Dumbledore/LONG and bad, SKIP if you do not feel like reading it :-)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 190988

Alla: 
> Dumbledore decided he does not want to implement those ideas, that he is
> remorseful over it. Fact - or at least we have not seen anything to the contrary
> in canon, Dumbledore KNOWS that Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort but does not tell
> anybody. I do not care that Tom Riddle had a perfect reputation before he
> dissappeared. 

Pippin:
Saying you don't care about canon facts does not make them go away:)  This one shows that Tom Riddle was not remembered as a pitiful human who had sociopathic tendencies.  Dumbledore could not get anyone to believe that when Riddle was at Hogwarts, so how was he to get anyone to believe it later? He has no proof. Known is better than unknown indeed, but not if what everybody "knows" is a lie. 

> 
> Fact:
> 
> Dumbledore disregarded the wishes of Lily and James that in case of their death
> Harry would be brought up with Sirius and took him to Dursleys. 

Pippin:
So, your idea is that Dumbledore should have left Harry lying in the rubble, trusting to Lily and James's plan to keep Harry safe? Lily and James's plan had gone rather wrong at that point. Dumbledore had no way of knowing  which of Lily and James's friends had betrayed them -- even if it wasn't Sirius it was likely to be someone trusted by him --but he could be sure that Petunia was not going to let any Death Eaters into the house at Privet Drive if he could give her the power to keep them out. 

What command should Dumbledore have given Hagrid? -- "Bring Harry to his aunt and uncle's unless someone shows up claiming to be Harry's godfather, then you should hand Harry over at once." LOL. 

Lupin tells Molly that if something happens, "we" will not let her children starve. So it was understood within the Order that there was a collective responsibility for the children of its members, and Lily and James would have expected that all the Order would do whatever was necessary to take care of Harry if they could not. 

Alla:
<snip>. But even if protection is there, maybe JKR feels it is okay to
> have a life full of abuse and neglect on the off topic chance that when
> deatheaters come Harry will survive it.

Pippin:
I do not see any evidence that Dumbledore thought it was okay. He never says it was okay. He only says there are worse things. That is JKR's opinion, I am sure. You are welcome to disagree with her, but it doesn't follow that Dumbledore wanted Harry to die, not when he is going to such elaborate lengths to keep him alive. 

There's often a choice, when someone is in serious danger, between  trying to keep them comfortable until the end comes, or trying to save them  at the cost of considerable pain and probable damage. That, to me, is the choice that JKR put before Dumbledore. 

 It's very possible that if it had known the truth,  the WW would have given up on Harry the way it would have given up on Arianna. Do you think they would have trusted Harry with a wand at all, much less a  wand that was brother to Voldemort's, if they knew that Harry had a bit of Voldemort's soul inside him? 

Alla:
> 
> But of course the best comes in book seven. JKR spells it out for us that
> Dumbledore tells Snape that Harry has to die. Could he want for Harry to live?

PIppin:
Of course, everything in the books up until then can be read as Dumbledore always planned for Harry to die  because JKR wants Harry and the reader to think that's what the plan was. But then there's the gleam. That's another canon fact that won't go away. Sure it was ambiguous, right up until Dumbledore explained what it meant. 

"He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort's one last hope for himself."
Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him. 
"And you knew this? You knew--all along?"
"I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good" -- DH ch 35

> 
> 
> Pippin:
> > Canon fact is, the books do distinguish, plainly and unmistakably, between
> Dumbledore giving Harry information and Dumbledore giving Harry orders.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Indeed. But where I did say that it did not?.

Pippin:
Post 190901:
" Dumbledore trained Harry to make sure that every
word from his mouth is accepted as command at the end IMO."

To me that sounds as if you think Dumbledore brainwashed Harry so that he could no longer tell the difference between instruction and orders. My apologies if that is not what you meant.


> Alla:
> 
> But of course it was Harry's "choice". After all Dumbledore is a brainless and
> soulless portrait now. Dumbledore's brainwashing Harry paid off really well.

Pippin:
I don't think the Headmaster portraits are supposed to be brainless or soulless. They are magical objects that can think for themselves and like the ghosts, they bear an imprint of the soul of the wizard they portray. 

