and spied and risked his
life for Dumbledore despite not knowing the full truth; he protected
Harry for Lily's sake. And, to Harry, that makes all the difference.

And he's not forgiving Dumbledore for "betraying" him. He's forgiving
him for not telling him the full truth--and for being a flawed human
being with a weakness for power and foolish enough to think that he
could put on the ring Hallow and bring Ariana back.

Harry has not merely forgiven them, as he seems to have forgiven
Draco. He admires them and honors them by naming his second son after
them. Their virtues outweigh their weaknesses in his mind and they are
both admirable in their different ways. Even if he has the twelve
children that Trelawney predicted, I doubt very much whether any of
them will be named Tom or Peter or Bellatrix.
> 
Carol earlier:
> > We are not supposed to admire James and Sirius, the Gryffindor
bullies. 
> 
Eggplant:
> There may be some truth in that. James must have had some good
qualities because so many people we admire say nice things about him,
and Lilly (a very good person) did marry him; but that's not what we
readers actually see, all his hypothetical good acts seem to happen
off page.

Carol:
Exactly. The schoolboy James is exactly what he was revealed to be in
OoP, and it can't be the so-called Prank that matured him because the
werewolf incident occurred before SWM (as we know because Lily refers
to it in their last conversation as already having happened though she
doesn't know what "toerag" James rescued Severus from).

We can only suppose that being appointed Head Boy and wanting to
impress Lily stopped him from hexing people in the hallways (an
confrontations with Severus occurred out of her sight). And becoming
an Order member and family man would have ended any moonlight
excursions with the werewolf. Still, it would have been nice to see
James heroically fighting Voldie as Voldie himself said he did in GoF
rather than idiotically running to the door without his wand. We get
to see him laughing and making smoke rings with his wand, but somehow
we never get the transformation from bully James to loving father
James. He remains, for me, one of the most unsatisfactorily drawn
characters in the book. 

I can only suppose that it's enough for Harry to know that his father
loved him (and that Lily, whom he knows to be good, came to love James
enough to marry him). Also, Harry saw him come out of the wand in GoF,
so maybe that's the image of his father that remains in his mind. In
the end, James, like Snape and DD, is forgiven his human weaknesses
and has one of Harry's sons named after him. And, most likely, that
son's middle name is Sirius since Sirius Black, like James and DD,
loved Harry but was a seriously flawed human being.

Carol, just responding point by point with no particular main idea to
this post