Realistically, him being Minister would most likely not a huge amount of differences from canon, assuming canon!Dumbledore is the Dumbledore in the story proposed. It could be interesting here, if it wasn't the main plot of the story. At that point you'd have to ask why it's in the story though.

If Dumbledore was correct in his judgement of himself being untrustworthy with too much power(which I don't personally believe so, in this case at least), you could create an interesting story. Maybe he goes back to the old idealogies he shared with Grindelwald, maybe he takes a more militant approach to governing, the world is the author's oyster here.

Of the two, I think the second is far more interesting and shows more promise as a story.

 

If you think about it, though, Dumbledore was already the de facto leader of everything at the beginning of the series.

- Headmaster to the only school of this society. He controls the next generation to some extent. (Maybe not as much as their parents, but still. Everyone knows who he is.)
- Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Assuming this is a similar position to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he has a hand in interpreting their laws, too. Again, not absolute power, but then again, Fudge was also pretty reliant on Lucius Malfoy and others, and Scrimgeour wasn't that much better.
- Supreme Mugwump of the ICW. We haven't heard much of the International Confederation other than the preservation of the Statute of Secrecy, but the fact that he's so well-known abroad in otherwise insular societies is significant.

If Dumbledore became Minister, he might end up pulling a Tyrion Lannister. He enjoys the game because he's good at it. But the smarter you are, the more trouble you'll get in when you finally fail.

He's not going to go back to the "subjugating Muggles" thing like Grindelwald, but he'll probably do equally despicable things to keep extremist factions on either end of the spectrum at bay. I'm thinking along the lines of "maintaining order and the status quo" - whether it means putting down Death Eaters or Muggleborn Rights activists. (Think of how the US government has reacted in the past to both Nazis and Socialism.)

He probably won't be as openly militant as Crouch Sr., since he's a more subtle chessplayer. Probably allowing questionable interrogation/experimentation methods, politically/financially ruining his opposition, etc.

The dangerous thing about Dumbledore in this situation, is that said opposition might not even be enemies to him. (He's smart enough to be careful about distinctly labeling people as bad guys and good guys because of Grindelwald.) To him, they might all just be challenges, like opponents in a chess tournament. For example, Lucius Malfoy wants to run against him? In a political campaign, anything goes. Scrimgeour is calling him too soft? Discredit him. He's not seeking to destroy; he only wants to win. Whatever he destroys in the process is irrelevant, as long as he didn't mean to do it.


Maybe it's safer to leave him as Headmaster after all. He holds a great deal of power over the youngsters, but considering how stable the positions are (with the exception of DADA), there's less reason for him to compete against other people. Real-world analogy: much less politicking among tenured professors compared to the nastiest bits of DC.

 

Dumbledore would make a bad Minister Of Magic.He would see the jungle and not the trees.

 

That's...an interesting way of putting it

 

Using that in the next story I write.

 

I think that you could pull of conflict- instead of Voldemort infiltrating the ministry, he could try a much more frontal army approach that could allow for a very interesting AU.

 

I think he would do well at first, and then mess it up big time.

 

I'm not really sure why I'm posting in this thread, as I never, ever post in these sorts of threads, but I can't really parse why people think Dumbledore wouldn't handle being Minister well.

Like, it would be a bad story, because he'd fix literally everything if he trusted himself with power again instead of waiting till he had to step in last minute lest the world burn, but we're talking about a guy that engineered a plan that killed an immortal dark lord without the loss of Harry's life despite Harry being a horcrux, the same dark lord whose movements and plans Dumbledore predicted with essentially perfect accuracy a full year after his own death. We're talking about a man who won a duel with a generational level talent who was wielding the best wand ever created. We're talking about a guy who never loses in canon at any point except on his own terms.

Tl;dr Dumbledore would be a baller minister, because of course he would. It's /possible/ that he would incite a pureblood uprising, but probably not because if you were a pureblood would you fuck with a minister!Dumbledore?

 

Oh, please. "Perfect accuracy" my ass. Even getting the broad strokes of one facet of Voldemort's 1997/98 was plot contrivance upon PIS.

Harry Potter is many things, but a series with intelligent and competent adults it is not.

 

I mean, you can call it plot contrivance if you want, but it is what it is. You're moving the goalposts if we start with considering things like plot contrivance. In story, Dumbledore is the next best thing to infallible, full stop, in that he achieves all of his real goals.

