Sorry if I'm replying to something a bit further up, but... the philosophers stone was definitely a trap, right? Like, I always interpreted that Harry, Ron, and Hermione- rather than saving the day- actually fucked everything up.

It always seemed to me that Dumbledore made it so that Quirrelmort was meant to get past the traps, find his way into the chamber, and then stay there for long enough that Dumbledore could stop him. After all, Voldemort wouldn't dare kill or harm a kid right under Dumbledore's nose when he was already under suspicion, so there was little danger in having the actual Philosophers Stone there. I always thought that Fluffy was probably trained/charmed not to harm children, just scare them away.

In face, my personal headcanon is that Dumbledore knew that the letter telling him to go to the ministry was a trap, and deliberately went so Voldemort would go after the stone; then, the rooms enchantments would stun/trap Voldemort until he could get back. But, when Harry followed after them, the enchantments turned off, since Dumbledore would obviously have set them up like that just in case.

Am I being stupid, or what?

 

The trio fucking shit up is correct. Had they left well enough alone, Quirrel would have been left staring at the mirror.

The rest? Voldemort might have been a little cautious in killing students, but I think he would have killed Harry in the forest had Firenze not interfered. It's also doubtful that fluffy was trained or charmed seeing as it tried to bite Snape's leg off. I haven't read PS in a while, but I think Dumbledore thought that letter was legit. As for the enchantments, I don't think so. The stuff leading up to the mirror would have been enough to stop Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Quirrel by themselves, but the trio worked it out and Quirrel had Voldemort. And the only reason the mirror failed was because of Harry.

 

Well, wouldn't Harry's protections from Lily have stopped Quirrel in the forest? I don't think they made physical contact, or Quirrel would have been severely burned. He might have tried to kill Harry, though.

 

I didn't say Fluffy was trained/charmed not to attack people, since it would have had to be believable to Quirrel, just that it had been trained/charmed not to attack children. I refuse to believe that Dumbledore would have left such a dangerous animal behind such minimal protection.

Also, I did completely forget about the Dark Forest, but I always thought Quirrelmort was kinda out of it when he was killing unicorns- like, he wasn't really... sane when he was doing it. Always seemed like that to me, anyway. The rest, eh, like I said, it's just my headcanon.

 

It's possible that Fluffy was charmed not to attack students as Dumbledore was protective of them, but he also allowed Draco Malfoy to roam free in HBP. And Fluffy was a magical creature, so he could have been immune to direct spells.

 

:facepalm. You are definitely mixing up your canon in your canon. Either that or you have never read the beginning of HBP.

This is an excerpt from HBP, page 55.
So, in the end, Dumbledore is not manipulative as people in fanon state he is. He is not the manipulative person that many people paint him to be.

 

This is a hotly debated topic, and everyone can have their own opinions. I enjoy an evil!manipulative! Dumbledore as much as I enjoy a good Dumbledore fic. It really doesn't matter, since J.K. Rowling purposely left many things to the fandom's imaginations, including this.

 

Fanfic idea: Dumbledore dies early. Everything else in cannon remains the same.
Conclusion: Harry is dead before he gets a chance to get on the express because Voldemort has a philosphers stone.

 

If everything in canon stays the same then Hagrid still gets to Gringotts before Quirellmort because Dumbledore's portrait would instruct him to do so.

 

I agree with some of the earlier statements; I wouldn't question so much how manipulative was Dumbledore, as much as I would acknowledge that none of it seemed to be malicious. Inconsiderate and amoral at times, but not outright evil...at least not outside of ff.

 

Which goes just as well for Harry, or Ron, or Hermione. So what's the point of all this?

 

This was somewhat addressed earlier when DarthBill and I went over the different protections in place in a series of posts. It doesn't appear that way at all. In fact, I don't recall there being any indication that Dumbledore even knew that Voldemort was the one after the stone until after the fact. He just knew someone was trying to get it, and that someone could break into Gringotts.

 

True, but that doesn't mean my theory is incorrect in any way- after all, it doesn't necessarily have to be Voldemort that's breaking in for Dumbledore's plan to work.

 

It does though. The protections were actually quite good and not meant to be easily bypassed. That was why I talked about the exchange I had earlier.

The best example is probably the Devil's Snare. Later in the books we find out that it is used to kill a wizard in St. Mungo's. This is particularly notable because none of the people working there noticed what the plant was. That is a hospital of fully qualified healers, and we know from the fifth book that healers are required to have at a minimum an E at the N.E.W.T. level in Herbology. You can read the other posts to see the other protections. The bottom line is that they are far from the shoddy protections fanon seems to want to make of them.

 

I don't have the book so I can't check, but weren't Harry and Ron trapped in the Snare and Hermione had to get them out? While Quirrell obviously managed, if seems like that would be the kind of thing more dangerous to a line trespasser (which Quirrellmort was likely to be) than a group.

 

Yes, Harry and Ron were stuck, but that group consisted of 3 first years. Without Harry, they wouldn't have gotten past the the flying keys and without Ron they wouldn't have gotten past the chess set. And I wouldn't classify Quirrelmort as a lone trespasser. He did have 2 faces after all.

 

She did get free. How difficult that would be is up for debate. You'd have to be pretty observant the moment you landed and hope you landed close enough to a place that would allow you to fend off the plant long enough to get to a safe place. Plus, it may have helped that there were multiple people it had to bind thus splitting the efforts of the vines. It did still come close to getting her. Ron and Harry were both bound before they even noticed.

I would also imagine getting into Hogwarts by yourself is much easier than sneaking a group in. There has to be a very good reason that Draco used the vanishing cabinet to sneak the Death Eaters into the school instead of a much simpler method. Then there would be the fact that once you got them in there and managed to get passed the protections, you'd still need to somehow sneak them out. The professors aren't exactly pushovers in a fight even without the Headmaster, and if Dumbledore is there, it really doesn't matter how big your group is.

Some of the protections for the stone are actively bad for a group too. The chess set would mean you are more likely to have members of your group seriously injured, and there is only so much potion available so either there will be a fight over it or some people are stuck there.

 

Okay, I will acquiesce that maybe it wasn't intended to be a trap, but hey, I like the idea that everything was all part of Dumbledore's plan . At the end of the day, there's no solid proof for either side, so I'll keep my head-canon as it is, and you keep yours, yeah?