HBP post DH look chapter 3

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184313

Carol earlier:
> Carol, who found Dumbledore's (unwitting?) hypocrisy in this chapter
less disturbing than other instances of Gryffindor bullying, not to
mention the Dumbledore of "The Prince's Tale," the Dumbledore that
Snape knew and chose to trust  <SNIP of the whole post by Carol and 
reply only to signature>
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Very good example actually of what I would have still enjoyed with
Dursleys. I of course have zero problems with how Dumbledore behaves
towards Snape in Prince tale, to me he had it coming big time and I
loved that.
> 
> But obviously the fact that I enjoyed it, does not mean that I am
going to delude myself and say that I think that Dumbledore behaved as
a good person here. It is just when I look at Dumbledore and Snape, I
find Snape to be much worse in terms of what he did to Harry and I do
not mind Dumbledore delivering that medicine to Severus dear.

Carol again:

Just to clarify, I'm not reacting only to DD's treatment of Snape when
Snape begs him for help (though I much prefer Snape's treatment of
Narcissa in "Spinner's End" in similar circumstances). "The Prince's
Tale" shows a side of Dumbledore that Snape has seen but Harry hasn't,
not only his expectation that Snape risk his life without receiving
full information in return for that risk (a situation that exactly
parallels Harry's), but Dumbledore expects *Harry* to sacrifice
himself to destroy the soul bit in his scar, an expectation that Snape
violently rejects, calling it "a pig to the slaughter." IOW, we first
truly see the manipulative, and to some degree ruthless, side of DD
(though it's not quite as bad as it appears in that chapter; he knows
but can't or won't tell Snape that Harry has a chance for survival).
Harry himself, after viewing the Pensieve memories, views it as DD's
"betrayal."

So what I meant in my sign-off was that DD's somewhat hypocritical but
mildly humorous (and perhaps deserved) treatment of the Dursleys in
HBP chapter 3 didn't bother me nearly as much as the view of him we
see in Snape's memories in "the Prince's Tale." It says a great deal
about Snape that he can still be loyal to Dumbledore (setting aside
his own reasons for protecting Harry and opposing LV) even knowing,
much more than Harry does, just how much of a puppetmaster Dumbledore
is and how much he's willing to risk not only his own life but the
lives of others for "the greater good." In short, it's the whole
picture of DD that we see depicted in "The Prince's Tale" that I found
disturbing, not just his (hypocritical) lack of sympathy for Snape,
who was worried about Lily but not about James or their son.
Considering that DD at only a few years younger was ready to join
forces with Grindelwald to run the world his way and, later,
indifferent to the suffering and deaths of unknown people if he could
only keep Harry safe, I did find his behavior on that occasion
annoying. However, it's the using and manipulating people who, in
Snape's case, lie and spy and risk their lives for him, or in Harry's
case, fight monsters and take on burdens that adult wizards fear to
face only to have the whole truth concealed from them, that I find
disturbing. I knew that DD was too confident in his own intelligence
and too unwilling to give credit to others (if only Harry had known
Snape's role in keeping DD alive after he stupidly put on the ring,
for example), but I was still unwilling, pre-DH and specifically
pre-"Prince's Tale" to acknowledge the extent of that manipulation of
others. And I wasn't aware of his secrecy, either, or at least not the
extent of it, though Aberforth paves the way for that revelation.

Carol, who desperately needed the return to the familiar Dumbledore of
"King's Cross," dead or not, to understand and partially forgive him