#Albus Dumbledore meta

[wisteria-lodge]

Manipulative/Morally Grey Dumbledore? An In-Depth Canon Analysis

So when I look at Harry Potter, my goal is to separate what I think the books are intending to say, from what they actually say, from what the movies say… and what the common fan interpretation is. So today I’m interested in Dumbledore, and specifically in the common headcanon of  Manipulative/Morally Gray Dumbledore. Is that (intentionally or unintentionally) supported by the text?

PART I:  Omniscient Dumbledore

“I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here”

In Book 1, yes Dumbledore honestly does seem to know everything. He 100% arranged for Harry to find the Mirror of Erised, publicly left Hogwarts in order to nudge Quirrell into going after the Stone, and knew what Quirrell was doing the whole time. It is absolutely not a stretch, and kind of heavily implied, that the reason the Stone’s protections feel like a little-end-of-the-year exam designed to put Harry through his paces… is because they are. As the series goes on this interpretation only gets more plausible, when we see the kind of protections people can put up when they don’t want anyone getting through. 

Book 1 Dumbledore knows everything… but what he’s actually going to do about it is anyone’s guess. One of the first things we learn is that some of Dumbledore’s calls can be… questionable. McGonagall questions his choice to leave Harry with the Dursleys, Hermione questions his choice to give Harry the Cloak and let him go after the Stone, Percy and Ron both matter-of-factly call him “mad.” The “nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak” speech is a joke where Dumbledore says he’s going to say a few words, then literally does say a few (weird) words. I know there are theories that those particular words are supposed to be insulting the four houses, or referencing the Hogwarts house stereotypes, or that they’re some kind of warning. But within the text, this is pure Lewis Carroll British Nonsense Verse stuff (and people came up with answers to the impossible Alice in Wonderland “why is a raven like a writing desk” riddle too.) 

This characterization also explains a lot of Dumbledore’s decisions about how to run a school, locked in during Book 1. Presumably Binns, Peeves, Filch, Snape are all there because Dumbledore finds them funny, atmospheric, and/or character building. He's just kind of a weird guy.  He absolutely knew that Lockhart was a fraud in Book 2 (with that whole “Impaled upon your own sword, Gilderoy?” thing after Lockhart oblivates himself. ) So maybe he is also there to be funny/atmospheric/character building, or to teach Harry a lesson about fame, or because Dumbledore is using the cursed position to bump off people he doesn’t like. Who knows.

(I actually don’t think JKR had locked in “the DADA position is literally cursed by Voldemort” until Book 6. )

Dumbledore absolutely knows that Harry is listening in when Lucius Malfoy comes to take Hagrid to Azkaban, and it’s fun to speculate that maybe he let himself get fired in Book 2 as part of a larger plan to boot Lucius off the Board of Governors. So far, that’s the sort of thing he’d do.  But in Books 3 and 4, we are confronted with a number of important things that Dumbledore just missed. He doesn’t know any of the Marauders were animagi, he doesn’t know what really happened with the Potter’s Secret Keeper, doesn’t know Moody is Crouch, and doesn’t know the Marauders Map even exists. But in Books 5 and 6, his omniscience does seem to come back online. (In a flashback, Voldemort even comments that he is "omniscient as ever” when Dumbledore lists the specific Death Eaters he has in Hogsmeade as backup.) Dumbledore knows exactly what Draco and Voldemort are planning, and his word is taken as objective truth by the entire Order of the Phoenix - who apparently only tolerate Snape because Dumbledore vouches for him:

“Snape,” repeated McGonagall faintly, falling into the chair. “We all wondered . . . but he trusted . . . always . . . Snape . . . I can’t believe it. . . .”  “Snape was a highly accomplished Occlumens,” said Lupin, his voice uncharacteristically harsh. “We always knew that.”  “But Dumbledore swore he was on our side!” whispered Tonks. “I always thought Dumbledore must know something about Snape that we didn’t. . . .”  “He always hinted that he had an ironclad reason for trusting Snape,” muttered Professor McGonagall (...) “Wouldn’t hear a word against him!”

McGonagall questions Dumbledore about the Dursleys, but not about Snape. I see this as part of the larger trend of basically Dumbledore’s deification. In the beginning of the series, he’s treated as a clever, weird dude. By the end, he’s treated like a god. 

PART II: Chessmaster Dumbledore

“I prefer not to keep all my secrets in one basket.”

