edit:misread.

 

I really need to get over and read that series. I've been holding off so I can read the actual Dresden books without Denarian spoiling any of that for me, if that makes any sense.

I like the way you phrased it. Dumbledore is probably the most complicated character in all the HP books.

QFT

Uh, he couldn't even bring himself to kill Grindelwald; what makes you think he'd actually decide to kill a teenage Tom Riddle, especially given that he didn't know what Tom was to become. With that line of thinking, D'dore should have laid waste to about half of Slytherin during the time he was a teacher and Headmaster at Hogwarts, cutting down Bellatrix, Lucius, the LeStranges, the Carrowses, the Crabbes and Goyles, etc. etc.

And I suppose that keeping things like, oh I don't know, say, the Deathly Hallows, at Hogwarts aren't dangerous at all? Because all three of them were there during Harry's sixth year. Not to mention all the other inherently dangerous things at a magical school, such as the Mandrakes, Hagrid's various bloodthirsty pets, the dragons for the TWT, Dolores Fucking Umbridge, QuirrellMort himself, Malfoy-the-desperate-Death-Eater-who-sends-cursed-necklaces-and-poisoned-mead, and the list goes on and on. The Philosopher's Stones was, by comparison, one of the tamer things Harry encountered at Hogwarts.

Ah yes, the days when I actually looked forward to reading a Bobmin story. <shakes head ruefully>

As for Dumbledore... well, he was in the unenviable position of having to make a lot of tough decisions, especially during his time as Headmaster. He knew, or at least suspected, that a conflict was coming with Riddle/Voldemort when Tom came looking for the Defense position, and took steps to form the Order. D'dore received the prophecy and passed the info along to the Potters and Longbottoms, and when Harry was chosen and marked, D'dore was left with the decision of what to do with Harry.

I believe D'dore knew it wouldn't be easy for Harry but he didn't think it would be as bad as it was, and after all, it was what he felt was the best of a bad situation. Granted, he could've left HP with a wizarding family, but the blood protection, along with his feeling about the circumstances of the prophecy and Voldemort's demise led him to gamble on leaving Harry with the Dursleys. Manipulative? A little, yes, but D'dore pretty much always felt the needs of the many outweighed those of the few.

As for D'dore's sexuality, it's a non-issue for me, and I confess that in light of Rowling's comments, I looked back at all the flamboyant outfits, the lofty speech and the letters to Gellert and decided to shrug and say that it fit a certain stereotype that sadly is perpetuated, but that it didn't bother me and in hindsight was neither shocking nor expected, so meh. It did shed light on why D'dore was reluctant to take down Grindelwald and why he thought people could change, since he himself did.

Speaking of Grindelwald... Since Tom Riddle came to Hogwarts in 1938 (HP Lexicon) and was a student until 1945, I'd say it's safe to say that D'dore has a good excuse to have placed Tom Riddle's antics on the back burner - namely, D'dore was busy putting off and then deciding to go after Grindelwald, whom he defeated in 1945, according to his Wizard Card. I'd imagine that a cruel and thieving little orphan boy in Slytherin, probably Muggleborn, was a lot less of a worry to D'dore during WWII than his old friend Gellert, who happened to be wielding the Elder Wand and wreaking a shitload of havoc in Europe.

Dumbledore had a shitload on his plate, most of which we're never privy to, given the limited POV of the narrative, and while I don't think he was insane or touched or whatever, I think he was an old man who simply loved life and everything about it, and recognized that too many strict rules made life boring, and that life is short, and that's why he was so lenient with the Weasley twins, with Hagrid, with Harry, with almost everyone, and it made him seem "barmy" to people like Percy and Hermione and even McGonagall and Snape. The old guy had a sense of humor even when he was dying on the Astronomy Tower, and I believe he really cared for Harry and wanted him to live, even if he thought it was a long shot.

 

Dumbledore is a "laisser faire, laisser passer" kind of guy. He likes to let people learn from their own mistakes just as he did. He lets Harry go after the stone because it was his choise , even if Dumbledore did say that the room was quite deadly he wasn't actually prohibiting entrance. If people want to make their mistakes he'd let them. His only moral obligation was to bail people out at the last possible moment, happens in every book in one way or another as far as I can remember. He did for Harry exactly what he did for Voldemort , exactly two shits. If Harry would have started to act like Voldemort used to he would give him a talk about morals , nothing else.

