Here's a possibly heretical thought: Why exactly do we need Harry to be locked in a cupboard, etc. etc.? What would change if he had a normal childhood, in a normal room, with Aunt and uncle who dislike/fear magic, but treat him decently? Is the scene where they flee from letters really needed for Harry's story? Not knowing about his parents and magic can be explained as a security precaution, so he would not let slip anything and attract attention from Dark Wizards. Same for accidental magic. He doesn't need to freak out at Aunt Marge, he can have an accidental magic outbreak following a scuffle with Dudley, and run away to cool off, then meet Sirius in Year 3. He wouldn't be allowed to get to Hogsmeade "for Security reasons", not because his slip was not signed - same effect and result. For tragedy in his background he can see his family starting to fear him, or rather his magic, and realize that his very presence scares and hurts them, even though they try to not let it show, and try to cope.

Does he need to be locked up in year 2, or can the Weasley kids simply overreact after the mails are blocked and visit in the stolen car?

What exactly do we need "cupboard Harry" for in canon? It's one of the biggest reasons "Evil Dumbledore" or "Inept Dumbledore" is so common. If we drop the canon "abused orphan childhood", would the story be hurt or helped?

 

Because Harry Potter is a fairytale.

And in fairytales the foster parents or aunts/uncles are evil and unreasonable.

In fact, imagine if Harry Potter was about a girl witch living in the middle ages.

Look at Cinderella.

There are many tropes from fairytales in Harry Potter. We even have the cool godfather/godmother character.

 

No.

/10 char

 

From an out-of-book perspective, the explanation is obvious: it's the classic Cinderella plotline. The Dursleys being shit makes the magical world seem even more magical.

However, from an in-universe perspective...

There are plenty of ways for Durlseys to be compatible with a nuanced Dumbledore characterisation where he is neither evil nor incompetent. We've discussed these ways many times. You simply refuse to even consider them, pulling fanon speculation to maintain your evil Dumbledore interpretation.

The fact of the matter is: you want Dumbledore to be evil and you look for ways to justify it. Instead of looking for ways to reconcile Dumbledore's character to the Dursleys, you actively try to shoot down plausible explanations.

Example explanation: Dumbledore honestly believed, from his position of magical expertise and knowledge of the strategic situation, that the bond of blood was the only magic that could 100% reliably protect Harry from Death Eaters. Petunia had to accept Harry freely in order for the magic to work, and thus Dumbledore could not interfere with Harry's treatment there because this would have violated the Dursleys' free will.

This is a plausible explanation that "rescues" Dumbledore's character, but instead of embracing it you try to find obscure reasons to shoot it down.

"But he could have bribed them". Firstly there's no real evidence that a bribe would be enough to overcome the Dursleys' magic hate. Secondly it seems likely that a bribe would break the magic -- Petunia isn't taking Harry freely, she's being paid to do so. That's not a bond of blood, it's a commercial contract.

"But he could have checked in on him". Well, he did do so via Mrs Figg. The fact that he didn't interfere more directly would seem to indicate that he couldn't do so.

And there we come back to your desire to interpret Dumbledore as badly as possible. When we're confronted with an ambiguity like Dumbledore not directly checking in on Harry, we have a choice of interpretations.

I choose to believe that Dumbledore acted as he did with reasons. Dumbledore rarely does something arbitrarily, and the fact that he did take measured action (Figg) implies that it was not mere neglect but rather carefully thought out. As such, the conclusion is that something restricted Dumbledore from interfering more directly.

You choose to believe that Dumbledore acted out of neglect or malice.

Either interpretation is logically possible, but it is a choice. Further, I feel that my interpretation is more consistent with the rest of canon.

In short, you're acting here in bad faith. You say you're looking for a way to avoid evil Dumbledore, but you're not doing that at all. You in fact relish it.

 

Taure please, I'm pretty sure you just broke the 13th Amendment.

 

I would like a good Dumbledore that doesn't require me to either abandon my brain or my morals to write him as such.

Though I cannot really expect much from a poster who thinks "Dumbledore knows best" after reading the books.

 

Thank you for confirming my point.

 

Sorry, your "reasonable explanation" is stupid and would not hold up to closer examination. It requires too much mental gymnastics, weird assumptions, and plain blind faith. It's too contrived to make sense. With that much warped thinking you could as well portray Voldemort as a champion for muggleborns, trying to point out how many purebloods actually died due to him, and how few actual muggleborn we see getting killed by him, and excuse the ones we see die as "needed sacrifices so the DEs do not cotton up to his plans to have them and the other purebloods kill each other off".

If all we need is this, this, this, this, and this assumption and Dumbledore looks good, then he doesn't look good.

 

The only assumption needed is to believe what Dumbledore says in OotP when he explains his actions.

It is in fact you who is making all sorts of non-canon assumptions in order to find ways to disbelieve those statements.

Without those assumptions there is no reason to disbelieve him.

 

For me at least it's a way to distinguish Harry from Voldemort. Both had a shitty childhood, but only Harry went on and became a decent human being.

