HBP chapters 24-26 Post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184468

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> > Carol again:
> > Possibly. But the Prophecy states that *Harry* will have "the
power that the Dark Lord knows not" (which DD would deduce is Love),
> 
> Pippin:
> The prophecy doesn't state anything about *Harry* at all. It states
that the one with the power to vanquish the dark lord will have the
power that the dark lord knows not. Dumbledore, who already believes
in the power of love magic, would not need a prophecy to tell him that. 

Carol:
If you've read my posts carefully, you know that I've pointed out the
ambiguity of Prophecies. I was using "Harry" as shorthand here for the
Prophecy Boy. (At any rate, DD knows that it's a boy, and LV assumes
that it is.) 

The Prophecy, at first, is only about a boy who will be "born as the
seventh month dies" who is also the child of parents who have "thrice
defied" Voldemort. Only two boys fit that picture as of the end of
July, 1980. And once LV chooses Harry over Neville and "marks him as
his equal," the Prophecy *does* mean Harry. He is "the one with the
power to vanquish the Dark Lord" who will be/was "born as the seventh
month dies.

DD knows that "the power that the Dark Lord knows not" is Love, but
how would he know that the power of Love will defeat LV, and how would
he know that Harry (who, it turns out, is no more or less loving in
himself than any other young Wizard) will embody that power? It's only
when Lily sacrifices herself (under unique circumstances) that the
power of Love gets into Harry's blood. And how would DD, who isn't
present at Godric's Hollow, know that Lily sacrificed herself to save
Harry if not for the Prophecy? How would he know, or guess, that Harry
survived the attack if not for the Prophecy? Why would he send Hagrid
to rescue Harry from the ruins if he thought that Harry was an
ordinary child who would have died in the attack? *If* Harry survived,
it had to be because of the power of Love, which could only, DD
deduces, have come about because of Lily's sacrifice. (He knows about
LV's promise to Snape to let her live.) If Lily has indeed sacrificed
herself, magically saving Harry, then Harry will have "the power that
the Dark Lord knows not" in his veins and that power will be his best
protection. As for the soon-to-be scar, Dumbledore can only know its
significance because he knows the Prophecy. Yes, he knows that LV's
soul is unstable because of multiple murders and Horcruxes, but how
could he possibly know (or guess) that one such soul bit would lodge
itself in Harry's open cut (soon to be a scar) unless he knew that the
scar "marks [Harry] as LV's equal." What that means he can only guess,
but if it means that Harry has some of LV's powers, they must reside
in that scar and they must be the result of a soul bit. DD is, IMO,
combining what he already knows about Voldemort (including what Snape
has told him) with what he deduces from the Prophecy to arrive at a
set of conclusions: Harry, though he may have a soul bit in his scar,
must be protected; the best protection is "the power that the Dark
Lord knows not," which Harry already has thanks to his mother's
sel-sacrifice, but which can be extended using her blood connection to
Petunia; Harry, whose survival has already fulfilled parts of the
Prophecy, must be watched and trained to prepare him for the day when
he must confront Voldemort. Even if he's not "the one with the power,"
Voldemort believes he is and will come after him. At that point, the
soul bit in Harry's head will have to be destroyed. But *if the
Prophecy is true,* Harry need not simply be sacrificed. *If* he is
"the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord," he must be given
every opportunity to know his enemy, every bit of training (and,
eventually, knowledge) that will enable him to vanquish that enemy,
even if it means his own death. (And once DD learns about the shared
drop of blood, he dares to hope that Harry can vanquish LV and live.)
Harry must not, however, know about the soul bit in his own head until
the last minute, at which point he will know that he can only defeat
Voldemort by replicating his mother's Love magic, sacrificing himself
to destroy the soul bit, a feat that only Harry can accomplish. Only
Harry has both "the power that the Dark Lord knows not" and the powers
that reside in the scar that "marks him as [LV's] equal. If Harry
isn't "the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord," then no such
person exists. And if he's not that person, DD has no reason to train
him to confront Voldemort. The "greater good" would be better served
by letting LV or someone else kill Harry, and the soul bit along with him.

Pippin: 
> The reader knows that Harry is meant because he is the topic of the
books, and we believe the prophecy must come true because we trust its
maker, JKR. 

Carol:
Of course. JKR created the Prophecy so that it would be fulfilled, but
not in a way that the reader, or Harry, will necessarily anticipate.
that's a given and not a point on which I disagree with you.

Pippin:
Dumbledore, however has no reason to believe that just because one
part of the prophecy came true, all the others must come true also.
Hs's not such a wishful thinker as that.