 

You just proved my point. He knowingly puts children under his care in harms way to suit his own purpose.

 

It's a magic school and magic is dangerous, the greatest weapon in the wizarding world is handed to children at the age of 11. In the wizarding world everyone can cause harm on almost the same scale, either with a wand or with a cursed object or accidental magic so anything Dumbledore had brought in is just another one of those dangerous things that life there is composed of.

 

Oh yeah, Do you think letting philosopher's stone in Gringotts would have been a better idea? Oh! I think you forgot the vault that contained the stone was breached and the stone could have been easily stolen. He kept the stone at Hogwarts thinking that it would be safe, you can't have Voldemort taking the stone from Gringotts now, can you?

He didn't blindly trust every teacher as he made sure that there would be protections from everyone of them. He failed to predict Quirell, come on Dumbledore is not a god and I don't honestly believe that he would use leglimency on every person he meets. The Drawback of coarse is that three first years had easily broke those protections. Its yet another loophole of JKR's writing. It's not as if she had always been perfect.

Deathly hallows - Where do you think he should have left them? buried deep underground like a treasure. Cloak was Harry's and no way anyone could have used it as a hallow but Harry(Dumbledore said so himself). Dragons were a part of the first task and the tournament was supposed to be life threatening would you have preferred Grindylows instead?

Umbridge was sent by the ministry as he was not able to find a suitable person for the job. Is that his mistake too? Great logic.

 

He could have kept the stone in his pocket the whole time, using the mirror as a ruse. That way he could have lured out Voldemort without the stone ever having been in danger. But for the sake of the plot, I guess JKR couldn't do that...the smart thing.

The 'protections' around the stone were hardly that. I doubt you can call something protected if a bunch of first years can breeze by them. Granted, they each brought their own unique skills to the table, but the protections surrounding the stone don't hold a candle to what Voldemort did to protect his horcrux in the cave. They certainly didn't stop Quirrel.

Also, Quirrel was suspicious from the start. Snape was on to him from the beginning, and Snape reports to Dumbledore, so even if DD somehow failed to notice the little coincidences (which is somewhat unbelievable), he had his little pet to inform him.

Taking into account all these details, it's not surprising that a lot of authors think the first year was a whole conspiracy set up by Dumbledore to have Harry end up confronting Voldemort.

 

Dumbledore probably didn't trust himself to not use the stone, so the mirror was likely as not a protection against him as well as Voldemort. Also, Harry was almost uniquely suited to retrieving the stone because he never considered immortality to be something he'd want. Look at his heart's desire, to have his dead family back. How can a person who believes in heaven have that if they're immortal? Against Voldemort the protection was perfect.

 

Maybe. But that's speculating something hard. Even if he didn't trust himself, he could have hidden it away in any number of places under real protections, or entrusted it to someone who could keep it safe...like McGonagall.

No, he wasn't. I doubt Harry was the only one who could deny immortality. You aren't giving Ron, Hermione, and perhaps some of the other students and teachers enough credit.

And who said that Harry believes in heaven? non sequitur. Besides, the soul and the afterlife is a form of immortality.

The ideas of the soul and the afterlife are cultural universals born out of man's fear of death and the desire to live forever. It is untestable, unverifiable, etc. etc. but so many people, even if they don't believe in religion, God(s) or deities, believe in the soul, afterlife, and reincarnation. It's illogical.

 

Just throwing it out there... It wasn't until AFTER the stone was moved that someone made an attempt to steal it from the Gringotts safe. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, but it doesn't apply in this situation because DD couldn't possibly have known the stone was going to be stolen. AFTER the Gringotts break in, he knew with certainty that it was a priority target for thieves with unknown intentions and ethics. What better place to put such an object than a school for children? :banana:

Edit: Also, the whole idea of Hogwarts being "The Safest Place In The World" ensures that anyone who DID manage to breach it with evil intentions would have to be very good at what they do. It basically means that the only people who will end up getting into the school to steal the stone are the people who could use it to create the most mayhem.

