varying views of characters

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191098

Alla: 
> I so do not follow your point about the information ministry should have? Ministry should have the information that Peter fed them?! A lie?!

Pippin:
The point is, only James, Sirius and Peter knew that Peter was a liar. Dumbledore did not. Not only was Peter lying about who the secret keeper was, James and Sirius helped him to do it. Lupin was deceived too. Maybe even Lily.

Peter accused Sirius of betraying Lily and James in front of a crowd of witnesses -- naturally the Ministry would have asked Dumbledore and others what he was talking about, since everyone knew that Lily and James had been murdered by Voldemort.

 Dumbledore could have refused to answer the question, but why should he? Everyone who believed that Sirius was the secret keeper would have wanted him hunted down and caught, and the Ministry's resources for doing that were far greater than Dumbledore's. 

Alla:
 I completely do not follow what this has to do with Sirius' loyalty to the order? And speaking about loyalty, does Dumbledore owe any loyalty to his soldiers? Like maybe again going to my original point - investigate further?

Pippin:
Here's an example from real life. I was just reading the obituary of a Navajo Code Talker, part of a secret operation that used the Navajo language as a code during WWII. The Germans never cracked it -- in fact it stayed classified for years after the war was over. 

This man was stationed overseas during the war, and he was told that if he was captured, he should die for his country.  

That's what it means to be part of a secret war -- the secrets are more important than you are, period. The general's job is not to see that his soldiers do not die to keep their secrets -- just the opposite. It is only his job to see that they do not die in vain.  

Sirius knows that the war against Voldemort is not over. He knows that the Ministry is full of unidentified DE's. So he has to behave exactly as if he'd been captured by Death Eaters, ie, he'll die before he tells them anything.  Dumbledore can't go to Azkaban to interrogate him, nor would Sirius expect it, because the Ministry will be listening to everything they say.

Alla:
 This meeting happened in the first place because dumbledore completely disregarded the fact that James may need cloak for something much more important than his intellectual curiosity and because of his extreme selfishnes. Yes I know Harry forgives him for that as well - I don't.

Pippin:
 I agree that JKR needed a way for Dumbledore to have the cloak so he could give it to Harry. She couldn't leave it in the ruins for Sirius or Peter to find. 

 She could have given Dumbledore a noble reason for taking it, and she didn't. But she also made it clear that James wasn't using it to protect his family either -- he was using it to sneak out of the house when being cooped up with his young family got to be too much for him. 

As an empty-nester I sympathize completely, BTW.

 But you can't have it both ways.

If the cloak could have been used as a protection against Voldemort, then it wasn't an idle or selfish pursuit to try to discover its secrets. OTOH, if it was useless against him, then Lily and James were not endangered by its absence. 


Alla: 
> It all comes down to this for me. As somebody (I think Magpie) said once that her characters are interesting chess pieces but she makes them do things to move plot forward which makes them look much more sinister than they really are. 

Pippin:
Since Harry and Voldemort are the only characters whose motives we know first-hand it is possible to invent sinister motives for all the characters. We've done that with Lupin and McGonagall and even Ron. But if you make Dumbledore the chess-player instead of JKR, it gives DD more power over the other characters than he ever had in canon and makes them much more puppet-like than they actually are, which I think is an injustice to JKR's craft.   

Sirius is hardly the only Order member who is depicted as contesting with or disobeying Dumbledore. Peter betrayed him, Lily and James refused to make him the secret keeper, Lupin kept the secrets of the animagi and the Marauders map for years, Arthur fell asleep on duty, Snape stopped the Occlumency lessons, Molly tried to keep Ron, Harry and Hermione from their mission, McGonagall tried to get Harry to tell her secrets, Mundungus used an Order safe house as a hiding place for stolen goods etc. 

It's really only the trained Aurors: Shacklebolt, Moody and Tonks, who display anything like military discipline.  

Alla:
 It is funny how when Sirius is dead Ministry believes his innocence despite what Dumbledore proclaimed, how hard it would be. 

Pippin:
It got a lot easier when Sirius got himself killed fighting for the Order in front of a room full of witnesses and Fudge saw Voldemort with his own eyes.

Pippin