Carol:
Not wishful. Practical. He would be foolish in the extreme to ignore
the possibility that it might well come true. Harry fits the criteria.
He's been "marked" as LV's equal, giving him powers that no one else
has. He has the power that LV knows not in his blood. That makes it
likely in the extreme that Voldemort, in choosing him as the Prophecy
Boy, has created his own nemesis. It's a possibility that DD can't
afford to ignore, especially as it has already demonstrated itself to
be partially true. And if the Prophecy *doesn't* fulfill itself, what
does DD have to lose (other than a boy he's developed an affection
for)? He can make use of the powers in Harry's scar, he can increase
Voldemort's fear of Harry (who will have some protection via the Love
magic in his blood), and, if worse comes to worst and LV kills Harry,
LV will destroy the soul bit himself). I personally think that DD
(whom you've asked us to cut some slack) would not send Harry out on
these test missions, or set him up for them, if he didn't believe him
to be "the one with the power." Not even the manipulative Dumbledore
would make such use of a child unless he really thought that that
child would one day prove to be Voldemort's nemesis. Surely, if he
thought that he could defeat Voldemort himself, he would have begun
his Horcrux hunt much earlier, when the DADA interview made it clear
that he'd destroyed his own humanity by making multiple Horcruxes.
Yes, he gathered information and tried to prove Tom Riddle guilty of
the murders of the Riddle family and Hepzibah Smith. Yes, he organized
the Order of the Phoenix in VW1. But he had no real, solid plan until
Harry came along. And to use an innocent boy as a weapon *only*
because LV believed him to be "the one with the power" without
believing so himself would be the ultimate folly, not to mention
inexcusable wickedness very much like raising him as "a pig to the
slaughter."

As I said earlier, we can't know exactly what Dumbledore thought, but
he certainly behaves *as if* he believes that the Prophecy either will
or can come true. And by encouraging Harry to believe that the
confrontation is inevitable, Prophecy or no Prophecy, he insures that
"either must die at the hand of the other" will indeed come about,
preferably with Voldemort being the one who dies. (That Harry and no
one else can be involved in this final conflict is determined by the
soul bit residing in the "mark" that LV gave him.) 

Dumbledore arranges with Snape that Snape will reveal the existence of
the soul bit to Harry at the point when LV is protecting Nagini (which
DD knows he'll do when he knows that his Horcruxes are in danger). In
so doing, Dumbledore is making sure that Harry uses Love
magic--self-sacrifice that replicates his mother's--to defeat
Voldemort. He is *trusting* that Harry is "the one with the power to
vanquish the Dark Lord" and that he will do so, not by firing an AK
but by using "the power that the Dark Lord knows not." Like Lily, who
didn't know the power of her own sacrifice, Harry will not know the
power of his, but he will do it because he has to, because DD has
trained him to believe that LV must be destroyed and that it's his
mission to do so, not through "murder" but through destruction of the
soul bit in his scar.

Pippin: 
> But Dumbledore  would already know, like Diary!Riddle, that a loving
sacrifice would make a powerful countercurse. He would be able to
guess how Lily had died from the simple fact of Harry's survival. And
he believed that this protection would remain with Harry for all time,
though the prophecy does not say so. <snip>

Carol:
The Prophecy *does* state that "he will have the power that the Dark
Lord knows not," which certainly indicates that the power of Love will
stay with Harry. (Obviously, he doesn't know about the role that the
drop of shared blood will play, and I doubt that he anticipates
Harry's self-sacrifice at this point.) But the trouble that he takes
to protect Harry and only Harry using blood protection and so forth,
as well as the training that he gives to Harry and only Harry
(including his friends on occasion as useful companions who supplement
Harry's strengths) indicate that he believes that Harry and only Harry
can ultimately defeat Voldemort. 

Why protect Harry using Love Magic only if LV is targeting him once LV
has been vaporized? Why anticipate that the scar might prove useful
(as he tells McGonagall) if he doesn't know that, through it, LV has
marked Harry as his equal? Wouldn't he, if he has guessed without the
Prophecy, that Harry has a soul bit in his scar, be more inclined to
believe that the soul bit is dangerous?

We're not talking about a humanitarian who has Hagrid rescue Harry
from the rubble out of the kindness of his heart. If that were the
case, putting him in the care of a loving wizarding family (and
warning them to protect him because the DEs might want to kill him)
would be the way to go. Or he might take Alla's preferred route and
actually talk to Sirius Black to see if some sort of arrangements
could be made to determine Black's innocence and place Harry in his
custody. But Dumbledore is concerned with the WW as a whole, not with
one little boy who's lost his parents, even one who has miraculously
survived an AK and will be regarded as a hero by the WW. DD is
concerned with Harry's survival because he believes or hopes that
Harry will one day be able to do what he himself, with all his
intellect and power cannot, vanquish the Dark Lord. For that
reason--not humanitarian goodness or fondness for the dead Potters or
joy at the miracle of Harry's survival or guilt regarding his failure
to keep his promise to Snape to "protect them"--he takes special
precautions to protect Harry. He is certainly not protecting the
precious bit of Voldemort's soul, which must ultimately be destroyed.
He's protecting the one who *may* have the power to vanquish the Dark
Lord, who certainly at this point (through no virtue of his own) has
"the power that the Dark Lord knows not," and who has been marked as
Voldemort's equal, giving him unique powers that may make the scar
useful rather than dangerous if Harry is properly guided and directed.

