What HP Character Scares You Most?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191928


> > 
> > Pippin:
> > But that's just it. Dumbledore's enquiries showed that Sirius was guilty. We don't know what evidence James and Sirius contrived to persuade everyone that Sirius was the secret keeper, but it's canon that they planned to do so,   and that everyone, including Dumbledore, was fooled. That, plus the eyewitness testimony of all those Muggles (which couldn't be checked since they were all memory charmed afterwards), clinched the case. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Which inquiries did Dumbledore conduct? 

Pippin:
The inquiries into who was passing information about James and Lily's movements to Voldemort. Dumbledore had gathered enough evidence to suggest that it would be unsafe to make Sirius the secret keeper. He had probably by that time developed a theory of the case that excluded Peter Pettigrew as the spy for the same reasons that Sirius thought no one would believe he was the secret keeper. 

> 
> Pippin:
> > Dumbledore didn't randomly interrogate prisoners to get their side of the story. He looked into Hokey's case and Morfin's because he suspected there was a connection with Voldemort which the Ministry was refusing to see. 
>  
> > There was no need to do that with Sirius -- the Ministry had no problems believing that he was connected to Voldemort.  So from Dumbledore's point of view there was nothing he needed to find out. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> But he interrogated him in PoA, no?

Pippin:
Snape's evidence from the Shack didn't make Sirius look innocent, but it  didn't fit Dumbledore's theory either. Dumbledore thought Lupin was innocent, so what was he doing in the Shrieking Shack being all palsy with Sirius? Also, Snape only heard Lupin's story of how they had become Animagi. That didn't explain how Sirius had broken out of Azkaban or how he was getting into the castle. And where was Lupin, anyway? Still safely tied up in the Shrieking Shack? Loose in the Castle? 

But any of those questions would lead Sirius to confirm Lupin's account of becoming Animagi, with the additional information that James had been a stag. And then Dumbledore remembered the shape of Harry's patronus. Sirius couldn't know about that, unless he'd gotten the information from Lupin. 

 So either Lupin is conspiring with Sirius, which Dumbledore doesn't believe, or Dumbledore's own theory about Sirius had to be wrong. 

 Sirius also seems to have related the story of how Harry had stopped him from killing Peter. He said in the Shack that  Harry  had a right to decide. No Death Eater would think like that. 

> Pippin: 
> >  While Draco undoubtedly deserved some punishment, even Harry did not think he deserved to be murdered, and that's what would have happened to him if Dumbledore had exposed his crimes.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> By whom? By Voldemort or somebody else? And if protection of the innocent was so important to Dumbledore, Draco was guilty not innocent, all the students who were exposed to the murderer in training were innocent IMO.

Pippin: 
Voldemort or his henchmen, what difference does it make? The only reason Draco hadn't been murdered already was that Voldemort was finding it more amusing to make him (and Lucius) squirm. 

The principal that a minor child has diminished responsibility for his actions is known in the wizarding world -- no one would expect Dumbledore to treat Draco like an adult criminal, certainly not after he himself criticized Fudge for doing so in Harry's case. Many wizards who were older and wiser than Draco had crumpled when Voldemort threatened their families. No one would expect Draco to stand up to Voldemort alone. And if Dumbledore did not defend Draco, who would?


> 
> Pippin:
> > If by justice you mean punishment for the guilty, then yes, Dumbledore believes protecting the innocent is more important. Reasonable people can disagree about that -- but I wouldn't call either viewpoint sinister. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> 
> Anybody who had been posting for a long time knows how much I hate Snape, but even I pity Snape so much every time I think of a young man who came to Dumbledore for help and instead got himself in the lifetime of slavery.

Pippin:
Snape's slavery began when he enlisted with Voldemort. But he did not come to Dumbledore begging for freedom, but only for Lily's life. I don't know that he valued  freedom any more than Kreacher did, sad to say. 

You seem not to understand how Harry, Snape and Sirius could voluntarily obey Dumbledore when it was against their own interest and not question his decisions. But we are speaking of intensely focused, dedicated people with an attraction to risk, who live in a culture where such qualities are esteemed. 

 Such people easily fall into what is called a "mission mindset". They don't have to be manipulated to challenge the odds when other people's lives are at stake. The difficulty in real life, as in canon, is often in persuading them *not* to do it.

A lot of helicopter rescue crews have gone down because they refused to make a no-go decision knowing that a life might be lost if they did. Finally it became policy not to tell the crew whether a life was at stake, so that the go/no go decision could be made on strictly operational grounds. The idea was that the percentage was better if a victim was lost than if a whole crew went down (along with the victim in some cases.)

Pippin