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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 182760

> 
> 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. 

Pippin:
You *can't* make it? You are saying there is *no* way Voldemort could
have gotten that information if Snape hadn't given it to him? On what
do you  base such a conclusion?

But suppose we agree there is *some* chance he would find out anyway.
 Suppose you and your security detail have a one in a hundred chance
of sneaking past an ambush without a shootout, but you could trade
that chance for an extra bodyguard.  You'd be insane not to make the
trade, both for your sake and the sake of your guards, right? 

Now maybe the odds of getting caught are more remote. Maybe they're 
good enough that the extra bodyguard wouldn't be worth it for one
time. But if you expect you'll be ambushed again in the future, you'd
have to put that into the equation too. 

And if your guards couldn't know what you'd done, would that change
things? Would that give you the right  not to do it, and put their
lives at greater risk?

Dumbledore chose the extra bodyguard and that bodyguard saved Lupin's
life.  Is there something there to agonize about? I don't think so.
It's not that he thought the Order's lives weren't worth saving, he
was acting, IMO, in the way he thought would save their lives.

I think the green goo scene proves that Dumbledore's detachment does
not come from callousness. But his motivation for saving people is
very different from Harry's. Harry had great empathy for the
downtrodden -- because he'd been there. But Dumbledore never was. 

DD's family was dysfunctional and his early life was marked by
tragedy, but Dumbledore was never a prisoner, never a slave, never a
victim, never a pauper, always one of those well-cared for children of
privilege, always certain he was destined for great things. He knew,
intellectually, that people don't like being locked up, that other
people suffer without emotional support,  but for him
solitude and isolation were a thing he chose because he liked them.
They were less of a trial, IMO, than trying to relate to people who
were basically functioning on a different plane.  

IMO, Dumbledore wanted to help the underprivileged because it assuaged
his feelings of guilt and helplessness over Ariana's fate, not his
own, and that's one of the reasons Harry became the better man.

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? 

Pippin:
No way to do it without the risk that he'd be forced out of office,
yes. Dumbledore says as much. It's a wrong choice in that Dumbledore
thinks Fudge should hold the good of the people he serves dearer than
the office he holds, but it's not wrong in terms of Fudge's estimate
of the probable consequences.


> 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.

Pippin:
It can't be a lie.

If every killing resulted in a torn soul, there couldn't have been any
doubt over who had killed Ariana. True, Dumbledore didn't want to
know, but Aberforth sure as hell did and he was in as much doubt as
his brother.  Besides, most of canon hinges on the idea that there's
no surefire magical way to identify a murderer -- which probably means
that the only soul a wizard can assess the state of is his own. So
there's no data IMO - all wizards can know for sure is that *some*
killings tear the soul, because some wizards have torn their souls by
acts of murder and made horcruxes. 

Pippin










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