When Dumbledore solves problems, he likes to go very hands-off. He didn’t directly teach Harry about the Mirror of Erised - he gave him the Cloak, knew he would wander, and moved the Mirror so it would be in his path. He sends Snape to deal with Quirrell and Draco, rather than do it himself. He (or his portrait) tells Snape to confund Mundungus Fletcher and get him to suggest the Seven Potters strategy. He puts Mrs. Figg in place to watch Harry, then ups the protection in Book 5 - all without informing Harry. The situation with Slughorn is kind of a Dumbledore-manipulation master class - even the way he deliberately disappears into the bathroom so Harry will have enough solo time to charm Slughorn. Of course he only wants Slughorn under his roof in the first place to pick his brain about Voldemort… but again, instead of doing that himself, he gets Harry to do it for him. 

Dumbledore has a moment during Harry’s hearing during Book 5 (which he fakes evidence for) where he informs Fudge that Harry is not under the Ministry’s jurisdiction while at Hogwarts. Which has insane implications. It’s never explicitly stated, but as the story goes on, it at least makes sense that Dumbledore is deliberately obscuring how powerful he is, and how much influence he really has, by getting other people to do things for him. But the problem with that is because he is so powerful, it become really easy for a reader to look back after they get more information and say… well if Dumbledore was controlling the situation… why couldn’t he have done XYZ. Here are two easy examples from Harry’s time spent with the Dursleys:

1. Mrs. Figg is watching over Harry from day one, but she can’t tell him she’s a squib and also she has to keep him miserable on purpose:

“Dumbledore’s orders. I was to keep an eye on you but not say anything, you were too young. I’m sorry I gave you such a miserable time, but the Dursleys would never have let you come if they’d thought you enjoyed it. It wasn’t easy, you know…”

It’s pretty intense to think of Dumbledore saying “oh yes, invite this little child over and keep him unhappy on purpose.” But okay. It’s important to keep Harry ignorant of the magical world and vice versa. fine. But once he goes to Hogwarts… that doesn’t apply anymore?  I’m sure when Harry thinks he’s going to be imprisoned permanently in his bedroom during Book 2, it would’ve been comforting to know that Dumbledore was sending around someone to check on him. And when he literally runs away from home in Book 3… having the address of a trusted adult that he could easily get to would have been great for everybody. 

2. When Vernon is about to actually kick Harry out during Book 5, Dumbledore sends a howler which intimidates Petunia into insisting that Harry has to stay. Vernon folds and does exactly what she says. If Dumbledore could intimidate Petunia into doing this, then why couldn’t he intimidate her into, say - giving Harry the second bedroom instead of a cupboard. Or fixing Harry’s glasses. In Book 1, the Dursleys don’t bother Harry during the entire month of August because Hagrid gives Dudley a pig’s tail. In the summer between third and fourth year, the Dursleys back off because Harry is in correspondence with Sirius (a person they fear.) But the Dursleys are afraid of all wizards. Like at this point it doesn’t seem that hard to intimidate them into acting decently to Harry. 

PART III: Dumbledore and the Dursleys 

“Not a pampered little prince”

JKR wanted two contradictory things. She wanted Dumbledore to be a fundamentally good guy: a wise, if eccentric mentor figure. But she also wanted Harry to have a comedically horrible childhood being locked in a cupboard, denied food, given broken glasses and ill fitting/embarrassing clothes, and generally made into a little Cinderella. Then, it’s a bigger contrast when he goes to Hogwarts and expulsion can be used as an easy threat. (Although the only person we ever see expelled is Hagrid, and that was for murder.)

So, there are a couple of tricks she uses to make it okay that Dumbledore left Harry at the Dursleys.’ The first is that once Harry leaves…  nothing that happens there is given emotional weight. When he’s in the Wizarding World, he barely talks about Dursleys, barely thinks about them. They almost never come up in the narration (unless Harry’s worried about being expelled, or they’re sending him comedically awful presents.) They are completely cut from the last three Harry Potter movies, and you do not notice. 

The second trick… is that Dumbledore himself clearly doesn’t think that the Dursleys are that bad. During the King’s Cross vision-quest, he describes 11-year-old Harry as “alive and healthy (...) as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well.”  

Now, this could have been really interesting. Like in a psychological way, I get it. Dumbledore had a rocky home life. Dad in prison, mom spending all her time taking care of his volatile and dangerous sister. Aberforth seems to have reacted to the situation by running completely wild, it’s implied that he never even had formal schooling… and Albus doubled down on being the Golden Child, making the family look good from the outside, and finding every means possible to escape. I would have believed it if Molly or Kingsley had a beat of being horrified by the way the Dursleys are treating Harry… but Dumbledore treats it as like, whatever. Business as usual. 