I don't, nor did I ever, have a problem with the idea of DD keeping one of the hallows and giving another to Harry. There had not been an attempt to find, nor steal the hallows in centuries, as almost everyone believed them to be a myth.(Canon 7th book.) No outside danger would come about from him keeping the hallows, the same cannot be said about the Philosophers Stone.

Actually yes. Supposedly DD holds a lot of power in the ministry, but it doesn't say anywhere in the 5th book that he even attempted to have Umbridge removed, despite the obvious drop in student morale. The fact that she consorted mainly with the sons and daughters of death eaters should have been enough warning for DD, however all he does is a few token gestures of resistance such as allowing Trelawney to stay, which certainly did nothing keep the student populace safe.

 

The mirror was under an enchantment that apparently even Voldemort couldn't break, and relied on a person's desire not to use the stone for their own gain to be bypassed. Dumbledore has been shown to avoid positions of power if at all possible, and having the temptation to take the stone constantly be there without a safeguard even he could not get round would be something I can see being in his character.

Ron's greatest desire at that point was to be famous, and he had a pretty large complex about being poor, so a stone that can grant you infinite wealth would be something he would want. Hermione would likely as not want to study it.

I'm basing the assumption on my experience of life as a child in the UK. Kids are generally told that there is a God, there is a heaven and that if anyone close to them dies they're going to be there watching over them. We're not a particularly religious country but there are some things we've kept because they're not doing any particular harm, like morning prayer in primary school. It's a reasonable assumption that Harry would hold the idea that his parents are watching over him (especially after seeing them in the mirror) very close to his heart, because that is his deepest desire and he'd give anything to have it be true.

That's also the point with Harry being almost uniquely suited to being able to take the stone. He doesn't want unending mortal life, since his family is waiting for him 'up there' and he can't have that if he's immortal.

 

Oh God! I think you missed certain parts at OotP. Dumbledore was slandered and ridiculed by the Daily Prophet(even severely than Harry) and if I am not mistaken his Chief of Warlock position was taken too. His political power was on decline as half his supporters believed Prophet's stories, the truth is people tend to believe the newspapers even if they are just rumors. However he was still admired by his peers.

The only thing I believe Dumbledore could have done is to create distrust towards the ministry among the other wizards so that he could throw the government and take it by force. Then again he was never an example to use force he always defend himself and others as I believe it to be one of his major trait.

Umbridge? Come on mate, I think it was the ministry that passed the law(it was mention somewhere in OotP) that if the Headmaster was unable to appoint a staff then the ministry could. That is exactly why Dumbledore couldn't do anything about that bitch.

 

Voldemort couldn't break the enchantment in the short period of time that he was alone with the mirror, but given enough time to study it, I'm sure he could have broken the protection somehow. Remember, he is a genius on par with Dumbledore and has done some pretty incredible magic, even at a young age.

And even if we assume Dumbledore is how you say, I still don't think you are giving him enough credit. He knew the PS would only be in his possession for a short period of time, less than a year in fact. So you are saying that Dumbledore put the stone in the mirror because he didn't think he could resist the temptation for what, 9 or so months? I think Dumbledore is made of better stuff than that.

You're also assuming that Dumbledore couldn't get the stone out of the mirror, which he had access to at any given time. The only difference between holding it in his pocket and having it in the mirror under the 3rd corridor is that he would have had to take a few minutes to disable the rather pathetic protections. We don't know what Dumbledore saw in the mirror, but I'm betting it was his sister or Gellert and not endless gold and immortality. Therefore, he could have retrieved the stone from the mirror any time he wanted...and if he had succumbed to temptation, the mirror wouldn't have been an obstacle for him.

I'll give you Ron, but I don't think Hermione would want it with the intention of using it. Hermione, even then, was a pretty smart cookie. I'm sure she could deduce the dangers of immortality without difficulty. Like you said, she would probably think it's fascinating and want to study it. The mirror then wouldn't stop her from retrieving it because she actually use it for its intended functions.

Without getting into an argument, I do believe that perpetuating these ideas and practices does indeed do harm, in the divisiveness and group mentalities that arise from such beliefs. I also have a problem with prayers in school. Prayers to who? The Christian God undoubtedly. The state should have nothing to do with religion, much less endorsing a specific religion by morning prayers in school.

