Which leaves us with inept.

 

Dumbledore never explained at all why he didn't make sure that Harry was treated decently. He knowingly tolerated 10 years of abuse (and 6 more summers of the same), despite having both the moral and legal (as the one responsible for placing him there, unless that was an illegal act itself) obligation to ensure Harry was treated well. There is no excuse at all for his refusal to act.

That alone makes him party to child abuse. Though letting Snape abuse Neville to the point that he becomes the boy's bogart is another clear case of tolerating child abuse he should have stopped.

I won't even comment on "Dumbledore knows best, so we should trust him" "argument", unless that was sarcasm.

 

Oh, man, can't you see where this is going already? At least the House-Elf debate had the virtue of being somewhat original. A real-time performance of Rita Skeeter and Elphias Doge sparring about Dumbledore's checkered history in Deathly Hallows has been done a few times, I think.

Personally, I find entrenched viewpoints on any character to be an odd sort of view when it comes to fanfiction. One of Rowling's strengths is her characterization, how she paints such a compelling picture in just a few words of, say, Tonks, to the point where there's definitely a spine there, but enough ambiguity to fill in the blanks using your own imagination. There's wiggle room on almost everyone. Broad preferences are one thing, but as we saw with the house-elf thing, once you start pulling at the threads, speculation, opinion, and extrapolation play a pretty huge role.

And there's nothing wrong with that. That's kind of why we're all here. But, it does mean that if you have an entrenched opinion like "Dumbledore is a child abuser," a debate about that fact is going to go in endless circles, because the two sides won't be arguing about facts, they'll be arguing about speculation derived from facts. There's a lot of potential for such an argument to evolve, rather quickly, into a self-correcting feedback loop.

 

Didn't he call Dumbledoof an enabler of child abuse? After all, he did nothing to rein in Snape or the Dursleys, though he could've.

 

Hey, if we're going to have another multi-page argument could somebody create a thread for it instead of filling this one, please?

 

As if that would help.

 

No, he didn't. Read the post again:

 

He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done. - Leonardo da Vinci

 

Time for a new thread I think.


The new thread can be found here: https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=27759