ChapDisc: DH 18, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 182735

> 
> Alla:
> 
> Okay, this is very nicely said, so you are arguing that DD decided
to  fight only for those who are weaker in different aspects, yes?

Pippin:
Exactly.

> 
> 
> Pippin:
>  It might
> even explain why he was hands-off with the Dursleys. Who was really
> the weaker party? The magical and possibly deathless child or the
> mean-spirited but merely mortal and Muggle Dursleys?
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Child I would say without any doubt IMO. Ariana was also a magical 
> child, yes? And she was attacked by three little muggle creeps and 
> hurt very badly. So I do not know how many times Dursleys could have 
> damage Harry, irrevocably that is IMO. Thanks Dumbledore.

Pippin:
But don't you see that  Harry was surrounded with the magical
protections that Dumbledore failed to give Ariana? And that unlike the
Muggles who attacked Dumbledore's sister,   Petunia was just as
fiercely devoted to keeping Harry alive as Snape was? 

She didn't love Harry -- but she never wanted him dead, and put her
own family at risk to protect him. 

Considering what would have happened to Harry if Voldemort had
realized about the soul bit -- the soul bit Dumbledore only had to
look at baby Harry to suspect -- and I think one can understand why
Dumbledore thought the blood protection would have been worth a much
greater price than Harry had to pay for it. Dumbledore says he was
prepared to find Harry in far worse shape than he actually was when he
returned.

Dumbledore wished the Dursleys would take good care of  Harry -- but
trying to make them do it, even with Dumbledore's manipulative skills,
would have been like trying to trim fingernails with an axe. He's just
too powerful, and they're too weak. Even bouncing wine glasses off
their heads seemed like bullying to a lot of people. 

And Dumbledore would remember what had happened to his father when he
tried to teach some Muggles a lesson.

> 
> Alla:
> 
> See this part I do not get at all. It is not like plan gets to 
> Voldemort by accident. Dumbledore deliberately, I repeat
deliberately  tells Snape to **deliver information**. What does
Dumbledore think Voldemort will do with it if not attack?

Pippin:
Dumbledore thinks Voldemort will send his DE's to intercept Harry, but
they will be foiled by the polyjuice  -- they won't know which one is
the real Harry so it won't be safe to attack any of them. He thinks
that Voldemort ought to have learned from Ollivander that Harry's wand
has absorbed Voldemort's magic and can defend itself from him. The
last thing Voldie should have wanted was to give Harry another
opportunity to outduel him in front of his DE's. 

Alla:
> And heee, you are saying Voldemort would have hunted for information? 
> SURE, but why make it easy on him? Maybe he would have gotten it 
> maybe not, but that would not be because White bearded man or his 
> portrait betrayed the information to Voldemort.
> 

Pippin:
In all canon, only a few people are able to keep Voldemort from
finding out something he wanted to know: Albus Dumbledore, Severus
Snape, and the Trio. Dumbledore knows this, therefore he knows that
any secret  known to someone outside that group is vulnerable. 

It is like Snape outing Lupin, IMO: there was no longer any reasonable
hope of keeping the secret -- not long enough to make a difference. 


> Pippin:
> IMO the "epitome of goodness" remark needs to be considered in
> context. JKR was answering a question about whether writing good
> characters was boring, and her answer applied to the characters she
> created, not good people in general, IMO. Was there a better example
> than Dumbledore of a good character in the books at that time?
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Oh that lovely remark again. Where JKR does says that DD is an 
> epitome of goodness among her characters?

Pippin:
Here's the quote in context:

E: Is there a sense that some people say good characters are boring
and evil characters are always the more interesting. And there's the
famous line about Milton and of course he writes Paradise Lost and God
is a bore and the devil is interesting.

JK: Well, you see, Harry is good. And I personally do not find Harry
boring at all. I mean, he has his faults. Ron and Hermione are both
very good characters but they're
 My voice sounds incredibly loud when
we stop this train. (Laughs)

E: (Laughing) No, it's lovely.

JK: No, I'm not bored by goodness. I'm not bored by goodness.

E: Do you have more fun writing the evil characters? Because Voldemort
[the sinister wizard who killed Harry's parents] is the quintessential
evil character.

JK: Yeah, he's a bad one. Do I have more fun? I loved writing
Dumbledore and Dumbledore is the epitome of goodness. 

Pippin:
See, she's talking about good characters, and how they're interesting
because they have their faults, and how Dumbledore is not boring to
write although he's a typical example of goodness.  It's the
interviewer who compared the good characters to God and the evil
characters to Satan, not JKR. 

Alla"
> I have no problem with her lying in the interviews to protect plot.
I  think she was entitled to. I just wish she did not open her mouth
and  said she never did lie. I find it hard to interpret this remark
as  anything but lie OR if I am generous the biggest joke from her ever.

Pippin:

She said she intended to be devious -- 


"I know exactly what's going to be in five, six and seven. And when
I've finished that, then we can have the full and frank discussion,
but until then, if I give full and frank answers I'm giving away
things about the plot, so I don't want to do that."


But I don't think, except for things like the character who was
supposed to show magic in later life and got cut from the plot, that
she said much that turned out to be untrue or that was
misleading in the sense that no ambiguous reading was possible.

Forex, if you read the secret keeper answer on the web, it says
absolutely nothing that is contradicted by later canon. The status of
the secret remains as it was when the secret keeper dies. That's
*true* --the secret remains known to those who knew it already.

But the language is ambiguous -- *when* the secret keeper dies the
status of the secret remains the same. What happens *after* the secret
keeper dies, ah, that would be telling <g>.


Pippin