 

Ah yes, the infallible plan that involved the Ministry falling into the hands of Death Eaters, hundreds of muggleborns and other undesirables displaced and/or killed, children were used as torture practice and a battle where dozens more were killed and Hogwarts suffered damage

Such a flawless plan that translates into healthy and sustainable Ministry politics and policies

Let's not even touch the fact that the way Harry won - Draco Malfoy and the Elder Wand - was not in Dumbledore's calculations at all. But okay.

 

Last post, because I'm not getting sucked in here.

I'm not saying that nothing bad happened in canon. There was a war, shit happens. But I am saying Dumbledore's arguably top priority was to see Harry live despite the fact that he had a piece of an immortal dark lord in him. Harry lived. Immortal died.

Book 7 was a shit show for the "good guys", but in all honesty it went about as well as it could've, with as little direct authority as Dumbledore actually had and the level to which everything had devolved. We're discussing a Dumbledore who isn't hiding from positions of direct authority, and I'm positing that he would have never let the problem (Voldemort) make it to the stage it did.

Dumbledore's failings, of which there were certainly some, almost all extended from shying away from direct authority because he "wasn't to be trusted with power". Remove that, and he becomes a bit of a sue and we have no story.

 

This started off good but then you got a bit too fanfiction-y. First of all, despite both characters being very well written and liked, there are very few things that are similar between Albus and Tyrion.

"Maintaining Order and the Status Quo"? Is this the same Dumbledore that paid house elves? Is this the same Dumbledore that gave a time turner to a Muggleborn Witch so that she could further improve her knowledge.

"Questionable Interrogation/Expeimentation methods"? The guy's not Danzo. First of all, Veritaserum is not "Questionable" since it's essentially a lie detector. Experimentation? What exactly is there to "Experiment" on in the Wizarding World?

"Anything Goes"? This is Albus Dumbledore we're talking about. The guy who hands out second chances like they're going out of style. I very much doubt that "Anything Goes" is a motto that he's going to follow.

Care to expand on this at all? The thread is in a sub-forum titled "General Discussion".

 

Minister Dumbledore would be exceedingly competent. So, the question is, what conflict would there be?

Well, if we assume that some given pile of canon problems are solved due to Dumbledore being Minister, then the question is: what problems can't be fixed due to that, and what new problems arise?

First, Minister Dumbledore can't be Headmaster Dumbledore. There's multiple reasons why: not enough time to do both, not allowing himself that much responsibility, and that there seems to be an unspoken separation of Ministry and School in Wizarding Britain. Fudge stationing Aurors and Dementors in PoA or installing Umbridge in OotP are seen as attacks on Hogwarts's autonomy. So, who would be Headmaster, then?

The obvious answer is McGonagall, but we don't actually know how a Headmaster is selected or appointed in the normal course of affairs. It's almost certainly done by the Board of Governors, though. The Headmaster certainly serves at their pleasure, so it's only natural to assume they can appoint a new one. So, who would they appoint? It's not going to be McGonagall, because that wouldn't make a good story. If you need a reason, maybe she's not experienced enough, or prestigious enough, or maybe she didn't send a Christmas card to one of the members a decade ago.

The most interesting--not the most likely, maybe, but definitely the most interesting--choice would be someone already affiliated with the school's operation. The chairman of the Board of Governors (at least at one point), Lucius Malfoy.

Instead of Headmaster Dumbledore and Minister Fudge, we get Headmaster Malfoy and Minister Dumbledore. From a storytelling perspective, while the Headmaster has limited power compared to the power wielded by the Minister, our Harry Potter will naturally spend a large amount of time at the school and so Lucius Malfoy becomes a credible villain. He's moneyed and can talk his way out of trouble and oh yeah, his son is an even more of an arrogant jackass.

To top it all off, we as readers would know that Malfoy is evil as sin, but our characters wouldn't all know that. They (especially a younger Hermione) might even assume that while he seems sketchy, well, if the Ministry still lets him be in charge of the school he can't be truly bad, right? You know, the same logic that excused Snape for years. Except that Dumbledore does know, but he's too much of a believer in doing what's right to go for the easy solution of extra judicially handling Malfoy so he's forced to deal with the situation. He may even believe that Lucius Malfoy was actually under the Imperius Curse and is willing to let him turn over a new leaf.

