Something that occured to me while read a fic the other day.

Was it ever said why Flammel asked Dumbledore to take care of the Philosophers stone?

He is around 666 years old which means he has probably had the stone for around 600 years. Why did he all of the sudden ask Albus to take care of it?

Did they sense Voldemort trying to return? If so they seemed to do sweet fuck all about it, Dumbledore didnt even notice one of his staff members acting oddly after a trip to Europe.

Did he just move his stone every decade to somewhere new? A very trusting guy considering the stone gives eternal life and riches.

What prompted Dumbledore to move it from Gringotts to Hogwarts? Did he know it was in danger?

Or like a thousand shitty evil!Dumbledore fics, was it to test Harry.

At the end of the day, we saw the protections around the stone in Hogwarts... pretty lackluster, only the mirror was effective (yet oddly less so then just putting it is a Fidelous closet). Where as we see the defenses of Gringotts in DH are pretty damn powerful.

Is there a logical reason for why Dumbledore had the stone at all, and why he put it in Hogwarts.

Naturally the answer is, its a plot point. It was her first book and I highly doubt she had any idea that adults would be so facinated by it and deconstruct it so much.

 

I like the theory that it was to trap whoever was trying to steal the stone and Harry, Ron and Hermione just got in the way

 

But why was it necessary to hold it at Hogwarts then?

 

The thing that bothers me about Dumbledore knowing Voldemort was coming for the Stone is that he had to have put two and two together when Unicorns drained of their blood started showing up in the forest. Meaning Dumbledore knew Voldemort was at the very least hanging out near Hogwarts, possibly living in the Forbidden Forest and he did fuck all about it.

The trap theory makes the most sense I suppose, but it kind of edges into 'evil Dumbledore' territory when you have him practically inviting a psychopath Dark Lord into a school full of children, then flying by broom to the Ministry for a day or so.

I also don't understand why Quirell (who was possessed by Voldemort, the most talented wizard of his generation) got mauled by a large dog and couldn't figure out a single way past him for the better part of a year with access to a huge library full of fucking magic. That's probably why it's best to not ask to many questions about the defenses in PS - they bring new meaning to the term plot hole.

 

I'm a firm believer that Dumbledore WAS trying to test Harry. It may be cliche in terms of indie/dark Harry fics, but there is a lot of evidence that Dumbledore did want him "forged as a weapon" as it were. He knew that Harry was going to have to face his death. He also knew that he would be hounded his entire life that Voldemort was alive. So he made the decisions that he did. It wasn't just to keep Harry from turning into Malfoy, it was to ensure that he'd have a willing participant to sacrifice himself towards the greater good.

I also remember reading a fic (damn it all if I can remember the name of it) where after a quick sneaking out of the Stone earlier than planned, Harry owls it to Flamel, who promptly returns to Hogwarts to chew out Albus for having such weak ass protections. I mean here we are talking about one of the most magically powerful artifacts in the world, having the ability to transform any metal into gold, not to mention immortality, and Dumbledore put it under such protection that a trio of eleven year olds who barely finished their introduction to magic are able to pass them. And it may be a plot device but the individual traps did seem way too geared towards Harry and his friends. The flying keys, the logic puzzle, the chess set. These things normally wouldn't even be considered adequate defenses, yet they play to a specific strength of one of the Trio.

In my mind, it was deliberately placed there to entice either someone to get trapped, or for Harry to prove himself. Especially when all he had to do was put the Mirror under Fidelius and have his Deputy be the secret keeper. Why place an obstacle for each teacher if you aren't trying to test the mettle of the participants, namely Harry?

 

Honestly now... let's not have another discussion about the defenses for the Stone in PS. They're meant to make for an entertaining read for children, not to get a bunch of nitpicky adult fans to agree that they hold water.

 

Meh Harry got in with the help of a Goblin, a highly illegal and hard to make potion, the exact knowledge and bodily samples from high ranking people in the current administration. And he still had a hell of a time.

Gringotts is to Hogwarts as Titanium is to Marshmallow.

 

I'd like to think that the "getting in" was the easy part, and that it was to lure the invader into a false sense of security. If and when the thief steals the Stone, though, the real security measures will kick in and give 'em hell.

