Presumably, the OotP, or a few trusted members, could just 'kidnap' Harry and place him at an undisclosed location. What's the Ministry going to do about it? I'm not saying that it's likely that they will do that but it's certainly a possibility and to say that the only option that ensures Harry's survival is to stay with the Dursleys seems to ignore other perfectly valid options that, like the Dursleys, have some problems attached to them.
I think the key reason why all the examples you listed failed was because the attacker knew the location of the breached safe-house. The absolute key thing is to keep the location secret. If your enemies don't know where you are, they can't harm you or undermine any defenses, which is also why the Fidelius is so effective if you have a reliable and 'secret' Secret Keeper.

 

The same thing they did to the Burrow, presumably. The same thing they did to all of the Death Eaters after Voldemort's fall: no matter where they were, the Ministry found them. Some of them got off at trial, but none of them avoided trial. There was no safe place for them.

This isn't the complacent OotP Ministry. This is a newly victorious Ministry still on war footing, led by a competent Barty Crouch Sr with Aurors authorised to kill on sight. If Harry Potter was kidnapped so soon after Voldemort's fall it would be disastrous for the Order. They'd be declared an illegal organisation, the public outrage against them would be huge, and to make it worse they're down to a mere handful of members at the end of the war.

Even if the Order were able to get away with it... it won't last. Harry dies in Philosopher's Stone because he doesn't have blood protection. Or, if not then, after Voldemort resurrects, because there's basically no place you can hide from him. When it comes to magic, Voldemort has Dumbledore beat. No matter what magic Dumbledore pulls to hide Harry from Voldemort, eventually Voldemort would find a way around it... with one exception -- the magic Voldemort has already shown vulnerability to.

 

If Dumbledore cannot keep Harry safe in a world post-Voldemort without exposing him to the Dursleys, then he is not really trying. After all, Dumbledore is still alive. Hogwarts is safe. Safest place in Britain. An army of house elves to look after him. And the reputation and personal power to simply tell the minisitry, who was on the verge of defeat until Harry saved them "Fuck off, I am taking care of our saviour, you can speak to me again once you have dealt with all his followers." I don't know how you can maintain that Dumbledore was both a capable wizard, the only one Voldemort feared, and still claim he could only keep Harry safe by giving him up to the Dursley's.

Also, if bribery is already interfering with "free will", then that sounds more like an excuse a shitty DM makes up on the spot when players point out a plot hole than some well-thought out plot point.

 

If the Ministry can do that, why didn't they do it to Grimmauld Place, Shell Cottage or any of the other places that people hid during DH? Furthemore, do you have any proof that what happened to the Burrow wasn't a fluke or exception of some kind? Did all the DEs really get put on trial after Voldemort fell? I find that highly unlikely, most didn't exactly have Malfoy's connections and money to get out of trouble and somehow they weren't imprisoned.

I wasn't thinking that they should wave a flag and yell: "Look, it's the Order of the Phoenix and we're kidnapping Harry Pottter!" If they didn't know it was the OotP or a select few members and they didn't know where Harry was(Fidelius or something similar) what are they going to do and how are they going to find Harry? Do they use the same magic from the Burrow incident that they conveniently didn't use for the rest of the war and remove all protections and reveal the location? I somehow doubt that would be possible.

Isn't the blood protection at Privet Drive different that what protects Harry from Voldemort's touch? Also, you're incorrectly assuming that things will go exactly the same when Harry is raised in wildly different circumstances. Let the butterfly flap its wings man!

 

WELL...

All of your options are flawed. Certainly there are other options that could have given Harry some level of protection, but the Dursleys was the one place that was 100% absolutely foolproof protection from Death Eaters.

Hogwarts, as we know, is breachable. Moderately easily, in fact. An army of House Elves isn't much protection at all.

The only way for Dumbledore to have given Harry protection equal to the Dursleys would be to never let Harry out of his sight... which is hugely impractical to the point of being impossible. It would also be a childhood equally as bad as that living with the Dursleys. At least with the Dursleys Harry had some measure of freedom of movement. Being handcuffed to Dumbledore would rob him of even that.

And even then, the protection is less than Privet Drive. Dumbledore is powerful, but he can, and was, eventually defeated.

This is your subjective judgement based on absolutely no argumentation. Paying someone to do something is very much not the same thing as them doing it of their own volition... this is not an obscure argument that revolves around a technical point, it's the way any regular person would understand it.

There's no mention in the books of any protections on Privet Drive itself, only protections on Harry which are empowered by proximity to Petunia.

Fidelius. As I said, the power has limits, and that's one of them. Unfortunately the Fidelius is one of the few genuine plot holes in HP as it has been presented inconsistently, so it's hard to invoke as a protection. Mainly the issue of whether or not a person can be their own secret keeper. Flitwick's explanation and the Potters would indicate not, Grimmauld Place and Shell Cottage would indicate yes... we don't have enough information.

 

I heard somewhere the following plot bunny: Make the Dursleys accept Harry, "freeze" them, put them in the basement and leave them there until he's 17. Or just put them under the Imperius curse. Or retool their brains the way Hermione did. Your assumptions, that this wouldn't work are based on pure conjecture (or probably it wouldn't work. Fuck knows. The magic of it ain't explained well enough to say either way). Your whole argument hinges all on only one argument: "Dumbledore knows best".

