So that duel was a draw with neither side managing to go all out. Just 'cause Voldemort was throwing out Avada Kedavra like party favors doesn't mean he was giving his best. The duel wasn't concluded, so we really don't know who'd have won.

 

But the duel was concluded, at least so far as Dumbledore completed his objective. He held off Voldemort long enough for the Ministry to see him with their own eyes. Also, as I said previously when Dumbeldore got serious the duel was basically over, Voldemort knew he couldn't beat him so he tried to possess Harry and taunt Dumbledore instead.

 

Wasn't that common knowledge among anyone who wasn't bribed back then?

 

Voldemort came to the Ministry to retrieve whatever followers he could. Not fight Dumbledore. So he completed his objective too. And him possessing Harry has more to do with his lack of morals and inherent cruelty than his dueling skills.

 

I can see your point, but in regards to the duel itself we'll have to agree to disagree. I saw it as Dumbledore winning the duel decisively, wheras you see it as a draw.

 

I'm checking canon but all I can find is that the Weasleys thought so about Lucios. Do you have a citation?

 

I think that neither Voldemort nor Dumbledore were trying to actually doing their best in that duel. Dumbledore for holding off Voldemort and protecting Harry, and Voldemort because his primary target was Harry.

 

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if I'm bringing up something already hashed over before, but something I hadn't considered before about Dumbledore popped into my head.

Ever since Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, he's been to the wizarding world what Harry is the night the killing curse rebounds. People look to him as their saviour, their protector. The man is thrust into positions of power because he's competent and able, although he seems to resist it a little - there were mentions of him turning down the position of minister, right?

So when the Dark Lord Voldemort shows up, everyone looks to Dumbledore for the solution. He tries, creates The Order of the Phoenix, but was never able to best Voldemort. The Dark Lord has a impact on their society so terrible that people become too scared to even say his name, and Albus feels partly responsible for allowing it to come to be given that he knew what Tom Riddle was capable of. People looked to him to stop it just as he had stopped Grindelwald.

And then along comes the prophecy about a boy born with the destiny to defeat the Dark Lord.

Given how much pressure and expectation hung over Dumbledore's head to fight against Voldemort, how relieved must he have felt to not have to be the one to deal with this mess? For once in his life, this was an out.

So how much impact would you expect societal pressure to have on Dumbledore's motivations? It's not hard to imagine that he would cling hard to the idea of the prophecy, knowing for once in his life there was definitely someone aside from him that the wizarding world could look to to take care of their problems. Picturing Dumbledore as the equivalent in status to The-Boy-Who-Lived isn't something I'd considered before, but it's clear they were written to have these parallels as saviours.

 

Haven't read the entire thread, but there's something about Dumbledore that was first brought to my attention by "Faery Heroes" on ff.net.

Even if all the circumstances of the prophecy are innocent coincidence (which is not the case in "Faery Heroes"), there is still the quite disturbing fact that Snape was allowed to leave after he had been caught eavesdropping.
We know from HBP that Dumbledore was there and that Trelawney saw Snape get caught.
We know from DH that Dumbledore had known that Snape would take the prophecy to Voldemort and let him do it anyway; we know this from one of the memories in 'The Prince's Tale' where Dumbledore knows from the start that Snape is a Death Eater and, in reference to the prophecy, Dumbledore straight up asks Snape, "How much did you take to Voldemort?" and in a tone that sounds like he'd expected it to happen.

So I think that it's pretty conclusive: Dumbledore deliberately leaked the prophecy to Voldemort and so is just as responsible for the death of Harry's parents as Snape and Voldemort are. And I don't care what justifications may be offered, or how many lives may have been saved in the long run. Deliberately leaking information to a terrorist, knowing that it will lead him to kill people, is Evil. No ifs, no ands, no buts.

 

Dude... first off lighten up. Stop treating this like it is real life. It is not. It is a story. If there are some questionable decisions taken by the characters which seem dodgy, it can all be attributed to an oversight by the author and not the characters themselves.
Geez it really surprises me how many people have convinced themselves that Dumbledore is 'evil'.

 

is there any canon evidence to support a position that, prior to Halloween 1980, Dumbledore suspected Harry would be Voldemort's downfall? If so then it's a pretty understandable bit of 'greater good' reasoning to allow snape to direct voldemort towards fulfilling the prophecy and finally being defeated. If we're going to use the whole rhetoric of 'terrorists' then it's good statesmanship to take the only shot at success you have.

Edit: even ignoring what I've said above, what was Dumbledore to do? Kill snape? Just start executing suspected death eaters? He didn't even know who the prophecy referred to, so all he was doing by not killing snape was allowing the possibility that a serial murderer might kill somebody slightly different to whoever he would have killed anyway.

 

Then you should do it

 

This. This so very much.

 

Jedipilot24 - just wait, any minute now idiots will come along with backpedaling rhetoric and throwing excuses like "Dumbledore isn't so strong, he couldn't have stopped him" or "Dumbledore isn't omniscience and didn't know what Snape would do".

It's amazing how hard it is for people to see what's hidden behind the actions of characters like him. Not to mention we have conflicting accounts of what happened during that interview. Red Hen wrote several very good articles about this subject.

I'm with the opinion that he wanted the prophecy to get out, because he was losing the war, and it gave him a small hope that Voldemort would self-fulfill the prophecy.

I also had an idea long ago, that with the "Dark Lord" the prophecy didn't refer to Voldemort, but to someone else, like Dumbledore, and he wanted to divert it. But that's going a bit too far.

 

I greatly suggest that you read the entire thread and instead of dismissing it you should think over it.

 

Here's a better answer. What could Dumbledore have done? Let's go through the list:

Have Snape imprisoned - There is no law against eavesdropping, even in the Wizarding World. So that's out.

Illegally imprison him - Dumbledore may be manipulative, but he's not that bad. Kidnapping is more Voldemort's thing. The closest he gets to imprisoning someone is Sirius, but that's still with the guy's full consent. He may not have liked being stuck in Grimmauld Place, but he knew why he was doing it and agreed with it in principle.

Kill him - Dumbledore never kills.

Obliviate him - This is actually an option he could have taken without it being absolutely against his moral code, though it does seem rather antithetical to how he usually works. Also he knew that Voldemort was perhaps the best Legilimens in the world, surely he was good enough to spot an obliviation if it wasn't perfectly cast, in which case there was no point.

You're acting as though Dumbledore was a general well used to sending his troops into battle. He wasn't. He was a kindly old man who was extremely talented and was thrust into a leadership position that he didn't want. He wasn't sending soldiers to fight for him; he was sending friends, and every death hurt him dearly.

 

Conclusive. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Edit: Sorry World. ^^

 

So, this entire line of conversation can be solved by simply reading the books. Particularly, in the 6th book Dumbledore and Harry have an entire conversation about the prophecy in which Dumbledore tells Harry that he is putting entirely too much stock in the prophecy.

So clearly not every single prophecy gets fulfilled. In fact, the only reason this prophecy came true was because Voldemort made it significant. He was the one who chose to believe in the prophecy and his actions based off of that belief triggered the events that followed.

 

>mfw when people keep trying to shoehorn Dumbledore into the Manipulative Bastard trope.

You can bitch all you want about how you'd have done this and that during the war, but if there is one thing we know about Dumbledore, it's that he isn't ruthless.

Yes, he may have made mistakes. But he didn't do them because he was evil. He did them because he valued life (everyone's) and their freedom of choice.

Edit : my bad, thread closed