Finally, while some of the main plot beats can be solved by Minister Dumbledore, some cannot. Lucius Malfoy would still have the Diary, and might still use it (maybe a plot to try and oust key Dumbledore loyalists among the staff?). The Triwizard Tournament would still happen (if Dumbledore didn't/couldn't go "Hell no" when it was his school he was personally in charge of, why would he when he's Minister and has a lot more pressure to bow to external pressures from both his Ministry and foreign powers looking to bring people together?). Wormtail still exists, even is Sirius might be freed.

And, of course, there's everyone's favorite pink ball of Satan Dolores Umbridge, who may even be Dumbledore's main political opponent in the Ministry. While it's unlikely she'd retain the Senior Undersecretary position, she'd certainly still be with the Ministry. Would she necessarily be the one to lead the Opposition, logically? Maybe not, but just like with Headmaster Lucius Malfoy we get to place another antagonist into another position to check Dumbledore that he'd be unwilling or unable to remove.

Remember, Dumbledore is right over easy. Working and compromising with a political opponent, even a loathful one, is the right thing to do in order to keep society in order and have a civil government. Purging, figuratively or literally, those who you don't agree with is absolutely not a Dumbledorian thing to do, and so a lot of opposition will remain in power, and maybe even be more united than they were at a similar point in the canon timeline. In canon, Dumbledore's opposition was the Ministry and the Death Eaters. While the second had some fingers in the pie of the first, Fudge and Voldemort were two different antagonists who were working at cross purposes. A political coalition of Malfoy and Umbridge backed and working with Voldemort in the background is a much stronger opponent. Note that this doesn't require Umbridge to be a Death Eater or anything. Canon Umbridge merely has more goals coincident with Voldemort's faction than Fudge did, so even if she didn't have knowledge of who her true masters were she'd have no problem carrying out the political side of their goals.

Aside from the Hogwarts issue, can Dumbledore have his status in the ICW and Wizengamot while being Minister? Maybe not, and if it's our story we can say he doesn't. If that's the case, while we don't know precisely what powers those positions wield, it is nevertheless a fact that it's power Dumbledore doesn't have. There's potential there, too.

In short, while Minister Dumbledore looks to solve a lot of problems, between the power vacuums he leaves behind and his essential Dumbledoreness, there's still a hell of a lot of conflict waiting to be uncovered. If you think Minister Dumbledore would be a boring story, you've got very little imagination.

 

I'm not saying the Dumbledore in canon we know. He's been tempered by age and personal tragedy. I'm talking about the man Dumbledore could have the potential to become if power corrupted him.

As a Headmaster, Dumbledore would have the freedom to be more liberal. The Board of Governors ousted him for major incidents like kids getting petrified or forming rebel groups; they wouldn't care about one Muggleborn witch or Dobby. As Headmaster, his goal in life is to educate, and therefore move forward.

But, if he went into politics instead, his goal in life would not be to educate and move forward, but rather, to hang on to power instead. I imagine he'd try to hand out second chances at first, and then get disillusioned after one backstab too many.

Questionable interrogation: Veritaserum only gets you the answers to questions you know you want to ask. The real information lies in Legilimency, which is very hard to learn, with bad results if in the hands of an untrained wizard. I was thinking he might authorize legilimens-in-training to practice on prisoners. As for experimentation, I don't know what sort of thing they get up to in the Department of Mysteries...I was thinking of the brain tank, but worse?

I'm not trying to go Evil!Manipulative!Dumbledore on y'all. Only a possible projection of what could have been. Anyone would come out of politics a harder and more jaded person.

 

And why wouldn't a Minister Dumbledore be "Tempered by age and Personal Tragedy"? Assuming that he became Minister after defeating Grindewald, Arianna still died. I've changed careers more times than I've changed hairstyles and I'm still the same person so why wouldn't Dumbledore?

Not every politician's goal in life is to hold on to power. Some - believe it or not - actually CARE about the world.

"Autorize legilimens-in-training to practice on prisoners"? That's no way to get reliable information. If they're still training then the information may not even be correct.

And again, if Dumbledore didn't use Leglimency of Slughorn,a man who had key information to bringing down of the most power Dark Lords ever born, then why would he lt it be used on anyone else?

 

Love your plot summary - go write it up!