[HPforGrownups] Secrets of Harry's past WASRe: On the Issue of "Boys will be Boys" Chapt 14 Disc

[Shelley]

No: HPFGUIDX 190101


> Margie:
>> Also, one thing that I think people are missing here is that the characters
>> don't know everything that we know.  Dumbledore does not know from the
>> beginning that Harry was told that his parents were killed in an accident
>> and that he was not to talk about them at the Dursleys.  None of these
>> characters know what Harry has been or has not been told by the Dursleys or
>> by anyone else.  The typical assumption is that the Dursleys, being family,
>> probably told Harry a lot about his parents and most adults don't get a
>> clear view of the Dursleys until late in the series.
> Alla:
>
> Actually in OOP Dumbledore also tells Harry that I had been watching you more closely than you could have imagined, so there is a view to which I personally subscribe for quite some time now that Dumbledore knew pretty well what was happening in Dursleys household pretty much in very great detail. Of course the reader who holds such view (me) would not like Dumbledore much because that would mean that he is responsible for a great deal of cruelty in Harry's life, but I had been feeling this way for quite some time now.
>
> So, yes I think he knew what Dursleys did to Harry, told Harry or not told Harry because he was watching him by unspecified magical tools and since he says it in OOP, I do not think he refers to Arabella either.
>
> JMO,
>
> Alla
Shelley now:
I am more of the opinion that Alla is right, Dumbledore knew. Also, the 
Mirror of Erised is in book one. There can be no denying that if 
Dumbledore didn't know how Harry longed to know more about his parents, 
he certainly knew it shortly after Christmas Harry's first year at 
Hogwarts. That is pretty early on in the series that Dumbledore could 
have given Harry some comfort by giving him some photos without spoiling 
any of the plot.

Shelley