Potters hiding/Caring about people/Bribe/Severus/Severus/Chamber/Grindelwald

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 184533

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184468>:

<< I see no evidence that anyone else went into hiding or received
extra protection. (I have no idea how James and Lily reacted, but DD
must have persuaded them that either they or Harry were being
specifically targeted. (snip) We hear of no other Secret Keepers, no
other Fidelius Charms, and lots of dead Order members. >>

According to me, either the Potters were the only Order family who
went into hiding, and the reason was that Harry was the only Order
baby that DD's spies said was being specifically targetted by LV, or
the Potters and the Longbottoms both went into hiding because DD's
spies said both Harry and Neville were being specifically targetted by
LV. There is some question as to how Frank and Alice could have gone
into hiding while they were Aurors; perhaps Neville hid with Gran for
that year and re-united with his parents right away after LV was
vaporized. 

IIRC the Potters' Fidelius Charm was cast one week before their death,
and the reason was that DD's spies (and other events) had warned him
that LV was close to figuring how to defeat all the other protective
magic already on their latest hiding place (due to information from
Peter, but no one told DD it was Peter). So if some Longbottoms were
in hiding with no Peter to betray them, they might not have gotten
Fidelius even when the Potters did.

<< But you still have all those dead Order members (whose whereabouts
were no doubt revealed by the forgotten Marauder) to account for. (big
snip) The Order members who died, other than the Potters, died
because, as Lupin informed Harry in OoP, Voldemort was picking them
off one by one. >>

I have always assumed that many of them were killed in the line of
duty - such as guarding other people who were DE targets, trying to
capture DEs, trying to catch DEs in the act of committing crimes so
they could be turned over to Aurors and other loyal Law Enforcers with
evidence, spying on DEs, etc.

Alla wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184472>:

<< So, I guess in my book caring about people, but making tough
choices does mean acting a bit differently than Dumbledore did. >>

While I am no longer certain that DD cared about any people except the
late Arianna, and much good it did her, I am shocked at your post,
Alla. You indicate that 'caring about people' means to you putting the
personal honor and personal friendship loyalty of one's behavior
infinitely above winning the war.

<< Well, cared about people, but had to make tough choices in my book
does NOT mean make those choices without people's consent and without
giving them enough information to choose themselves whether they agree
or not especially in the matters of life and death. >>

All the Order members, including all 13 people who volunteered to
transport Harry, had signed up to be Dumbledore's soldiers. As such,
they had consented in advance to going on missions where they were
likely to die, and to obeying orders without explanation.

Real generals don't explain their plan to every private soldier and
ask his consent for his unit to be ordered into battle. Sometimes they
give orders like 'Hold the pass at Thermopylae or Ronceville as long
as you can', while thinking that Leonidas's or Roland's small unit
cannot possibly hold it forever, but the longer they can slow the
enemy, the more time they buy for the main army to prepare for battle. 

Even a puny two-gold-bar lieutenant with a platoon of twenty men might
need to assign two machine gunners to cover the retreat of the other
eighteen. At his low level, he probably would ask for volunteers, and
ought to be one of the volunteers if there aren't enough, but he is
right to order one soldier to stay with him to cover the other
soldiers' escape if there is not a volunteer.

<< Care about people but making tough choices means in my book sharing
information with the people about what they are facing, and making
sure that your Tools trust each other. In fact that means in my book
making sure that people are NOT tools for you and you just do not go
ahead and betray the plan to Voldemort for I am still not sure which
reason. >>

I agree that caring about people means not viewing them as tools, but
sending soldiers on suicide missions doesn't necessarily mean viewing
them as tools. The general can cry for those poor boys and their
bereaved families after the war is won, or perhaps during a break
after battle. I'm not certain that Dumbledore's plan was a good plan
but that depends on whether it was likely to work, not on whether it
set up some of his loyal soldiers to be killed as part of a
complicated feint.

That Snape's leak of the Seven Potters plan to LV was an 'Order' (dead
DD) feint rather than Snape's loyal to LV betrayal of the Order is the
kind of information (like troop movements in times of war) that is a
LEGITIMATE military secret and therefore protected by not telling
anyone people who don't 'need to know'.

