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

[rtbthw_mom]

No: HPFGUIDX 190902




> 
> Alla:
> 
> Confused again. Granted I have not reread GoF for quite some time, but are you saying that in the book nobody is suggesting that Harry should be withdrawn? In other words, I am just not sure which part is movie contamination. 
> 

Pat: 

You are correct, in the book neither Karkaroff or Madame Maxime suggest that Harry's name should be withdrawn. (They both instead demand that their schools should be allowed another contestant also.) McGonagall wants DD to do something, she is obviously quite anxious with the thought that Harry should be forced to be a part of things. But DD reminds her that it is a binding contract. 

As for your comment that because it was Crouch!Moody that put Harry's name into the GOF, he shouldn't have been held to it - well, all I can say is that it wasn't the Goblet's job to determine if the person putting the name in was actually the person whose name was written on the paper. The Goblet's job was to choose one entrant from each school (Crouch!Moody admits at the end that he confunded the Goblet into believing there was a fourth school). 

Obviously JKR puts these restrictions on the Goblet and on DD so that the story can continue and things will work out the way they do. She has a plan for her story and we just have to sit tight and let things unfold. Sorry that you can't enjoy the ride!

 
> Pippin:
> 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" .
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Technically this is true and I have held this position for a very long time that facts that characters are giving us should be taken as truth unless they are shown to be a liars in canon, otherwise how could we debate facts?. However I do not see why Dumbledore should be granted such exception and that his words should not be held to some extra support, if we at one point or another doubted the facts from the mouths of many characters who were never ever shown to be liars in canon. Dumbledore is actually shown to be a liar by omission and more than once, like not telling Harry why Voldemort is after him, who sold his parents to Voldemort, etc, etc. I do not see why after lies by omission the statements of what he can and cannot do should be held as true automatically.
>

I still think that DD was operating from the position he took at the end of PS/SS. 

SS - American Edition, p. 298

"The truth." Dumbledore sighed. "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. However, I shall answer your questions unless I have a very good reason not to, in which case I beg you'll forgive me. I shall not, of course, lie."

I don't see how you can consider Dumbledore to have lied by omission. He never changed what he said here - never negated it in any way. This was DD's standard operating procedure. Today we might say that everyone he interacted with was on a "need-to-know" basis. If you didn't need to know, he wouldn't tell you, but he would not lie to you. 

Pat