Dumbledore WAS: Re: Love and Joy vs. Hate and Despair

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 190896

 
> Alla:
> 
> You know, one can argue that he did handed Harry to Voldemort when it suited his plans ;). Remember triwizard Tournament? Remember how everybody thought that Dumbledore should withdraw Harry and there were those mysterious rules that he supposedly cannot withdraw. Did anybody doubt that Dumbledore could withdraw him if he actually wanted to? So here we go, while even as a joke I will not claim that Dumbledore predicted Cedric's death and went along with him (although I personally would not put it past him), Dumbledore could have avoided Harry's ordeal and did not do so.

Pippin:
That's movie contamination...in the book it is clear that both Madame Maxime and Karkaroff wanted Harry withdrawn and would have insisted on it if it was possible. Since they are judges of the tournament, they are familiar with the rules.

More broadly, the only canon we have for what Dumbledore can and cannot do is what Dumbledore says. If he's lying about that (though I do not remember any instance where he says he cannot do something and it's later shown that he could) then there's simply no basis for a canon-based discussion. The reason we have that rule, after all, is to keep the discussion from degenerating into  "did so" "did not" .

> 
> June:
> I think some people need to re read and understand the books. Dumbledore was not evil, he was one of the good guys.

Pippin:
I think one of the ideas JKR is exploring  is that in fiction we expect to find "good guys" while in real life there are  no people who are  always going to do the right thing except when some external force prevents them.  

But I do think we are supposed to see Dumbledore as acting for the common good, except for those occasions when he admits that he behaved selfishly. And I do think there were also occasions when external forces kept Dumbledore from doing as he would have liked.


Pippin