But that isn’t the framing that the books use. Dumbledore is correct that the Dursleys aren’t that bad, and I think it’s because JKR fundamentally does not take the Dursleys seriously as threats. I also think she has a fairly deeply held belief that suffering creates goodness, so possibly Harry suffering at the hands of the Dursleys… was necessary? To make him good? Dumbledore himself has an arc of ‘long period of suffering = increased goodness.’ So does Severus Snape, Dudley‘s experience with the Dementor kickstarts his character growth, etc. It’s a trope she likes.

It’s only in The Cursed Child that the Dursleys are given any kind of weight when it comes to Harry’s psyche. This is one of the things that makes me say Jack Thorne wrote that play, because it’s just not consistent with how JKR likes to write the Dursleys. It’s consistent with the way fanfiction likes to write the Dursleys. And look, The Cursed Child is fascinatingly bad, I have so many problems with it, but it does seem to be doing like … a dark reinterpretation of Harry Potter? And it’s interested in saying something about cycles of abuse. I can absolutely see how the way the play handles things is flattering to JKR. It retroactively frames the Dursleys’ abuse in a more negative way, and maybe that’s something she wanted after criticism that the Harry Potter books treat physical abuse kind of lightly. (i.e.  Harry at the hands of the Dursleys, and house-elves at the hands of everybody. Even Molly Weasley “wallops” Fred with a broomstick.) 

PART IV: Dumbledore and Harry

“The whole Potter–Dumbledore relationship. It’s been called unhealthy, even sinister”

So whenever Harry feels betrayed by Dumbledore in the books - and he absolutely does, it’s some of JKR’s best writing  - it’s not because he left him with the Dursleys. It’s because Dumbledore kept secrets from him, or lied to him, or didn’t confide in him on a personal level. 

“Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And again! And again! And don’t expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me even though I don’t trust you! Never the whole truth! Never!” (...) I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me.”

Eventually though, Harry falls in line with the rest of the Order, and treats Dumbledore as an all-knowing God. And this decision comes so close to being critiqued…  but the series never quite commits. Rufus Scrimgeour comments that, “Well, it is clear to me that [Dumbledore] has done a very good job on you” - implying that Harry is a product of a deliberate manipulation,  and that the way Harry feels about Dumbledore is a direct result of how he's been controlling the situation (and Harry.)  But Harry responds to “[You are] Dumbledore’s man through and through, aren’t you, Potter?” with “Yeah. I am. Glad we cleared that up,” and it’s treated as a badass, mic drop line. 

Ron goes on to say that Harry maybe shouldn’t be trusting Dumbledore and maybe his plan isn’t that great… but then he abandons his friends, regrets what he did, and is only able to come back because Dumbledore knew he would react this way? So that whole thing only makes Dumbledore seem more powerful? Aberforth  tells Harry (correctly) that Dumbledore is expecting too much of him and he’s not interested in making sure that he survives:

“How can you be sure, Potter, that my brother wasn’t more interested in the greater good than in you? How can you be sure you aren’t dispensable (...) Why didn’t he say… ‘Take care of yourself, here’s how to survive’? (...) You’re seventeen, boy!”

But, Aberforth is treated as this Hamish Abernathy type who has given up, and needs Harry to ignite his spark again. There’s a pretty dark line in the script of Deathly Hallows Part 2:

Which at least shows this was a possible  interpretation the creative team had in their heads… but then of course it isn’t actually in the movie. 

So in the end, insane trust in Dumbledore is only ever treated as proper and good. Then in Cursed Child they start using “Dumbledore” as an oath instead of “Merlin” and it’s weird and I don’t like it.

PART V: Dumbledore and his Strays

“I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man.”

So Dumbledore has this weird relationship pattern. He has a handful of people he pulled out of the fire at some point and (as a result) these people are insanely loyal to him.  They do his dirty work, and he completely controls them. This is an interesting pattern, because I think it helps explain why so many fans read Dumbledore’s relationship with Snape (and with Harry) as sinister. 

Let’s start with the first of Dumbledore’s “strays.” Dumbledore saves Hagrid's livelihood and probably life after he is accused of opening the Chamber of Secrets - and then he uses Hagrid to disappear Harry after the Potters' death, gets him to transport the Philosopher’s Stone, and he’s the one who he trusts to be Harry’s first point of contact with the Wizarding World.  Also, Hagrid's situation doesn’t change? Even after he is cleared of opening the Chamber of Secrets, he keeps using that pink flowered umbrella with his broken wand inside, a secret that he and Dumbledore seem to share. He could get a legal wand, he could continue his education. But he doesn’t seem to, and I don’t know why. 

So, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a well known fix-it fic that basically asks “What if Harry Potter was a machiavellian little super genius who solves the plot in a year?” I enjoyed it when it was coming out, but the only thing I would call a cheat is the way McGonagall brings Harry to Diagon Alley instead of Hagrid. Because a Harry Potter who has spent a couple of days with McGonagall is going to be much better informed, better equipped and therefore more powerful than a Harry spending the same amount of time with Hagrid. McGonagall is both a lot more knowledgeable and a lot less loyal to Dumbledore. She is loyal, obviously, but she also questions his choices in a way that Hagrid never does. And as a result, Dumbledore does not trust her with the same kind of delicate jobs he trusts to Hagrid.

Mrs. Figg is another one of Dumbledore’s strays. She’s a squib, so we can imagine that she doesn’t really have a lot of other options, and he sets her up to keep tabs on (and be unpleasant to) little Harry. He also has her lie to the entire Wizangamot, which has got to present some risk. Within this framework, Snape is another very clear stray. Dumbledore kept him out of Azkaban, and is the only reason that the Order trusts him. He gets sent on on dangerous double-agent missions… but before that he’s sort of kept on hand, even though he’s clearly miserable at Hogwarts. Firenze is definitely a stray - he can't go back to the centaurs, and who other than Dumbledore is going to hire him? And I do wonder about Trelawney. We don’t know much about her relationship with Dumbledore, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was a stray as well.

I think there was an attempt to turn Lupin into a stray that didn’t… quite work. He is clearly grateful to Dumbledore for letting him attend Hogwarts and then for hiring him, but Lupin doesn’t really hit that necessary level of trustworthy that the others do. Most of what Dumbledore doesn’t know in Book 3 are things that Lupin could have told him, and didn’t. If had to think of a Watsonsian reason why Remus is given all these solo missions away from the other Order members (that never end up mattering…) it’s because I don’t think Dumbledore trusts him that much. Lupin doubts him too much. 

“Dumbledore believed that?” said Lupin incredulously. “Dumbledore believed Snape was sorry James was dead? Snape hated James. . . .”

 We also see Dumbledore start the process of making Draco into a stray by promising to protect him and his parents. And with all of that… it’s kind of easy to see how Harry fits the profile. He has a very bleak existence (which Dumbledore knows about.) He is pulled out of it by Dumbledore’s proxies. It’s not surprising that Harry develops a Hagrid-level loyalty, especially after Dumbledore saves him from Barty, from his Ministry hearing, and then from Voldemort. Harry walks to his death because Dumbledore told him too. 

Just to be clear, I don’t think this pattern is deliberate. I think this is a side effect of JKR wanting to write Dumbledore as a nice guy, and specifically as a protector of the little guy. But Dumbledore doing that while also being so powerful creates a weird power dynamic, gives him a weird edit. It’s part of the reason people are happy to go one step farther and say that the Dursleys were mean to Harry… because Dumbledore actively wanted it that way.  I don’t think that’s true. I think Dumbledore loves his strays and if anything, the text supports the idea that he is collecting good people, because protecting them and observing them serves some psychological function for him. Dumbledore does not believe himself to be an intrinsically good person, or trustworthy when it comes to power. So, of course someone like that would be fascinated by how powerless people operate in the world, and by people like Hagrid and Lupin and Harry, who seems so intrinsically good. 

PART VI - Dumbledore and Grindelwald

“I was in love with you.” 

I honestly see “17-year-old Dumbledore was enamored with Grindelwald” as a smokescreen distracting from the actual moral grayness of the guy. He wrote some edgy letters when he was a teenager, at least partly because he thought his neighbor was hot. He thought he could move Ariana, but couldn’t - which led to the chaotic three-way duel that killed her. 

One thing I think J. K. Rowling does understand pretty well, and introduces into her books on purpose, is the concept of re-traumatization. Sirius in Book 5 is very obviously being re-traumatized by being in his childhood home and hearing the portrait of his mother screaming. It’s why he acts out, regresses, and does a number of unadvisable things. I think it’s also deliberate that Petunia’s unpleasant childhood is basically being re-created: her normal son next to her sister’s magical son. It's making her worse, or at the very least preventing her from getting better. We learn that Petunia has this sublimated interest in the magical world, and can even pull out vocab like “Azkaban” and “Dementor” when she needs to.   She wrote Dumbledore asking to go to Hogwarts, and I could see that in a universe where Petunia didn’t have to literally raise Harry, she wouldn’t be as psychotically into normalness, cleanliness, and order as she is when we meet her in the books. After all, JKR doesn’t like to write evil mothers. She will be bend over backwards so her mothers are never really framed as bad.

