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

[Kamil]

No: HPFGUIDX 190898

<alla>
 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?

<Kamil>
*raises hand* Yeah, I absolutely took Dumbledore at his word. My hand
to <deity>, it never once entered my mind, until I read this post,
that a "binding magical contract" was not just that. A *binding*,
magical contract.

It's not like this was a phrase Dumbledore came up with once he'd
found out Harry was entered. He mentioned it to all of the students
beforehand, cautioning them not to put their names into the goblet
unless they were very sure they wanted to compete because once their
name came back out again, they had no choice, they had to see it
through to the end.

I think he mentions it to the student body again, that next night at
the Welcome Feast for the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students.

And then there is his reaction when he first sees Harry, after his
name has come out. It seemed quite clear to me Dumbledore was almost
frantic with worry and fear, and seemed to me as well that he
performed legilimency on Harry, to see if he was lying to him about
somehow fooling the age line or having an older student put his name
in (speaking of, I will never understand why that option didn't occur
to Fred, George and Lee).

Plus, if it was at all possible for a contestant to be removed once
spat out by the Goblet, why didn't Madame Maxime or Karkaroff insist
that Dumbledore do so at once? They certainly weren't pleased with
Harry being a contestant, and as headmaster/mistress of their own
Schools, one would think they were, if not as competent as Dumbledore,
certainly of a caliber to know when they were being fed a load of
dragon dung by him.

So, yeah, I can say with no doubts whatsoever that it never once
occurred to me that Harry had any choice at all but to go forward with
the TWT.


Kamil
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull
his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you
understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send
signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that
there is no cat. --Albert Einstein