Carol:
> > I disagree. Only the Potters were protected by a Fidelius Charm,
which DD suggested to them alone because of Snape's request. He would
have been the Secret Keeper himself if they had allowed it. 
> 
> Pippin:
> ::boggles:: And James and Lily were okay with that? They didn't mind
if Dumbledore hung their friends and companions in the Order out to
dry, not for the greater good, but because he couldn't be bothered?
And yet James still respected him enough to lend him his most precious
possession, and Lily refused to believe he had ever had anything to do
with Grindelwald? 
> 
> I don't buy it.

Carol:
Boggle if you like, but 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. All we know is that they *d8d*
go into hiding and that they *did* tell him that they wanted Sirius
Black as SK (and later changed their minds). We hear of no other
Secret Keepers, no other Fidelius Charms, and lots of dead Order
members. Unless, of course, you can provide canon to the contrary. (As
for why they trusted DD with the Invisibility Cloak yet didn't make
him their Secret Keeper, you'll have to ask JKR.)
> 
> Carol:
>  And if a Fidelius Charm had been placed on the original Order HQ,
the Order could have continued to use it when they re-formed between
GoF and OoP, instead of needing new HQ at 12 GP. 
> 
> Pippin:
> The forgotten Marauder strikes again <g>. Needless to say, using a
hideout that Peter  had access to wouldn't be a good idea, even with
charms to keep him out. 

Carol:
Okay, good point. You could be right on this count. But you still have
all those dead Order members (whose whereabouts were no doubt revealed
by the forgotten Marauder) to account for. The entire McKinnon family
died--*after* the Potters went into hiding. Evidently, DD didn't
provide them with a safe house or suggest a Fidelius Charm to them. DD
provided special protection to the Potters because Snape told him how
LV interpreted the Prophecy and because he had promised Snape to
"protect her--them." He had not provided any such protection before
that point and seems not to have provided any afterwards. Whether he
himself put any faith in the Prophecy at that time, we don't know, but
Snape's words would have recalled it to his mind. And once Harry had
survived the AK by the power of Love and been "marked" as Voldemort's
equal, he must have pondered it even more deeply.

Dumbledore was not one to ignore a possibility because of his own
prejudice against Divination as a school subject. We saw him studying
his own thoughts and memories, everything that could have a bearing on
the mysterious happenings at Hogwarts in GoF. I'm quite sure that he
put equal thought into the reasons for Harry's survival at Godric's
Hollow, what should be done with him, and how best to protect him if,
indeed, he should be protected rather than sacrificed because of the
soul bit. And where better to find the answers than the Prophecy,
already partially fulfilled?

Pippin:
> <snip> People were not being ambushed at Order Headquarters or in
secret-keeper protected locations -- that would have convinced even
James that there was a spy. But people can't carry out  missions for
the Order and hide at the same time. ,snip>

Carol:
We don't know that there were any other SK-protected locations,
assuming that you're correct about Order HQ. And since, as you say,
people can't carry out missions for the Order and hide at the same
time, most likely no one but the Potters was in hiding. James didn't
carry out any missions from Godric's Hollow. DD had somehow persuaded
him to stay put. (Maybe that was one reason why he "borrowed" the
Invisibility Cloak--to keep James safely at home!) As for James not
believing there was a spy, he probably thought, as Sirius did, that it
was Remus (who was not told about the Secret Keeper switch).

Pippin:
> I think I'm finally beginning to understand something. People must
unconsciously expect JKR to follow the  rules of popular heroic
fantasy: good guys don't die unless
> 
> a) They're red shirts
> b) They've done something unworthy and must make amends
> c) They're heroically saving another more important character
> d) They've been betrayed
> 
> From our point of view, the McKinnons and so on are red shirts, but
they were James' and Lily's friends, so according to rule d) they must
have been betrayed. And so they were, by Peter. But he's not a very
impressive villain, so I guess you'd like it to be Dumbledore instead.

