Snape/Snape/Chapt35Disc/Dumbledore/Dumbledore&Sirius(at length)/Dumbledore

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 185042

Potioncat wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184992>:

<< I wonder what the Malfoys' opinion of Snape is now that it's all
over? >>

Now that it's all over, Snape is a dead hero, so it's useful to
reminisce publicly about having been friends with him, so it doesn't
matter what their secret real opinion is. Draco's secret real opinion
might be that Snape saved his life and his soul, which could lead to
gratitude or resentment.

Zara wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184993>:

<< I think he did betray his old friends, in the first war. We are not
given any specific instances, >>

I think we were. There is the famous list in GoF of Slythies with whom
student Snape hung out: "Rosier and Wilkes – they were both killed by
Aurors the year before Voldemort fell. The Lestranges – they're a
married couple – they're in Azkaban. Avery – from what I've heard he
wormed his way out of trouble by saying he'd been acting under the
Imperius curse". I have always assumed that Aurors found Rosier and
Wilkes (or were waiting for them when they arrived to commit crimes)
because Dumbledore passed on tips from his new spy, Secret Sevvie.

In addition, IIRC Karkaroff is the only person whom adult Snape called
by his first name. It seemed to me that Snape still felt a remnant of
friendship for Karkaroff despite Karkaroff being inconvenient and a
coward. I don't recall how Karkaroff was convicted - was it the result
of another Spy Snape tip?

Sherry discussed Chapter 34 in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184995>:

<< 8. Were you surprised at the identity of any of the people who came
to Harry through the Resurrection Stone? >>

I was not surprised that Lupin had finally escaped from Tonks and
rejoined the people he actually wanted to be with, but I did wonder
how this works out for Tonks. Rowling would not be proposing that
Tonks spend her afterlife alone and lonely.

<< 10. When Harry is saying that he didn't want them to die, why was
he mostly addressing Lupin? >>

Like everyone said, Harry's reason is that Lupin is the most recent
death, therefore freshest on his mind. Rowling's reason is that she
needed to tell the readers that it was okay for Remus to die and leave
his son an orphan despite the rant she had previously put into Harry's
mouth about Remus's first duty being to stay with his son, not help
hunt for Horcruxes.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184998>:

<< Now all I see is the unreliable narrator: "Neither would live;
neither could survive." (Wrong!) >>

Wrong, but live/survive is another reference to the Prophecy: neither
can live while the other survives. Which is another reminder to me
that I STILL don't know what the Prophecy meant by that. If it had
been neither can DIE while the other survives, that would be a
reference to this very event.

Montavilla47 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185033>:

<< What bugged me most was the remark about giving Ron the Prefect
position because Harry would be too busy... doing what, exactly? But
it wasn't that. It was that, when Harry's beloved Godfather has just
died, whether or not he got to wear a shiny badge seemed like the most
irrelevant thing in the world. >>

Surely that was for the readers, who had begun the book by watching
Harry *not* be chosen Prefect, and Rowling wanted to assure the
*readers* that DD still thought Harry was the greatest thing since ...
what do wizards say instead of 'since sliced bread'? 

I was so happy that Ron became prefect! I had been sure it would
either be Harry, because everything happens to Harry, or else Neville,
to force him to develop leadership. I wish DD's purpose (and as long
as he was speaking about it, I wish he had said so) was Ron needed the
status more than Harry, as Harry already had status as Quidditch star
and Triwizard Champion.

Alla wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185022>:

<< If Dumbledore had the little understanding of psychology of the
people he leads would have known that inaction is the absolutely
worst thing that can be done to Sirius, the worst blow to his psyche.
Inaction in the house where he had a bad memories feels even worst to
me. >>

I think Dumbledore knew all that and did it deliberately. He admitted
doing it (but not that it was deliberate) in the DD-tells-all at the
end of OoP.

I'm breaking DD's statement into three pieces to call attention to the
middle one: 

"It is my fault that Sirius died," said Dumbledore clearly. "Or should
I say, almost entirely my fault — I will not be so arrogant as to
claim responsibility for the whole." 

"Sirius was a brave, clever and energetic man, and such men are not
usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to
be in danger."

"Nevertheless, you should never have believed for an instant that
there was any necessity for you to go to the Department of Mysteries
tonight. If I had been open with you, Harry, as I should have been,
[or allowed Sirius to tell you without Molly stopping him] you would
have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to
the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked
into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after
you. That blame lies with me, and with me alone."

>From a later part of that conversation:"He had no love for Kreacher,
because Kreacher was a living reminder of the home Sirius had hated."

Back in the day, the list thoroughly discussed DD's motive for wanting
Sirius to be killed before Harry's eyes. Some thought it was as simple
as getting rid of Sirius's recklessness which might endanger Harry or
getting rid of Sirius's love for Harry which might interfere with DD's
plans to use Harry in ways not so good for Harry. Some thought it was
that DD feared that Harry's grief for his parents and anger at their
murder was not fresh enough, so he used Sirius's death to refresh
Harry's desire for revenge on Voldemort. I prefer the theory that DD
knew that a heart broken by bereavement would protect Harry from being
possessed by Voldemort "because he could not bear to reside in a body
so full of the force he detests."