<< if you decide to put the ring stupidly on you and now think that
your death will be useful, you do not, do not, do not ask the man who
does not want to do it ( HA, I of all people now have no doubt
whatsoever that Snape was not playing or anything, that he really did
not want to kill Dumbledore) >>

DD should not have put the ring stupidly on -- maybe he deliberately
put it on, confident that Snape could keep him alive long enough, as a
technique to manipulate Snape to kill him at the appropriate time?

However, once he had planned that Snape must kill him in order to get
in really good with LV (some listies expected this to happen early in
book 5 or even between GoF and book 5, a theory which someone called
'Dumbledore's head on a silver platter' so I called it CHOP for
'Cranium of Headmaster On Platter'), then that plan will NOT be
advanced by DD committing suicide in order to spare Snape's feelings.

<< Care about people, but making tough choices in my book means for
example if one just MUST place a baby in his relatives' care ( I am
putting aside whole Sirius' angle, for a while, does not mean that I
agree with that), one must must must to make sure that he is checking
upon that baby's wellfare. >>

I'm inclined to agree with you on this, but other listies have said
that DD had Arabella Figg and occasional surveillants like Dedalus
Diggle to check on Harry, and they reported that he wasn't exactly
starved and he wasn't physically abused to the point of needing
medical care and he went to school regularly, so hard hearted DD
figured Harry's welfare was adequate.

Montavilla47 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184489>:

<< I don't believe I used the word bribe. That is your
characterization of what could be a mutually beneficial relationship
between Dumbledore and the Dursleys. It's not unreasonable for someone
who assumes the care and feeding of a child to get financial support
from someone who leaves them with that child. It's also not unheard of
for the person leaving the child to *ask* the other to take on the
responsibility, rather than leaving the child on their doorstep in the
middle of the night. >>

This is a forbidden 'I agree' post. I am not confident that child
support payments would have made Vernon and Petunia like Harry any
better, but I was rather shocked at Pippin calling child support
payments 'bribes'. If covering some expenses of the job is a bribe,
what does she call my salary from my job?

Oryomai summarized Chapter 30 with admirable affection for Severus
Snape in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184491>:

<< 9.What do you think would have happened if Severus had found Harry
alone? Would Severus have told him everything? Would he blow his cover? >>

Was LV still reading Harry's mind at this point, or only Harry reading
LV's mind?

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184503>:

<< I do wonder when, why, and how Snape learned to fly. If it's a
"trick" that he learned from his "master," he must have been in high
favor indeed with Voldemort, who didn't teach that skill to any other
follower. But it's just possible that he taught himself based on
Voldemort's example. It's probably wishful thinking in the extreme to
think that maybe Voldemort copied him! >>

Whichever of them invented it, it is a new spell, because Quidditch
Through the Ages begins its history of flying on broomsticks by saying
that wizards can levitate a steady five feet above the ground, and a
wizard transfigured into a bat can fly, but having only a bat brain,
would forget where he wanted to go, so Animagi whose animal form is a
flyer are the only wizards who can fly without a piece of equipment.
And, damn, both of them are dead without having taught it to anyone else!

<< (Remind me again, somebody, how they could have gotten back up the
pipes into the girls' bathroom without Fawkes to carry them and
without being able to Apparate inside Hogwarts.) >>

Maybe when Salazar built his Chamber, he included a ladder back up, or
stowed a flying carpet there. Maybe Hermione had learned a Revelio
Egress spell since CoS.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184510>:

<< I mean that when Grindelwald came to power, Dumbledore found that
the "force that was necessary" to bring Muggles under wizard control
was much greater than young Dumbledore had allowed himself to suppose. >>

It seems to me that Grindelwald's struggles, the ones that led him to
fill Nurmengard with his opponents and kill Viktor's grandfather and
many others, all were struggles with wizards who tried to thwart his
plans -- other than fanfic about the exact relationship between
Grindelwald and Hitler, we have no evidence that he even began to act
on his plans about Muggles. (As Montavilla47 said in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184514>, but I
like the way I said it.) 

JKR said that there was some connection between the wizards'
Grindelwald war and Muggles' World War II, but she didn't say what the
connection is. Maybe it is just that when wizards are at war, the side
effects of the curses they throw at each other make everyone, even
Muggles, feel agitated, and the collateral damage of their curses
could seem to Muggles to be terrorist/enemy bombings as easily as to
be hurricanes.