Carol:
My turn to boggle. Please, please, please don't try to figure out what
I think, because you clearly have no idea how my mind works. I've just
spent about two or three posts defending Dumbledore from Alla's
aspersions, and now you think that I want him to be the villain? I
agree with you that he's practical, not prone to wishful thinking. We
know that he's manipulative and that he expects sacrifices (including
his own life). It makes no sense that he would send all his Order
members into hiding. He wouldn't have hidden the Potters if it weren't
for special circumstances.

As for the "rules" you've just listed, they have no bearing on my
thinking. I certainly don't think that they deserved to die or that
they were heroically saving another character or that they're "red
shirts," a term I've never used in my life. 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. And since Wormtail had
been spying for Voldemort for at least a year, we can assume that he
was LV's source of information. The Potters would, no doubt, have been
targeted in their turn, but I see no reason to assume that they would
have received special protection had it not been for the Prophecy (or
Snape's information, if you prefer--it still boils down to the
influence of the Prophecy on the action).

Quite simply, I see no evidence that DD protected any other Order
members. They had joined the Order knowing that they might die in the
fight against Voldemort. They knew that LV was targeting Order members
(though perhaps the idea that they be next on the list never occcurred
to them). 

Pippin: 
> But JKR thinks she's writing a war story, and  kills characters off
when she's finished with 'em just to show that war is hell. Alas.

Carol:
Very true. But what it has to do with my points regarding Dumbledore
and the Prophecy escapes me.
> 
Carol earlier:
>  If the SK had been Dumbledore, they would have been safe.
> 
> Pippin:
> Until Voldemort tricked Dumbledore into revealing the secret, or had
Peter kidnap Harry, or used the Imperius curse to make someone else do
it, or made them think that Sirius was in danger and they had to go
rescue him, and so forth...there are lots of ways to get around it if
you think about it.

Carol:
I should have said, they *might* have been safe--safer, certainly,
than they were with a DE as SK. I doubt that LV could have tricked DD
into revealing the Secret, but, sure, Peter might have managed to
kidnap Harry. And then the Prophecy would not have come true because
there would have been no Love magic to save Harry, and we'd have had
no story. (I think that's the reason that JKR didn't make DD the SK.
She needed a traitor, just as she needed an eavesdropper who was in
love with Lily.) None of this has any bearing on Dumbledore's
motivation, however.
> 
Carol earlier:
>  The idea that a Prophecy existed did, however, give them hope that
*Harry* would save them, and the few who fought at the end did so
because of Harry. 
> 
> Pippin:
> That's chicken-or-the-egg. Did they believe in Harry because of a
prophecy they'd never heard, or did they believe in a prophecy they'd
never heard because they believed in Harry? Scrimgeour thinks it's the
latter -- he didn't care beans about the prophecy, but he knew people
would rally around Harry. Otherwise, he could have  spun  the alleged
prophecy to support the ministry.

Carol:
They believed in a prophecy because the Hall of Prophecy had been
broken into. The idea that Harry might be "the Chosen One" (a term
that had not been used before--it had previously been "the Boy who
Lived") gave them hope. that's canon. And it's only one small way in
which the Prophecy shapes the action of the story.

Without the Prophecy, there's no Fidelius Charm to be breached, no
attack on Godric's Hollow because of Peter's treachery, no Snape
storyline. If the Potters are killed, it's only as ordinary Order
members, and their ordinary son is either orphaned or killed along
with them. There's no scar that "marks" Harry as Voldemort's equal
because without Snape begging LV to spare Lily, there's no Love magic
in Lily's sacrifice. There's no plot in OoP except the Umbridge
storyline, and no reason for Sirius Black to die (or Harry to inherit
Kreacher). There's no reason to believe that Harry has any reason
other than revege for fighting Voldemort, much less going after the
Horcruxes. There's no reason for DD to train and test Harry unless he
has strong reason to believe that Harry is indeed the Chosen One. The
Prophecy, and Snape's reporting it to LV, sets the story in motion.
The story ends (setting aside the epilogue and a few details like the
infamous request for a sandwich) with the fulfillment of the Prophecy.

Like it or not, the Prophecy is a central motif, perhaps *the* central
motif (other than the scar and its powers, which are tied in with it).
Even though we readers don't encounter the Prophecy until the end or
OoP (though it's foreshadowed when DD refers to her PoA prophecy as
bringing her total of *real predictions* to two), its existence in the
backstory is crucial and makes sense not only of LV's actions (he was
trying to kill Harry specifically, though James would have died, too,
and Lily would have been spared only because of Snape) but of Snape's
motives (without Snape as repentant eavesdropper, where is the Snape
storyline?) and of Dumbledore's special treatment of Harry.

Carol, who does *not* see DD as a villain, only as placing the greater
good above the good of the individual, even if the individual in
question is a fifteen-month-old toddler
> 
> Pippin
>