In HBP, when Harry and Dumbledore go to the cave looking for the horcrux, Dumbledore says that he was not worried, because he had Harry with him. Was this an empty confidence boost, or did he mean something by it? I can't see him lying to a sixteen year old just to be nice, especially when he almost certainly knew it would not actually boost Harry's confidence. One explanation I can guess is that Harry is a horcrux, and has some kind of resistance to horcruces, and the other is that as the child of prophecy, there is no way he won't survive, because he has to die later. Neither of these things, however, would protect Dumbledore, and one has to assume that he wasn't worried about himself in the first place, because he was dying as a result of his last horcrux encounter. Anyone else have any thoughts?

 

I've always thought that Harry is far more competent than Rowling actually writes him as being. She is so unbelievably inconsistent with his character over the course of the books. At times he gets characterized as someone who enjoys studying and reading and actively misses going to class and at others he will come across as lazy and not trying all that hard in his classes. Basically he does whatever fits the feel she wants to go for in the chapter or arc she is writing.

 

I take it as a little bit of both of the above and a pinch of neither. Harry is not Dumbledore’s Dumbledore, but Dumbledore is glad to have him at his back. He doesn’t know what they’ll find exactly, but he trusts Harry and Harry’s support, and to act well in a crisis. Who else in the order has been what through Harry has, by this point? Who else has come face to face with Voldemort so often and antagonistically? And Harry does get him away, after all. He wasn’t wrong to say ‘I’m not worried Cus I know you’ll have my back’.

We have this ideal of Dumbledore, but I doubt Dumbledore never has moments of self-deprecation, and like any human his failures will stand out to him more than his achievements and his aptitude. Even if he is rather arrogant sometimes, in what he says about himself, I bet he bites his tongue as much as any man. The last horcrux he went to face alone almost took his life, and I’m sure that plays into what he says here to Harry. It’s not a test of magical skill, really, that may overcome Dumbledore, and that’s not precisely what he’s worried about I’d say. He trusts Harry to react the right way to the problems they encounter, more than himself perhaps.

 

I hope that's not the impression I gave with my reply. I just meant he was far more competent than he is portrayed especially after PoA when things start to get more inconsistent. Dumbledore in my mind is a singular existence. There is him and then there is everyone else. He has his flaws, but even Voldemort isn't hanging around trying to duel him for prolonged periods. In my headcanon, Harry is more at the level of a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor who has had a great deal of real world experience and on the far end of the magical power bell curve as seen by his ability to drive off so many dementors in his third year.

This is very much getting into my headcanon on magic, but I think that Harry has a fairly unique talent for magic. The sorting hat mentions he is very talented, and I take that to mean towards understanding magic on a deeper level. That's how he knows the doe patronus means no harm and how he knows it is best for Ron to be the one to destroy the locket. In my mind, this is something that you can't learn through books. It is like being a metamorphmagus. You either have it or you don't and Dumbledore and Harry are the only two characters that have it. This is why Harry knows instinctively he needs to stab the diary, why he feels like Snape is reading his mind even before he knows about mind magic, and why he gets the feeling that only he and Hagrid can see the Leaky Cauldron. Dumbledore just gives him the key to understanding how to actively use it.

 

I think thats exactly it. Of everyone in the Order, the few who have been through shit equivalent to what Harry's been through either have...issues (like Mad Eye) or too much to lose (like the Weasley's). The newer members are better trained than Harry, but less experienced. Dumbledore knows that if shit hits the fan he can count on Harry to manage in the moment until Dumbledore can fix the shit.

 

I would disagree on the better trained part. I'm not saying they don't have more training than Harry, but more training isn't necessarily better training for a given task. Kingsley would definitely be better trained. I'm just not so sure anyone else in the new members would be. Maybe, Bill would be as well, but we just don't know enough about his job to say for certain. I think fanfiction has distorted the views on post Hogwarts training particularly Auror training when it comes to dueling and dealing with dark creatures. We obviously don't get to see that training, but we do get to see the results of it, and they aren't all that impressive.

 

I genuinely don't think it can be reasonably argued that a Hogwarts student with only some limited extra independent study is better trained in magic than someone who has not only graduated Hogwarts but gone into a career where they undertake additional training or need to gain additional skills.