 

It was a fake, Dumbledore set it up to see if Voldemort was still out there and confirm a few theories. My view anyway.

 

"Well, I got back all right," said Hermione. "I brought Ron round -- that took a while -- and we were dashing up to the owlery to contact Dumbledore when we met him in the entrance hall -- he already knew -- he just said, 'Harry's gone after him, hasn't he?' and hurtled off to the third floor."

"D'you think he meant you to do it?" said Ron. "Sending you your father's cloak and everything?"

"Well, " Hermione exploded, "if he did -- I mean to say that's terrible -- you could have been killed."

"No, it isn't," said Harry thoughtfully. "He's a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don't think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It's almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could...."

 

You think maybe Dumbledore was hoping that Harrys super love blood would be able to clean up the spirit of Voldemort ending it all right there and then?

 

I think the theory that works best coupled is the one that Dumbledore was actually trying to protect the stone. And I think judging from the available evidence, the defences at Hogwarts worked better than those at Gringotts. Remember, at the beginning of PS, Quirrellmort got to the vault easily (apparently just a short period after Hagrid retrieved the stone). However it took him the better part of a year to make his way through the obstacles and would have been foiled by the Mirror had Harry not been around.

I think the trap theory holds some water, but only if you look at it in the direction that Dumbledore was hoping that Quirrellmort would be stalled by the mirror long enough for him to be alerted to any break-in. However I hate it if people make it appear that trying to trap Quirrellmort was his primary intention for bringing the Stone to a school full of children.

The training Harry arc - :facepalm: From the very beginning Dumbledore's been portrayed as wanting to protect Harry's childhood. Shoving the kid towards a Dark Lord bent on his blood is not the way he'd do it.

 

Just to address this point (I don't really have anything to add to the other questions that hasn't been said already), we don't actually know when Dumbledore first took care of the Stone. He might have had it ever since he worked with Flamel - I'm not sure if there's canon dates on that, but I think of it as being before he starts teaching at Hogwarts. Flamel would know that Albus could be trusted with it, and trusted with protecting it. This ties in with Voldemort going after it; perhaps he'd known that Dumbledore had access to it for years, but never felt it worthwhile during his first campaign, and wasn't up to it until Quirrell.

There's also the possibility that it's a sort of passing of the torch, one mad genius to another. Flamel recognising that after six hundred years or so, he's probably achieved and seen everything he wants to, and that letting Dumbledore take the reins for a few centuries is the thing to do.

 

It's not really the traps that kept Quirrelmort out, it was the presence of Dumbledore.

Voldemort could have Imperio'd Hagrid to get past Fluffy or just AK'd the dog. The Devils Snare would have slowed him down about 2 seconds, the chess set, he could have either blasted, flew over or shrank, remembering that Quirrelmort broke into Grintotts, I doubt there's a lock Flitwick could make that would keep him out. Snape's puzzle might have slowed him down for a few minutes, but it was only the mirror that stopped him; which could have been DD's whole goal.

Had Harry not showed up, could DD have sealed the room and trapped the Voldemort spirit; possibly forever? Who knows, but it's something I've never seen done.

 

I haven't read DH in a while, didn't Snape's flashbacks show that Dumbledore knew for a long while that Voldemort was in Quirrell?

most of the weirdness with PS is due to it being written for even younger audiences than the other books (plus being the introductory book, so you have stuff like Molly asking about where the platform is) so it didn't need to make that much sense. But in fanwank terms, I think "Dumbledore chess mastered everything" makes good sense, indy!Harry cliche or not.

 

To the argument that this has plot holes in it, yes, it does. But it doesn't have any more holes in it than someone actually being able to enter Harry into the Triwizard against his will and without his knowledge or consent with nothing more than a slip of paper and a decent Confundus charm, but you don't hardly ever hear anyone complain about that vocally. The plot holes only get attention when it helps further the conspiracy theory of the day.