Tom Riddle: "So, your mother tried to save you. Yes, that's a powerful counter-charm. I can see now ... there is nothing special about you, after all. I wondered, you see. There are strange likenesses between us, after all. Even you must have noticed. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. Probably the only two Parselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the Great Slytherin himself. We even look something alike ... but after all, it was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. That's all I wanted to know."

The similarities right down to the upbringing and the way both see Hogwarts as their true home is very important especially to shape Harry's character. Plus denying Harry a happy childhood plants the seeds of revenge in him, I believe that was mentioned in Dumbledore's office after Sirius's death.

 

No idea, why most fanfic authors lack imagination to remove "cupboard Harry" in favor of neglected, but not abused Harry (OK, (step-)parental can be abuse, but, for the sake of the plot twist...). In that scenario, the Dursleys may not like him, but they also not actively seek to harm him like they do in canon.

 

I think it's been said around here before, but the "cupboard under the stairs" actually isn't as terrible as it sounds. Granted, it's shit, but younger kids sleep in rooms of comparable size all the time. Hell, I sleep in a box room back in London - it's cosy once you get used to it.

And yes, it's pretty much a box.

Harry was neglected, certainly, but abused? I think that's a loaded word for many. Had he grown up somewhere else, there's literally no telling what he would be like. Would he have thrived in an environment where his natural curiosity was encouraged, rather than challenged?

 

No, but it is funny. One of the best parts of fantasy is how the normals react to the presence of "magic" JKR used her normals as comic relief. She also made sure to make them distasteful enough that people wouldn't feel bad about the cool wizards making life hard on the poor innocent muggles.
Now in fanfiction this gets taken to the absurd. Where people either forget to take Harry out of the cupboard entirely. Or it seems like lately they forget that "Harry is a wizard". He can move/destroy objects without regard to the laws of physics. Muggles aren't really a threat to him.

 

No.

Or more elaborately: That's just stupid.

 

I do agree with Taure for the most part. It does explain Dumbledore leaving Harry on the doorstep, without actually discussing anything with the Dursleys beyond a letter. It would be the ultimate act of making sure that it was entirely their choice to provide Harry a home.

That being said, I'm not sure Dumbledore convincing Harry to go back to the Dursleys' makes sense if we take that explanation. Wouldn't it be equivalent to him interfering in Harry's choice of considering #4 his home?

If Taure or anyone else has a possible explanation for that, I'd like to hear it.

Moving on:

Putting Harry in a cupboard was likely one of the less abusive ways to make Harry have gone through similar life as Voldemort, and still choosing a different path. The entire series does put a good amount of emphasis on 'choice', and a Harry with a normal life would not be a good comparison to Voldemort on the matter of having made better choices in his life.

What I can't understand is some fanfics trying to make his life at the Dursleys' worse than it's depicted in canon, as if the amount of abuse that Harry went through in canon just isn't grave enough for their plot.

 

Dumbledore specifies in OotP that Petunia accepting Harry freely was essential to seal the spell, but doesn't say anything about Harry choosing to live there freely. Which is lucky, as he was a baby at the time.

Though after OotP, when Dumbledore explains why Harry is at the Dursleys, Harry doesn't make any objection, which seems to indicate he accepts Dumbledore's reasoning and freely chooses the Dursleys. A lucky thing too, as Harry continued to be protected there even at the start of DH. Voldemort couldn't touch Harry until he left Privet Drive.

Given Voldemort's ability to assassinate high-ranking Ministry personnel (who would have had the highest level of magical protection possible), it seems likely that if Harry had been placed anywhere else, he would have died.

 

Not necessarily. Voldemort had infiltrated the Ministry to a large degree and was likely able to gain crucial information to bypass protections and reveal secure and secret locations of the high ranking members. Hell, he might even have the Aurors protecting the VIP on his side. Harry's protection would not be handled by the Ministry if Dumbledore had anything to say abou it. It would be the job of the OotP, which wasn't infiltrated in this way and it's likely that Harry could've lived undisturbed elsewhere and managed just fine. Now if the Ministry was involved in the protection of Harry, that'd be a totally different thing and I could understand where you would be coming from.

 

I think the Ministry would have been involved somehow. If Harry didn't go to his relatives then there would presumably have to be some official process determining a foster family, which would be prime opportunity for the Ministry to insert itself into his upbringing.

Also, the Order seems to work with the Ministry on some things. The Tonks' safehouse, for example, was said to have been given all the protections that both the Order and the Ministry could give it together.

Even if the Ministry isn't involved, there's strong evidence to suggest that the Ministry can simply declare the protections on a location void, collapsing them immediately. There's no resistance, the protections simply disappear. This is what happened to the Burrow in DH as soon as Voldemort took the Ministry.

Being able to give Harry a protection beyond this Ministerial power would be a significant advantage. It obviously has limits or they could have found Voldemort easily, but those limits seem to be quite high, given the events of the Burrow.

Even without this power, Voldemort seems to be able to bypass protections given time. Voldemort's killing of Amelia Bones took place in the summer after OotP, well before he had a firm grip on the Ministry -- Yaxley didn't get Thicknesse under the Imperius until the summer after HBP, and that was the key person they needed (head of DMLE). Voldemort's inability to access the Tonks' house shows he can't simply overpower entrenched protections, but it would seem that over time he can find ways around them or undermine them somehow.