Dumbledore & Power / Serpensortia / Crouch Sr / Parselmouth

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189048


> Nikkalmati quoted Catlady:
> 
> << [Dumbledore] also states he could never allow himself to exercise the power of the ministry. >>
> 
> Nikkalmati :
> While I believe that JKR intended that to be his good behavior, I view it as some combination of cowardice and hypocrisy. When Dumbledore's nation wanted him to become Minister for Magic and the alternative was Cornelius Fudge, he should have accepted and watched himself carefully to see if he was becoming irresponsible. 

Pippin:
The point is, Dumbledore's experience taught him that he wasn't good at telling whether he was being irresponsible. No one in canon is. The clever people can always come up with ways to convince themselves that they're doing the right thing, or that it isn't important enough to matter.

It's also problematic to say that Fudge was the only alternative. If the people of the WW preferred Fudge to someone like Scrimgeour because Fudge told them what they wanted to hear and Scrimgeour wouldn't, wouldn't they have objected to Dumbledore just as much once they found out what he wanted them  to do to stop Voldemort?

> Nikkalmati 
> As for hypocrisy, perhaps Dumbledore was too busy admiring himself for refusing to be Minister that he didn't notice that he had immense power over the kids in his school (power to allow Filch to hang them in chains, power to send them into the Forbidden Forest at night without an adult, power to expel them) and he had life-and-death power over the  members of the Order of the Phoenix. In the case of the kids, he was observed by the teachers, the kids' parents, and supposedly by the Board of Governors. The teachers were willing to say 'Really, Dumbledore, do you think that's wise?' and the Board of Governors might not have needed Lucius Malfoy's threats to fire him if a student was killed because of something he had commanded. But in the Order, no one questioned him at all.

Pippin:
I think you are exaggerating Dumbledore's power.
No one had to send their children to Hogwarts, but everyone has to obey the MInistry. 
Dumbledore, unlike Fudge, could not send anyone to Azkaban on a word. Nor could the teachers and the students hold off the power of the Ministry, which, as we saw in OOP, could take over the school any time it liked. 


Dumbledore's actions were scrutinized and criticized both by the Ministry and by Rita Skeeter. He got many letters every day objecting to how he ran the school.

Dumbledore is head of the Order only as long as its members are willing to obey him, which they don't always do. Not everyone is as devoted as Harry. Snape stopped giving Harry Occlumency lessons, Sirius ignored Dumbledore's advice and refused to follow orders whenever he felt like it, and Pettigrew was an outright traitor. None of them were punished. 
 

> Nikkalmati : 
> Carol was curious in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/189035>:
> 
> << why Catlady thinks that Snape had Draco cast Serpensortia if it wasn't to find out whether Harry was a Parseltongue >>
> 
> I suppose I can't say that the author asked him to do it? 

Pippin:
If Dumbledore just wanted to find out whether Harry was a parselmouth, why conduct the test in front of the whole school? I think he wanted to find out whether *anyone* was a parselmouth. 

Snape's shrewd and calculating look may indicate Snape trying to figure out what Dumbledore is up to, rather than Harry. Did Dumbledore expect this, and is he therefore deliberately trying to throw suspicion on Harry, perhaps to make the real Heir careless, or to divert suspicion from more vulnerable people like Hagrid?

Pippin