HBP Chapter 12:

HBP Chapter 13:

How would you have dealt with this? Did Dumbledore do enough, in preventing further theft but doing nothing to punish or reverse the thefts which had already taken place (which included, in case anyone forgot, a horcrux)?

How do you think Harry/Dumbledore should have handled the situation with Mundungus?

Seems to me that if you were wanting to drive a wedge between Harry and Dumbledore without resorting to shitty fanon evil!Dumbledore tropes, a legitimate disagreement on this issue, with Harry taking a harder line, could be one angle.

 

Personally? Dumbledore didn't do near enough because he didn't actually do anything about it. Preventing further theft? How much of what was left was of any value by the time they caught him? What the hell did Dung have on Dumbledore that he was so reluctant to punish the scumbag? As for how it affects their relationship, I don't think this is a big enough issue to drive a serious wedge between Harry and Dumbledore, but I could see it being a sore point for sure.

If it were me in their shoes, I'd vote for forcing him to return everything he took (including what he'd already sold), then giving him a thorough beat-down, followed by memory charms specifically targeting everything he knows about the Order and the identities of the people who punished him for screwing them over. Basically boot his ass out of the Order with a lot of bruises and only the vague memory that he'd fucked up big time by stealing from someone he shouldn't have.

I sincerely doubt Dumbledore would go for something like this, but I could see Harry calling for something similar if he was angry enough.

 

I think it was just a low priority thing to Dumbledore, Harry had more than enough wealth, Sirius hated Grimauld Place and Harry didn't want to inherit the property in the first place. So while he obviously didn't like the theft, considering the point in the war, I doubt he was willing to antagonize Mundunugs too much, as he was quite useful and loyal according to Sirius. I'd imagine that considering that Dumbledore was focused on tracking down the Horcruxes at the time, he'd consider Mundungus one of the most valuable order members, as that would be exactly the kind of thing you'd expect him to be useful in.

Though I think Dumbledore would have been more insistent, if he thought that it would seriously bother Harry, so I dont think it's that suitable to drive a wedge between Harry and Dumbledore.

 

The most damning thing about those quotes is that it makes it seem like Dumbledore knew about Mundungus' stealing already before Harry confronted him. That to me would be way larger breach of trust than simply not doing anything after Harry told him.

All in all this is just one more example of why I think that Dumbledore was a poor leader, and managed to make many things worse than they could have been. The question then is not how they should have handled the situation they faced, but what they should have done way before to stop situation like that from happening in the first place.

 

It’s a bit hard as we don’t know how valuable Dung was. It’s said it’s handy to have a thief in their keeping, maybe Dumbledore actually found him very valuable.

In general Dumbledore should of taken a direct hand in catching Dung, or delegate it. Return and retrieve everything he can, then restitution of some sort.

 

I mean, there are other ways of keeping a thief on hand than letting that thief steal from you.

 

Harry should have straight up just beat the living shit out of Dung. Whatever DD did to Dung after the catastrophe at the start of OotP clearly didn't work, and that involved the Chosen One nearly getting his soul sucked out, ending up in front of a Kangaroo Court, and nearly expelled. So now you talk Dung's language.

Dung was a well known thief and petty criminal, known to hang around Knockturn Alley. He's the dregs of society. People in that world understand force, violence, and brutal retribution better than most. You don't jack the neighborhood crack dealer because he'll turn the front of your house into Swiss cheese. You pay back the loan shark on time in full plus interest or you'll under up in hospital with two broken legs from 'falling down the stairs'. You don't call the cops when you get jumped, you get a group of friends and you find the guys who jumped you.

If Harry lays a solid beating on Dung, Dung isn't going to be so 'light fingered' around Grimmauld Place. If he forgets that lesson, well I'm sure there's a spell designed to break fingers one at a time.

 

I don't get that impression. Rather, I see it as he became aware of it because of the confrontation but before Harry told him.

 

I guess the question that needs to be asked is just how useful was Dung really? Because we're only ever told that he is, but we're never shown anything but him being a useless scumbag. Admittedly this is a problem with a lot of characters throughout the series. By limiting her POV character so severely, Rowling ensured that most of the supporting characters' stories took place "off-camera", and thus the readers were in for a lot more "tell" than "show" where characters like Tonks, Dung, or Remus were concerned.

Still, it can be very frustrating sometimes when you run into these situations because there's just not enough there in the source material to easily judge the situation. I personally am of the opinion that Dung was basically useless, or at least that his merits were outweighed by his demerits. On a basic level I don't believe Dumbledore was a good, competent leader, so I don't trust his judgement of the merits of keeping a guy like that around.

But in the end, without anything definitive from the text, that's nothing more than one person's opinion.

 

I'm with Othalan that the key question is how useful is Dung, how important is he to the war effort. You have to allow small things to slide sometimes, and a little bit of thievery if thats what it takes to get vital intelligence from Dung...its not much of a sacrifice. Although I would have said that Dumbledore should have discussed that with Harry - presented as a sacrifice for the war effort, there's no way Harry would have refused to turn a blind eye to Dung pilfering Grimmauld Place.

 

I mean... there are multiple aurors in the order, Harry could have tried to report the items as stolen. As say, Kingsley was able to access Grimmauld place, it wouldn't interfere with the security of the fidelius charm. Actually attacking Mundungus could have gone poorly for Harry.

 

Dung is also the Order member, that left his post and let Harry get attacked by Dementors.

This could be seen by Harry like the straw that broke the camel's back regarding his faith in their decisions.

From his point of view, he is the one always getting disregarded and pushed out of the way, because it's apparently more convenient for the adults. And yet, in the end, he has to put his life on the line to deal with whatever crisis.

He's treated either as a nuisance or as fragile while assholes like Snape and Dung can do whatever they want with seemingly no consequences.

Edit: The Order trusted Peter Pettigrew once, too.