Is Bill better than your average Hogwarts DADA NEWT Outstanding student at combat magic? Maybe not, but I'd say your average Hogwarts DADA NEWT Outstanding student knows more spells and more techniques than Harry does.

Tonks will be better than that Hogwarts NEWT student, because she has an additional 3 years of Auror training plus her actual experience as a working Auror.

Though I'll give you that Dung isn't more skilled than Harry, but then again he's been recruited for contacts, not for skills.

 

Never said they didn't know more magic than Harry. However, you have to look at their actual jobs. Do those jobs involve DADA at all? Because if they don't it is probably reasonable to assume they are only at the NEWT or OWL level at best and at worst they regressed because they haven't had to use it in years.

Isn't Harry literally teaching Hogwarts DADA NEWT students in OotP? I mean sure they know more spells than him, but are those spells applicable to DADA?

We don't know what all their training entails. It certainly isn't three years of dueling even if we can reasonably assume that is a component of it. We do know disguises, concealment, and tracking are parts of the training though. None of that is remotely helpful in the cave. They seem to do quite a bit of tracking wizards down. Moody mentions in one of Dumbledore's memories the he spent months tracking a dark wizard. Kingsley also seems to spend the majority of his time trying to track down Sirius. I tend to lean more towards tracking being a larger part of their training because of this.

Tonks gets knocked out of the battle in the department of Mysteries pretty quickly. Sirius who spent years in prison and on the run does a better job than she does. She doesn't seem to stand out all that much in the battle in the HBP either. She obviously dies in DH. I just don't see any actual examples in the book that make me think she is that much better than older students in a fight. I mean even the dark wizards that Aurors are tracking down don't necessarily work in jobs where they deal with fighting or advanced training in dueling yet still hold their own or win against magical law enforcement due to their independent study.

Kingsley is obviously much better. He is shown fighting multiple people on his own. I'm just not sure we can say that's because of Auror training and not individual talent.

 

I think that Dumbledore was confident in Harry's strength of character and ability to get out of tough situations. Dumbledore is the most talented wizard in the books who got cursed because he fell to temptation. He didn't need magical assistance, he wanted someone with the ability to resist temptation. Harry had already proven that Voldemort could not tempt him.

 

No clear answer in canon.
My personal guess would be, because he associates death with powerlessness and the Idea of being an orphan who thinks he's powerless disgusts him.

Even as a child his first thought regarding his mother was that she couldn't be a witch, since she died.

That wouldn't work, he would have been at Hogwarts for the entirety of the Blitz.

 

He did mention to Dumbledore his mum must have been a muggle, as if she was a witch she would of saved herself (And thus him).

He see's death as muggle and weak, two things he cant accept.

 

Amazing that the Blitz ran from September 7th 1940 - May 11th, 1941 - almost as if they had been warned to avoid drawing the ire of the wizarding world in London. That said, one of the worst attacks was on December 29th. If Riddle had gone 'home' for the Christmas holidays, he'd have been stuck right in the firestorm. Of course, he wouldn't have left Hogwarts unless he had to, so probably not.

 

I'd personally put it down to his being an orphan - he's only an orphan because his mother was dead, and I'm sure the orphanage staff probably had very few kind words to say about his mother. If at an early age he conflated the idea of her being a weak, worthless, pathetic etc person with her being dead, then you can see how that may translate into a fear of dying as that would mean he was equally as worthless.

 

Is there anything indicating that someone who regularly drinks the elixir of life created by the Philosopher's stone is only immune to death through old age, rather than truly immortal as long as they keep drinking it?

 

There is no such thing as death by old age. The reason they use the term 'natural causes' now is because it's always one thing or another. I would guess that the elixir makes the user younger and less susceptible to those causes. I would not think that Flamel could not be killed, or he would have offered some elixir to Dumbledore and the Order to go after Voldemort.

 

True, I wanted to simplifly things.

Initially I would have agreed with you, but Nicolas Flamel as we see him in Crimes of Grindelwald seemed like he contniued to as, as he looks like the oldest and frailest wizard we have ever seen

That sounds plausible

I am not sure, I mean, we can't really know that he didn't offer it, since that seems like the kind of thing Dumbledore would refuse.

 

Yeah but the movies aren't really canon, are they?

 

The Screenplays are basically published books, set in the canon universe, written by Rowling, so yes they pretty much are Canon by every requirement, and that scene in particular is identical in the movie and the screenplay