The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore/ some spoilers for Song for Arbonne

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182758

Alla wrote:
> 
> Quite frankly, I do not care what we are supposed  to think about
Dumbledore, I have my well formed opinion of him and it is what it 
is. <big snip>

Carol responds:

Just a sidenote here. I agree with you that an author's intentions are
less important than the reader's interpretation. Intentions, even when
we know them, are not always successfully carried out. It's what's on
the page and how we interpret it on a careful reading, that matters.
And different careful readings will produce different results.

As for me, I *don't* have a "well-formed opinion" of Dumbledore.
(Snape, yes.) I'm still coming to terms with the revelations in DH but
a little more prone to forgiveness than you are, I think.

Sidenote to Pippin: Do you think that our Muggle-loving Dumbledore
read and was influenced by Plato's "Republic"?

Alla wrote:
> That's what I was hoping Dumbledore will end being shown - yes, 
person who made many tough decisions, but all of those decisions 
being made while caring about people, valuing life, agonizing over 
them. Yeah, right. In much agony he is while telling Snape to inform
Voldemort about the Order, NOT.

Carol responds:
Which brings up a distinction that I don't see being made in this
discussion between (well,, I've tried to make it but to no effect)
between the living Dumbledore of books one through six and parts of
"The Prince's Tale" and the Portrait!Dumbledore of the rest of "The
Prince's Tale." Can the portrait of a dead man agonize over decisions
involving life and death? He's very definitely concerned for Snape to
keep his cover (expressed twice, IIRC) but anxiety for the success of
his plan and for Harry's and snape's safety, both essential to it, is
different from agonizing over the possible deaths of other Order
members (who are, nevertheless, voluntarily risking their lives, with
the exception of Mundungus, who's being coerced by Mad-eye, not by
Portrait!DD).

I'm not trying to excuse Dumbledore from the responsibility to
consider the danger in which he's placing people by having Snape
reveal the date and time of the escape (which I still think that LV
would have found out, anyway). I'm just wondering, for the sake of
this discussion, how much like the real DD the portrait is. I do note,
though, that Portrait!DD and other portraits cry for joy over Harry's
victory, but, still, isn't it a bit much to hold a mere portrait to
human standards of empathy and compassion? Just asking, not arguing.

Alla:
> 
> So  the assumption  is that even if Dumbledore would not tell Snape
to betray the date to Voldemort, he would have found out anyways? I 
cannot make such assumption. 

Carol responds:
You don't think that Mad-eye was right that LV would have had DEs
watching the neighborhood, knowing that the charm was about to break,
just in case the Order decided to break it early? He did, after all,
have a group of two or three DEs watching a house they couldn't see,
12 GP, for signs that Harry or other "Undesirables" might be hiding
there. I think it's a safe assumption, myself.

Alla:
> And not that I find all those situations to be relevant, but out of
curiosity how does it work? Fudge being stupid and not reaching out 
to other races, means that there was just no way to do it? I see it as
Fudge making a wrong choice and not doing it, not that he just could
not do it.

Carol:
First, I'm not agreeing with Pippin that Fudge and the giants was an
equivalent situation. I just want to make an observation. I've always
thought that Fudge *did* send an ambassador to the Giants, an MoM
employee named Walden Macnair, recommended for the job by Fudge's good
friend, Lucius Malfoy. What Fudge didn't know was that his ambassador
wasn't working for him at all: both Malfoy and Macnair were working
for Voldemort. (I don't have any proof for this theory, only the
Fudge/Malfoy and Malfoy/Macnair connections, and the fact of Macnair's
being, like Rookwood before him, both a DE and a Ministry employee.
I've also wondered who the other DE was; Hagrid never tells HRH and
presumably doesn't know.) At any rate, if I'm right, Fudge's mistake
wasn't choosing not to send an embassy to the giants; it was sending
the wrong ambassador.

> Pippin:
> Where does it say Dumbledore doesn't care about Snape's soul? He
says, "You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old
man avoid pain and humiliation" -- in other words, whether allowing a
doomed old man to die with dignity and in the service of the cause for
which he dedicated most of his life would be an act of supreme evil. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Yes, I know what he said. But the thing is when we first heard about
murder splitting the soul, there was no indication that the person
alone knows whether it will be so or not, isn't it?
> 
> I took this as piece of rhetoric, which Dumbledore most likely knew
was a lie. IMO of course.

Carol responds:
Of course, it's a matter of interpretation again, but I agree with
Pippin. Murder splits the soul, but mercy killing which also saves the
soul of a seventeen-year-old boy (more or less--Draco's birthday might
not have occurred yet, but it's days away if it hasn't) is different
from the outright murder that Draco or the DEs would have committed.
Snape's other motivations, which include protecting Harry and helping
DD to defeat Voldemort, also prevent his act from being murder. It's
more a coup de grace since Dumbledore this time around falls into the
category of someone that Snape can't save (between the potion and the
DEs, he's going to die in any case) and having Snape rather than
someone else kill him furthers the cause of the fight against Voldemort.

I agree that it's a terrible burden to place on Snape, but I don't
think that Dumbledore was lying about Snape's soul. I think that
Snape's motivations for honoring DD's request, along with everything
else he did to atone for his earlier role in the deaths of Harry's
parents, ensured his redemption. At least his soul, even if it was
damaged, remained inside his body, where it had some chance of
healing, in contrast to LV's permanently maimed soul. I read Snape as
fully redeemed and happier after death than he ever was in life.

Another thing, too. "King's Cross" shows Dumbledore as healed of the
injury to his hand (the result of his own stupidity and selfish desire
to undo his wrongs to his sister). In "the Forest Again," Sirius Black
appears to be healed of the torments of Azkaban and Remus Lupin
appears to be free of the ravages of lycanthropy. Our glimpse of the
afterlife, "the next great adventure" (even though Harry didn't choose
to "go on") seems to show that death heals the wounds inflicted by
life. Unless, of course, you have mangled your soul and have only a
fragment of it left and die unredeemed and unrepentant like Voldemort,
in which case, you are likely to spend eternity as a whimpering,
tortured child wrapped in filthy rags and left under a bench.

I really don't think that DD was lying to Snape in this instance or
that he was unconcerned about the state of Snape's soul. YMMV.

Carol, wondering what the afterlife is like for Peter Pettigrew and
Gellert Grindelwald