Dumbledore moved the stone to Hogwarts because Hogwarts was a safer place to keep something than Gringotts was. Hagrid said as much, this was never contradicted by anyone, and it was proven true by the fact that the high-security vault the stone was stored in was broken into only a few days after the stone was removed, but it took Voldemort the better part of a year to get as far as the mirror room, and the Mirror of Erised would have confounded him and Quirrel both indefinitely, because they would have been totally unable to retrieve it. The only reason there was ever a struggle over the stone at all is because Harry was present, and as a person who only desired to retrieve the stone, as opposed to wanting to use it or give it to someone else, the stone automatically came out when he looked in the mirror.

The stone 'was' safer at Hogwarts than at Gringotts. This is objective fact.

Whether or not this was because Dumbledore was physically present at Hogwarts is irrelevant. Even if it were true, it still makes Hogwarts the better choice, because Dumbledore is there, and not at Gringotts. You're not arguing that it's false. You're just splitting hairs over why it's true.

"But putting the stone in the middle of a school full of children is incredibly dangerous!"

So is putting a giant murdersnake under the school, or hiring Lockheart to teach anyone, or stationing Dementors around the school, or hiring a werewolf teacher, or having moving stone stairways in the middle of a school, or leaving the door to the Department of Mysteries unlocked so anyone can just walk in, or propping an absurdly rickety and structurally unsafe house filled with children up with questionable magic, or allowing Umbrige to do literally any of the things she did, or a billion other tiny things I could bring up that would never, ever fly in real life. The entire Harry Potter world is guilty of zero safety standard compliance. The Magical World is practically a walking deathtrap waiting to happen, and I'm convinced the only reason wizards aren't extinct is because healing magic is broken as fuck-all, and they can just regrow bones and reattach limbs with an overnight stay in a hospital. You can't hold that one against Dumbledore, because literally everyone in the entire series is guilty of it to one degree or another, and it's pretty obvious that if they had safety rails everywhere they should be, none of the cool adventures would have ever happened, so it's even justified as being that way. And if anything, Dumbledore is far better than most. Once upon a time, detention in Hogwarts meant spending a night on a rack or being whipped while tied to a post.

"But tons of us write fanfiction! We need an explanation for why this happens!"

And the books already gave you one.

Wizards. Have no. Common sense. None. At all. Not only are nearly all wizards completely lacking in common sense, but things like the logic puzzle Snape put in are about as decipherable to a wizard as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics translated into Mandarin Chinese using Navajo as an intermediary.

Most of the solutions you guys are proposing, a wizard would never even think of. They'd be busy trying to build increasingly elaborate obstacle courses or a complex series of treasure maps leading to other treasure maps that refer back to yet other previous treasure maps. None of them would think of just burying the damn thing and not writing down where it is, or making a Horcrux out of an uninteresting rock and dropping it into a deep sea trench.

That would require common sense that wizards just don't tend to have. People like Hermione and Snape and to a degree Harry are exceptions, not the rule.

If Voldemort had just hidden the Horcruxes in random places that were really hard to find and then not told anyone about it, as opposed to entrusting them to his servants and using places that are connected to his past and history, he probably would have won. He just didn't, because that would require, say it with me now, common sense.

If wizards have to protect something, and you left it up to a democratic vote to decide what they would do, they'd build some massive labyrinth filled with highly dangerous monsters and elaborate traps. They'd never just stick it in a hole and not tell anybody where it was hidden.

It's possible that Dumbledore was trying to trap Voldemort or otherwise pubilcally expose him, so he couldn't skulk in the shadows amassing power for a return anymore.

It's also equally possible that the idea of locking the stone in a box on his desk and casting a Fidelius on the box with himself as the secret keeper never at any point occurred to Dumbledore or any member of the staff who participated in hiding the damn thing.

You can't trust wizards to come up with a reasonable solution to a problem. I'd honestly struggle to find a single example of a reasonable solution that was proposed by anyone who isn't Hermione, and even she and Harry fall prey to this with unnerving regularity.

"Nonsense! Hermione never does that!"

She thought invading the Department of Mysteries with a strike force made up of a small number of quasi-trained schoolchildren against a physically-present Voldemort and an unknown number of Death Eaters to diffuse a hostage situation was a good idea.