Key word there: almost. Harry got the stone out of the mirror, but I have no doubt Dumbledore could have gotten it out on a whim should he choose, or Hermione if she somehow reached the end of the protections and not Harry (although she'd probably get killed by Quirrel afterwards). And your argument that Harry knows his family is waiting for him 'up there' is still a non sequitur. Remember what Dumbledore tells Harry of the mirror? It shows us our deepest desires and nothing more. It's an illusion that many people have succumbed to and wasted their lives away for. The afterlife has absolutely nothing to do with the mirror, and it isn't until DH, where he meets DD in the train station that he actually 'encounters' the afterlife. With the exception of his question to Nick at the end of OoTP (IIRC) regarding whether Sirius would come back as a ghost, there is absolutely no evidence that Harry believes in heaven or the afterlife in canon.

The existence of ghosts themselves isn't evidence of any particular wizard's beliefs on death and the afterlife.

 

Clearly you should prove this theory:
1) Become principal of school.
2) Allow your 11 year old students to try to stop murderers because it's their choice.
3) Continue posting argument while in prison for child endangerment.

My biggest problem is that JKR seemed to want it both ways. Especially in the later books she made Dumbledore practically omniscient, capable of precisely predicting events even long after he died. That made him basically the puppetmaster of everything that happened, much of which was pretty awful, yet there was never any real suggestion in the books that what he did was morally questionable. Even "You planned for me to die!" turned into "Oh well, no big!" rather rapidly.

 

Thanks


Still, it isn't moraly questionable if there was no other way, right? Besides, you can't actually stop year olds from doing shit. They'll still do it if they want to. Dumbledore was not omniscent and he might have stopped the kids if Voldemort hadn't tricked him to leave at key moments. Maybe we should write Rowling and ask her this question.

 

With magic you can.

If Dumbledore truly wanted to keep people away from the 3rd floor corridor, he could have simply put up an age line or some other type of barrier, charm, or ward(s), and the kids wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it.

 

Can I go for the Chewbacca defence here??



It could be another plothole.

 

I have pretty mixed up feelings about Dumbledore. Sometimes I think he means well and that he is a human being and makes mistakes, but other times there is stuff I can'f forgive Dumbledore for. Such as letting Slytherin House continue existing and allow them to get away with their pureblood surpremacy crap. That and leaving Harry under the mercy of the Dursleys', despite knowing fully well that they don't tolerate magic. Those two reasons (along with more, in which I can't think of right now) is reasons why I think Dumbles' sucks as a character, IMO.

Cheers,
Mary

 

A point that needs to be made - the entire Philosopher's Stone plot wasn't just out of a necessity to avoid its theft by Riddle - it was an attempt to ensnare Riddle in the first place.

Quirrell comes back, and there's something different about him. Wonder what that is? So Voldemort's returned to England. It coincides with Harry's return, but it probably wasn't planned. Well, Voldemort wants a way back, and the Philosopher's Stone is a pretty effective means of regaining a body and immortality.

So Dumbledore lures him in. Gets the stone off his old friend and places it at Hogwarts, and makes sure to have "protections" put in place to defend it. The real protection, of course, is the Mirror of Erised. Snape looks after Quirrell, and when the time is right, Dumbledore leaves for the Ministry. Riddle's been in hiding for ten years, and now Dumbledore has his chance to take him down.

Except, of course, Harry fucked the whole thing up by taking the Stone and then nearly dying, but even still, Dumbledore can't fault the boy's bravery.

It does frustrate me somewhat when people go on about Manipulative!Dumbledore. What do you expect from a man pushed into the responsibility of leading a war effort? If he does nothing, then he deserves criticism. We're talking about a highly capable man with a moral streak - he is a competent puppeteer, but nevertheless he is a reluctant one, pushed into the position due to his genius. His responsibility demands he does everything possible to save society - and he has to work in a desperate situation that pits a teenage boy against a madman with near unlimited power at his disposal. That's why Harry still kisses the old man's arse seventeen years later - because he would have been up the creek without his old Headmaster's manipulations.

 

Unfortunately, 'Dumbledore knows best' makes for pretty boring fanfiction.

Just like it made for a pretty boring ending to the series.