Starfox5, I think you have a bad case of assuming Dumbledore is Gary Stu, and everyone else, especially the villains, are completely incompetent. I have noticed that most of your points rely on that assumption.

 

The half-giant they had no proof against.

A guard against a proxy who could not get the prophecy? Really, that's supposed to be a good idea? I could buy the "we Need to expose Voldemort" plan, if it had a prayer's chance of working, and if they had kept it up. But a) it wouldn't work, nagini showed that and b) there was no guard when the DE's came. So, what exactly did that guarding do?

Voldemort was an idiot with too convulted plans - see GoF, see OotP - which only ever worked due to way too many coincidences aka "plot rails". He would be laughed at at the Evil Overlord reuinion.

And Dumbledore finding a way for Harry? He didn't tell him anything, only gave him some shitty "open at the close" cryptic trope clue.

 

So Voldemort was stupid, Dumbledore was stupid, and I'm guessing Harry was also stupid. All in all, since all primary characters are stupid, the entire series also seems to be stupid. What are you doing here anyway? You do know that this is primarily a Harry Potter forum right?

 

Dumbledore was just a very old man with a very ambitious childhood that went into flames when his very young sister died from his own wand or from the wand of his brother or the man he very much loved.

If we remember the fact that this one incident pretty much changed his entire overview on life and build up the old man we know from there, his acts do make some kind of weird sense.

What I mean to say is that Dumbledore too had a very shitty life to take some of those shitty decisions he made. He kind of had his head screwed much more times than JKR cared to explain. Imagine the fact that he never healed his crooked nose after his brother hit him, the kind of impact that would have on his teenage mind and that it would only grow with time.

He never had anyone to rely upon. A man who was so utterly alone for so very long and still kept going deserves some respect.

One thing no one thinks is that he probably did not know any better. He did his best in caring for Harry and perhaps no better solution occurred to him. He was wise in the matters of war and politics, not so much in life.

Another thing. At least Dumbledore did something. Imagine if someone, say perhaps Cornelius Fudge had gotten Harry's custody, what would have happened?

Maybe he himself wanted Harry to grow up in his own care, but he never knew how to take care of him. McGonagall did say he cared for Harry like his own grandson, didn't she?

He did everything he could. He did not have the luxury of reading a series of novels and then compairing them with a few selected fanfictions featuring an AU Universe and wondering exactly how he could have probably done it better. It was real life in front of him and no matter how fast you think or how much you can plan in advance, some decisions have to be taken on the spot. He just did his best from what he knew.

And yes. I got my magic.

 

This is going a couple of pages back but what about the fiddelus charm makes it capable of hiding any object? All we know about it is that it is a complex bit of magic that can be used to conceal a dwelling place.

 

Dude going by what you're saying the only conclusion I've come to is that you really hate Harry Potter. You have literally dissed everything which makes the series what it is.
The only way to remedy this would be to write your own fantasy tale and avoid all the pitfalls Rowling couldn't.

 

Or radically rebuild the HP verse, which is done all the time in fanfiction.

 

Or you can do that and not whatever it is you're doing. Though why would you want to write fanfics about a series you hate? Something to think about.

 

To make it better than the author did. Isn't that the motivation in many or most of the fanfics?

 

They had testimony that he had been keeping dangerous creatures in the castle. That said, it doesn't take much for a half-human to be persecuted against in the Wizarding World.

Nagini had a piece of Voldemort's soul inside her. Could that be enough to let her touch the prophecy if Voldemort himself were possessing her? We don't know and I expect neither did Dumbledore, which is why Arthur being at the Ministry that day was so useful. Even if it wasn't possible, nobody could tell before it happened, therefore there's a decent chance Arthur foiled an attempt at retrieving it.

Yes. He has an ego the size of Hogwarts and prefers complex plans that may gain him greater power than simpler ones that will definitely gain him less. He's a gambler and assured of his own success despite repeated failures (this is a textbook symptom of psychopathy, by the way).

He literally couldn't tell Harry about it otherwise there was a chance that Harry wouldn't be able to do it. Self-preservation is a thing, after all. It's only because Harry was desperate and saw suicide by Dark Wizard as the only viable solution that the protection was bestowed on everyone and the scarcrux was destroyed.

Also, Harry was never intended to survive the destruction of the horcrux. Dumbledore had no way of knowing that he would be able to come back from that and, in fact, actively moulded him so that he'd be both willing and able to sacrifice himself with the knowledge that he would and not come back.

 

I don't know about that. Writing a better story than canon isn't my motivation for writing fanfics. I respect the original even if I don't agree with them. One of the reasons I can't see Dumbledore as a bad guy is because he is not a bad guy in the original story. A lot of people find a lot of reasons to hate him. Most of those reasons seem extremely contrived. You don't like Dumbledore...... fine. Write a story where your interpretation of him is that of a douche. But don't force it on the canon version.

 

I never claimed Dumbledore to be bad or evil.

 

I didn't mean you as in 'you'. I was just using it as a rhetoric device.

 

Only really terrible fanfics. So yes.

 

Late, again, but...

Idiocy. Bluntly.

There's a wide gulf between best and only when it comes to options. Especially if someone is concerned about possible moral slippage since you can potentially stretch "this is the best option" quite a ways.

In fact, for Grindelwald, just tack on "for the greater good" and you may begin to see why it is Dumbledore would kill only when it's the only option. And why the distinction is quite important! I'm not a hundred percent sure how you can read DH without getting a pretty clear idea of how past experiences shaped Dumbledore's morality and decision making. Hence the mild mockery.

 

I am somewhat curious about AD "loving" HP. I mean, it was mentioned in this thread a few times, but is there any "proof" of that? (In this case, I'd say loving somebody would probably mean acting in said person's best interest)

 

Clearly you've never been in love XD

 

Of course it takes something like balls to make difficult decisions. Doing nothing is much safer and helps you to maintain sparkly clean hands, right?

...which allowed all these DE to tun free and cause mayhem and conquer the Ministry of Magic and install a short lived government of Mr. Noseless, all to silence the demons of his past and keep his hands clean in his eyes.
Him not bumping off DE has the same reason as Batsy didn't just bump off the Joker: To prevent the series from ending after a few issues (and to maintain the rating. In the case of the Batman comics, there was this Comic Code crap (goodbye, first amendment, was nice knowing you) the comic industry was bullied into)! With Dumbledore taking on a more decisive approach, you could've ended the series in one or two books, what's the profit in it, right?

 

Before we get sidetracked by what does it mean to love someone…

I ask again!

 

The man's neither omniscient nor omnipotent.

Beyond that, the only way you can say Dumbledore does nothing is if you...hm. I'm actually not sure how you reach that conclusion. It's not like he created a demi-vigilante group outside the auspices of government to try and stop Voldemort and his followers or anything. Or, yknow, tried to figure out the whys and wherefores of how it was Voldemort didn't die properly and do what he could to remove Voldemort's soul jars once Slughorn had given the memory up.

Which, may I remind you, is pretty much why Dumbledore ended up letting Snape kill him to cement Snape's place in Voldemort's inner circle- the curse on the ring was killing him.

Or, in short: You're an idiot. All the rolleyes emotes in the world are no substitute for intelligence.

Because, you know, he's going to coup the legal government and lead the light to victory as Dear Leader Albus. Heh. Sure. Whatever you want to think, crazy person.

I sincerely doubt that Dumbledore believes his hands are clean, especially as regards Harry. It's not like the limbo scene was just filler, yknow. Also, there was the small matter of dying.

If you honestly think this remind me why it is again you're whining about Dumbledore?