Alla: 
> Have I mentioned how much more I loved the scene with Elder wand in the Movie?
> To me movie makers were kind enough to "clean up" this part of the ending which
> I cannot stand and had I not wanted to avoid some movie contamination, I would
> have happily agreed to remember this scene rather than the book one. To me
> Movie!Harry becomes his own man and Canon!Harry I have to imagine so.

Pippin:
I like that scene too. Obviously the filmmakers have to take some liberties with the story in order to tell it visually. They are not going to get into the nerdy discourse on wandlore that we have in The Tales of Beedle the Bard to explain why the wand could not have been broken a long time ago.  But even in DH Harry points out that Hermione should not have been able to break his wand if it was so powerful. 

To me, Harry became his own man when he decided he did not need to know exactly how Arianna had died. It doesn't matter because he is no longer measuring himself against Dumbledore.  Harry at last knows who he is, and he is who he wants to be, and I think that is the greatest gift Dumbledore gave him. 

Remember all the theories that Harry was going to have to turn into Dirty!Harry in order to defeat Voldemort? Well, Dumbledore recognized that there was a way for Harry to defeat Voldemort without having to turn him into something Harry never wanted to be. 

Which does not preclude Harry from asking Dumbledore's portrait for advice.-If you (not you, Alla) only discuss things with people who share your view of the world and think  exactly the way you do, you are not likely to learn very much -- which is why I enjoy our discussions even though we see canon so differently. 

> .Pippin:
> > Certainly I agree that Dumbledore was attempting to form Harry's character as
> well as impart information and skills. But that's not a bad thing, IMO. That is
> what education is supposed to do, not only give us knowledge but a moral and
> philosophical framework for using it.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Only IMO the education that stops you from questioning with critical eye what
> you had been told could be extremely dangerous education and character's forming
> is all good to a degree IMO.
> 
> Pippin:
> > Dumbledore does want Harry to believe that one person can make a difference.
> And I think JKR wants to show us that, not just because the genre demands it,
> but because it's what she believes. She could have chosen a different genre,
> after all. The books show not only that one person can make a difference but
> why, sometimes, one person has to.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Certainly one person can make a difference in many ways, good or bad, but one
> person saving the world? Well, I personally am aware of *one* religious figure
> doing that (I mean we have other religious figures too). It is all in the degree
> for me. 

Pippin:
In Judaism, to save even one life is to save the whole world. So while I am sure that JKR means Harry 's sacrifice to be understood in a Christian context, it is not the only way to understand it. I agree that Harry was damaged, I just don't see Dumbledore as to blame for it. 

Harry's parents were murdered and the whole wizarding world was expecting Harry to grow up and be their savior -- even the DE's were hoping that Harry might be a replacement for the Dark Lord they had lost. What sort of a normal upbringing could Harry have possibly had in the WW? 



> Pippin;
> > He did not want Harry to make a hot-headed, rash decision about the hallows,
> or about destroying the horcrux in himself, before Harry fully understood what
> his choices were. But he was hampered because Harry did not want choices, he
> wanted certainties, even if the certainty was death.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> He made Harry's choices for him though IMO. Didn't he say I wanted to slow you
> down?

Pippin:
He wanted to slow Harry down because he didn't want Harry to act rashly. That is what a good teacher and a good leader does -- they don't put you into a situation that they don't think you are ready to face. They have to make those decisions for their followers (because the followers don't have enough knowledge or experience to make them), and sometimes they make bad ones, not necessarily because they have bad intent. 

Dumbledore allows that  he was too cautious, too scarred by his own experience to trust that Harry was ready. 
 
> Alla:
> 
> All I wanted is a little more clarity that he really tried to keep Harry
> survive. The fact that Harry survived just does not cut it, because ancient
> magic does not need Dumbledore's help to work, doesn't it?

Pippin:
It needed Dumbledore's help for Harry to trust that  there was  ancient magic that would save him, which it did.  It just required Harry to believe, for a very short time, that his trust had been misplaced. 

Pippin