Dumbledore

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 177350

From: allthecoolnamesgone <allthecoolnamesgone at yahoo.co.uk>
>Dumbledore's past was a big surprise and the revelation of his level 
>of callousness towards Snape and Harry.

Bart:
Actually, Dumbledore's initial callousness towards Snape is out of character for him. As Dumbledore rarely does anything without a reason, it is reasonable to assume that there was a reason behind this, as well. Now, in terms of wizarding power and skill, Snape has shown himself to be way up there, possibly on the same order as Dumbledore and Morty (the fact that Morty thought that he was the first to discover the Room of Requirement, plus the contention that he was a psychopath, also implies that Morty was overconfident; he clearly did not consider Snape to be a potential rival, and I don't think Morty was capable of believing that Snape was a good enough Occlumens to fool him). Yet, Snape had let himself be used as a pawn. In a different time, or in a different house, Snape may well have become what Gildylocks pretended to be (well, without the award winning smile).

I have mentioned before that Snape reminded me, to a certain extent, of the young Ebeneezer Scrooge from A CHRISTMAS CAROL; notably, the memory from DH where Lily finally breaks it off is reminiscent of when Scrooge's fiance breaks off the relationship, realizing that Scrooge would always love gold more than her. But, while Marley arranged for Scrooge to have a chance to turn around before it was too late, it was already too late for Snape. It took endangering Lily for him to see the path he was on, but he was unable to save her. Dumbledore's initial attitude towards Snape was because Snape still had not fully comprehended the enormity of what he had done; in order for Snape's repentance to be complete, he needed that callousness. Note that, once Snape has set on the path to redemption, Dumbledore's attitude towards him turned around. 

As far as Harry goes, I would not call the attitude a callousness. Here is the problem, as I see it. Since Harry was not a regular Horcrux, Dumbledore had hopes that the Mortysoul could be removed from Harry without killing him. But it wasn't until Morty insisted on using Harry's blood in his reincarnation that Dumbledore saw how it could be done (if Dumbledore WAS callous, there would have been no "gleam of triumph" in GOF). Now, it's clear that, when Morty hit him with YAAK, it destroyed the Mortysoul in Harry, and knocked them both out and sent them to the inbetween world that Harry saw as King's Cross (Morty was the weird baby thingy).  Now, for reasons I can guess, but are not at all clear in canon, in order for this thing to work, Harry had to believe that he was sacrificing himself, and Morty had to have no idea of what was going to happen (my best guess, and it's only a guess, is that Harry needed to believe he was going to die in order to fully expose the Mortysoul to the AK). So, even to Snape, Dumbledore had to appear to be a callous manipulator when it came to Harry's death, or Harry wouldn't be convinced. In other words, if Dumbledore had let Harry know he was going to live, paradoxically, Harry would not have lived. 

I wish that JKR had been clearer on this point.

Bart