 

Alright so you'll agree that, disregarding the possibility of it happening, Dumbledore could kidnap Harry with Lupin or some other member of OotP(preferably someone without Lycanthropy) and place him in a location that's been placed under the Fidelius, where he would be safe from both Death Eaters and the Ministry? Likely without the Ministry finding out considering Dumbledore's magical prowess. If you agree with this, then your original point that I objected to, that Harry would only be safe at the Dursleys, is incorrect.

 

I agree that Dumbledore could have put Harry under the Fidelius. I don't agree that it would have made him safe from Death Eaters, though it would likely make him safe from the Ministry.

Basically every Fidelius we've seen in the books has been broken. We know it has a variety of weaknesses, mainly:

A. The secret can be tortured out of the Keeper (why they switched from Sirius, who would be the obvious choice).
B. The area around the place under the Fidelius is not included (Death Eater watch over Grimmauld place)
C. You can't apparate directly into a place under the Fidelius (Harry and co apparating to the doorstep).

I have no doubt that Voldemort/Death Eaters would eventually have been able to get around it.

Well, firstly, that is clearly evil so not something Dumbledore would even consider an option.

My argument isn't "Dumbledore knows best". My argument is "Here are the reasons Dumbledore gave us, and we have no reason to doubt them. To doubt them you have to invoke non-canon speculative ideas which would appear to run counter to various witnessed events and statements by characters as to how the magic works. Further, JKR has said that Dumbledore is her mouthpiece for the way magic works."

It's not like Dumbledore just said "trust me on this bro". He laid out his justifications pretty comprehensively, and nothing in canon contradicts them.

 

I don't understand how it would help. Even if it did work somehow, it doesn't preclude the fact that as soon as Voldemort returned, in any form, he could kill Harry, like during the Philosopher's stone incident.

Why would Dumbledore settle for a solution that would 'probably' work, when there is a solution that would 'definitely' work? Dumbledore didn't know when Voldemort would be back, only that he would.

Considering that, #4 would be the only place where Harry would be safe.

Another thing to consider is that, being in Privet Drive, Dumbledore hoped that Harry would have some sort of childhood. In order to maintain the kind of security you explained, I think Harry would virtually have to be a prisoner whenever he lived.

 

If you can call Durskaban childhood...

 

I gotta say, this thread is hilarious.

I love how the EVUL!Dumbles supporters have managed to put canon itself on the backfoot. "Oh no canon! Stop right there! You must explain this single action or I declare you to be WRONG!"

It's stupid. And it is not how any rational argument should go.

We can either assume that we're not told about all the factors that caused Dumbledore to make the decision he did (this is not an unreasonable assumption as our window is limited to a child's perception of events).

Or we can assume that everything we ARE told is a carefully concocted lie for EVUL reasons. Also there's lots of factors we're not told because Dumbledore is an evil liar that lies.

I don't know when discarding almost everything we're told about canon Dumbledore became the simplest solution and the theory that simply assumes a lack of complete knowledge became the mad off-the-wall idea that needs to be defended.

Anyway, you guys just carry on having your fun. Knock yourselves out.

 

Hold it! We just mentioned Shell Cottage before. That wasn't broken. The two other examples, which aren't representative of what I had in mind, were breached by treachery(could've been avoided if Dumbledore was the secret keeper) and pure chance in the case of Grimmauld, which was already under heavy supervision. I don't expect baby Harry and his guardians will go around hunting Horcruxes or the like.

A spirit that can barely possess an animal and a group of hunted or imprisoned people are going to find a location that could be practically any place on earth(a small house in the Alps or maybe Siberia?) and under a spell so secure that Voldemort couldn't break it in DH when he also had the Ministry with its apparent ward-breaking abilities on his side? I can't imagine a scenario where someone like Lucius and his posse would scour the world in search of an invisible house where the residents are would probably keep to themselves and wear disguises when they go out to shop etc.

With all this in mind and thinking about how to keep Harry safe and ensure he doesn't have miserable childhood, do you really think the Dursleys are the best option? Furthermore, if I've understood/read it correctly, the sacrificial protection that Lily provided to Harry in regards to Voldemort touching Harry would still be in effect.

 

That is not more or even less evil than what he did in canon.

We are told almost nothing about how that whole "blood proection" thingy works, so there is much space to speculate and make fanfiction from.

That works only, if you give a damn about what JKR said, after she wrote the books and doesn't justify her words with the stuff she wrote in the books themselves.

Because we almost get no information in canon, that's why there are no contradictions.

 

I honest to god don't understand the point of this thread. Do we need it? How is that relevant? It's there, it's canon. Deal with it.

 

Fuck canon, this forum is about fanfiction.

 

Hindsight is 20/20. I said Dumbledore 'hoped' that Harry would have a childhood. That he didn't have one is an aftereffect that he could have guessed, but not known for certain. It's a matter of what he decided was more likely to give Harry a childhood.

The point is not whether it was ultimately the right choice, but whether, given all the information he had at the time of his decision, Dumbledore made the better choice.

 

Except this conversation/thread is in General Discussion, not Fanfiction Discussion.

 

I've never not stopped reading a story that used the word Durskaban. Maybe I should apply the same rule to this thread? I mean, damn.

 

Knock yourself out.

 

I assumed this was a property of the taboo, but I might have misread/be misremembering.