La Gatta Lucianese suggested that Sirius had consented to this plan,
and that was why he got stressed out waiting to die (rather than from
being caged upm with his bad memories). She suggested that everyone
who joined the Order consented to be killed and/or to kill a comrade
if needed by DD's plans, and that that is what Lupin meant by saying
"There are dangers involved of which you can have no idea, any of you".

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185021>:

<< Sirius Black chose to return to England. He could have stayed free
and safe among the tropical birds. But once he chose to return and it
became known that he was in England, it was risky to leave the house
because Wormtail had described his Animagus form to Voldemort and the
DEs. (big snip) not sure what DD should have done differently
regarding Sirius Black, whom he was trying to keep safe >>

He could have sent Sirius out, maybe even on missions, or at least to
get some exercise, in a *different* disguise. Other Order members who
were not Animagi or Metamorphamagi used disguises; for example,
McGonagall returned from some sort of mission disguised as an old
Muggle woman. They were able to disguise Harry as a Weasley for Bill
and Fleur's wedding, so maybe they could have disguised Padfoot as
some other dog.

DD could have sent Sirius to a foreign country to recruit foreign
wizards to help against Voldemort, which DD had asked Charlie in
Romania to spend his days off doing. 

Maybe he could have thought up some meaningful paperwork assignment
that Sirius could do in the house, reading the Muggle papers to track
Voldemort's latest crimes, going through old books to find forgotten
spells to use against Voldemort, that kind of stuff. If someone
invented a detector to show whether a person is under the Imperius
Curse, that would be helpful for the Light Side. (Like Alla wrote
in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185025>: 
<< How about writing something? How about strategy conversations?
Letters campaign to newspapers to clear Dumbledore and Harry? >>.
Maybe DD didn't want their names cleared and the truth out, as it was
Hermione, not DD, who eventually got the truth published via The
Quibbler.) 

Or he could have used his emotional power over Sirius to force Sirius
to go back to the tropical birds and (as the only use the Order had
for him was to command Kreacher not to betray them to Narcissa) take
Kreacher with him.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185039>:

<< we do know that afterward, everyone, including Molly who hadn't
known Sirius in the old days, felt he couldn't be trusted not to take
unnecessary risks. >>

I don't think Molly has a right to have an opinion. I think she
forfeited it by her own idiotic reckless behavior. When seeing Harry
off on the Hogwarts Express, Padfoot "reared on to its hind legs and
placed its front paws on Harry's shoulders", which various large dogs
have done to me when they wanted to slobber on me, but Molly "hiss[ed]
'For heaven's sake, act more like a dog, Sirius!'" She didn't even
call him Padfoot! Even without using a name, since when does telling a
dog to act more like a dog soothe enemy suspicions?

What is the evidence that the bad guys knew about Padfoot (from
Wormtail) before Molly gave the name away in front of most of
wizarding Britain's teen-agers? 

I think who was *really* after Sirius was the Ministry, and LV and the
Death Eaters were content to send Lucius to tell Fudge about Sirius's
dog form and then wait for the Ministry to dispose of him, rather than
hunting him themselves, but 'bad guys' covers both.

I know that logic indicates that LV already knew about Sirius's dog
form from Wormtail -- it seems to me unlikely that Peter told LV:
"Call me Wormtail", in which case LV Legilimensed the whole thing, all
four Marauders, their nicknames and animal forms, from him back in the
first war. 

But the actual events of the story of the story suggest that LV had
some kind of brain fart and never told anyone that the bloke whom they
were hunting could turn into a dog, until Draco or one of his
colleagues heard Molly on Platform 9 3/4 and then Draco told Lucius
and it may have been Lucius's own independent idea to tell Fudge to
tell his Aurors.

For that matter, what is the evidence that anyone told the Aurors? 

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185035>:

<< I came to think that Dumbledore's commitments not to lie in PS/SS
and to tell Harry everything in OOP, which I once defended, had been
made as emptily and cynically as Harry's promises to Griphook in DH.
But when I actually reread the final chapters of OOP, I felt differently.

To my surprise, it read as if Dumbledore really was prepared to tell
Harry everything, mentioning the scar and saying that Harry wasn't
nearly as angry with him as he should be. Darn right! But the topic
turns to Sirius and Kreacher, and when it comes back to Harry again,
Dumbledore seems to have reached a decision that he's only going to
speak about the prophecy for now.

In the light of the revelations in DH, trying to get Harry to
understand about Sirius's flaws feels less like an intrusion and more
like a test -- if Harry was not ready to deal with the truth about
Sirius, how could he be expected to deal with the truth about himself? >>

But DD didn't say 'I am going to tell you everything' until AFTER
Harry had repeatedly shouted at DD for saying unfeeling things about
Sirius's death.