Dumbledore the Manipulator WAS :Re: Sirius and Snape parallels again

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 185107

 
> Alla:
> 
> They wanted to try, did they not? They wanted  to try to save their 
> friend and that was not quite real battle, was it not? I would think
 they knew pretty well that Ron was not really dying, or anything? 

Pippin:
Um, how would they know that? They'd already passed Fluffy and the
Devil's Snare, either of which might have killed them. It was pure
luck  that Hermione was able to free herself before the plant could
immobilize her and keep her from using her wand.


> Alla:
> 
> Oh I agree that Dumbledore is not afraid of just ANY scene. However,
 I do think that Dumbledore may just be very afraid of the scene where
 Sirius may threaten to take Harry and go somewhere.

Pippin:
So what? Are Ron, Hermione and Hogwarts going to be safe if Harry runs
away? They won't be -- Voldemort has his own reasons for wanting
Hogwarts in his power, Muggleborns dead and blood traitors punished.
Harry knows that. IMO, Sirius had no more chance of keeping Harry out
of the fight than Harry and Dumbledore had of keeping Sirius out of
it. Harry would flee, as we saw in OOP, only if he were convinced his
friends would be safer because of it -- but it would be manipulation
to make him believe that, because it just isn't true. 

Anyway, I still don't get the scenario where Sirius doesn't want his
godson to share his values. Harry couldn't possibly respect anyone who
was that much of a hypocrite. And neither would I. 

"I believe that people should die to protect their friends, but I
don't want you to do it " -- that's not saying I love you. It's either
saying my values are okay for me but not for you, or else that my
friends were worth dying for but yours aren't. I think Sirius would
have been risking a punch in the nose if he'd tried that one. And he'd
have earned it.

> Alla:
> 
> Hm,  the only reason Harry was able to even **get** to Slughorn in 
> the first place was because Dumbledore took him to Slughorn. The
only  reason why Harry was able to guilt memory out of  drunken
Slughorn  was because Dumbledore molded him into doing something that
he really  really did not want to do – return to teaching.

Pippin:
But Slughorn did want to return to collecting, which he couldn't do
while he was hiding out. Dumbledore brought Harry to him, but it was
Harry who  pointed out that hiding out was costing Slughorn more than
he thought. 

Paradoxically, the drunkenness gave *Harry* courage -- the courage to
admit that he was the Chosen One. Slughorn would have been willing to
cooperate, IMO, if Harry had been willing to tell him that before. He
was practically begging to know. 


> Alla:
> 
> I do not get it. Snape is angry when he learns the truth, but he 
> still sticks with doing what Dumbledore tells him to, I do not see 
> that Snape decides to do it because he feels it is a right thing to 
> do. I am not sure how you figure that Snape just makes this decision.

Pippin:
If he didn't feel it was the right thing to do, his guilt would show
itself. I don't see any signs of that. He has that big guilty moment
in HBP, but we're not told who it's for. So it's probably for
everyone, everyone  he couldn't save, I think. 

Alla:
 How about Dumbledore doing  some brainstorming and trying to figure
out whether Horcrux can be  taken out of alive Harry? How about
Dumbledore involving Harry in it?

Pippin:

Right, DD needs a Manhattan Project -- get all the best minds in
wizarding together and they can make a lot of horcruxes to experiment
with. You do see some ethical problems with that, I hope? 

Anyway, Harry's own intuition told him that the way to destroy a
horcrux is by destroying its container -- that's how he got rid of the
diary. 


Alla:
> But I am absolutely convinced that he knew about Qurrelmort and did 
> not move a finger when three eleven year olds went to the mission 
> that could have resulted in their deaths. Yes, I know I said above 
> that it was not real, but I meant the puzzles part.

Pippin:
Convinced by what? Dumbledore says in OOP that he didn't expect Harry
to go after the Stone, or at any rate to encounter Voldemort so quickly.

"much sooner than I had anticipated, you found yourself face-to-face
with Voldemort." --OOP ch 37 

The facts bear him out, IMO.

 Dumbledore knows that Quirrell has been corrupted. He can also guess
that  Voldemort is nearby and is inhabiting a feeble body which needs
unicorn blood to sustain it. However, there's no reason to suspect
that it's Quirrell, who merely looks pale and unhappy -- not an
unusual state for Voldemort's minions. 

Quirrell is a mediocre wizard who lacks confidence and would not  dare
to challenge the traps on his own, or get very far if he did.
Dumbledore would expect Voldemort to bide his time until he can
ensnare a more powerful wizard to aid him, and that's just what seems
to be happening. 

 Quirrell waits for months after he has found out how to get past
Fluffy, putting Dumbledore further off his guard. At last he's able to
decoy Dumbledore out of the castle, which Dumbledore has probably left
 many times before that night without anything untoward occurring--as
McGonagall says, a great wizard has many demands on his time.  

There was no outward indication that Quirrell was going to make his
move that night. Harry intuited it through the scar connection, which
Dumbledore does not have. There was no reason for Dumbledore to
suspect that Harry had gone after Quirrell until he met Ron and
Hermione in Entrance Hall. 

> Alla:
> 
> Well, we did agree that Dumbledore does not want to manipulate
crowd,  no? I think the answer is that he simply did not have enough
people  on hand whom he could manipulate individually?

Pippin:
Huh? He's the Hogwarts headmaster, he has access to a thousand young
impressionable minds, not to mention their parents, the best wizarding
minds of the day and all the people he meets through his other
offices. There must have been many people as eager to join the Order
as Fred and George were. But they're rejected because they don't
realize what they're getting into, and if they did they wouldn't agree
to it. 

I think Dumbledore picked only people whom he felt would approve if
they understood what he was doing.  That was presumptuous, but in fact
he doesn't leave a trail of people who regret helping him, and that
makes him very different from Riddle. 

Pippin