And I honestly think it’s possible that J. K. Rowling was playing with the concept of re-traumatiziation when she was fleshing out Dumbledore in Book 7. We learn all this backstory, that… honestly isn’t super necessary? All I’m saying is that the three-way duel at the top of the Astronomy Tower lines up really well with the three-way duel that killed Ariana. Harry is Ariana, helpless in the middle. Draco is Aberforth, well intentioned and protective of his family - but kind of useless, and kind of a liability. Severus is Grindelwald, dark and brilliant, and one of the closest relationships Dumbledore has. If this was intentional, it was probably only for reasons of narrative symmetry… but I think it's cool in a Gus Fring of Breaking Bad sort of way, that Dumbledore (either consciously or unconsciously) has been trying to re-create this one horrible moment in his life where he felt entirely out of control. But the second time it plays out… he can give it what he sees as the correct outcome. Grindelwald kills him and everyone else lives. That is how you solve the puzzle.

If you read between the lines, Dumbledore/Grindelwald is a fascinating love story. I like the detail that after Ariana’s death, Dumbledore returns to Hogwarts because it’s a place to hide and because he doesn’t feel like he can be trusted with power. I like that he sits there, refusing promotions, refusing requests to be the new Minister of Magic, refusing to go deal with the growing Grindelwald threat until he absolutely can’t hide anymore, at which point he defeats him (somehow.) I like reading his elaborate plan to break Elder Wand’s power as both a screw-you Grindelwald, the wand’s previous master, but also as a weirdly romantic gesture. In Albus Dumbledore’s mind, there is only Grindelwald. Voldemort can’t even begin to compare. I like the detail that Grindelwald won’t give up Dumbledore, even under torture. And, Dumbledore doesn’t put him in Azkaban. He put him in this other separate prison, which always makes it seem like he’s there under Dumbledore authority specifically.  Maybe Dumbledore thinks that if he had died that day instead of Ariana…he wouldn’t have had to spend the rest of his life fighting and imprisoning the man he loves.

And then of course, Crimes of Grindelwald decided to take away Dumbledore's greatest weakness and say that no, actually he was a really good guy who never did anything wrong ever.  He went all that time without fighting Grindelwald because they made a magical friendship no-fight bracelet. Dumbledore is randomly grabbing Lupin’s iconography (his fashion sense, his lesson plans, his job) in order to feel more soft and gentle than the person the books have created. Now Dumbledore knows about the Room Requirement, even though in the books it’s a plot point that he's too much of a goody-two-shoes to have ever found it himself. He loved Grindelwald (past tense.) And Secrets of Dumbledore is mostly about him being an omniscient mastermind so that a magical deer can tell him that he was a super good and worthy guy, and any doubt that he’s ever felt about himself is just objectively wrong and incorrect. Also now Aberforth has a neglected son, so he’s reframed as a bit of a hypocrite for getting on his brother’s case for not protecting Harry. 

So to summarize, I think Dumbledore began the series as this very eccentric, unpredictable mentor, whose abilities took a hit in Books 3 and 4 in order to make the plot happen. He teetered on the edge of a ‘dark’ framing for like a second… but at the the end of the series he's written as basically infallible and godlike. I’ve heard people say that JKR’s  increased fame was the reason she added the Rita Skeeter plot line, and I don’t think that’s true. But I do think her fame may have affected the way she wrote Dumbledore. Because Dumbledore is JKR’s comment on power, and by Book 5 she had so much power. In her head, I don’t think that Dumbledore is handing off jobs in a manipulative way. She sees him as empowering other less powerful people. That is his job as someone in power (because remember - people who desire power shouldn't wield it.)

Dumbledore’s power makes him emotionally disconnected from the people in his life, it makes him disliked and distrusted by the Ministry, but it doesn’t make him wrong. That’s important. Dumbledore is never wrong. Dumbledore is always good. That’s why we get the Blood Pact that means he was never weak or procrastinating. That’s why we get the qilin saying he was a good person. It’s why we get the tragic backstory (because giving Snape a tragic backstory worked wonders when it came to rehabilitating him.) And that is why Harry names his son Albus Severus in the epilogue, to make us readers absolutely crystal clear that these two are good men. 

[bi-harrymort]

yesterday i listened to the order of the phoenix audiobook while doing some chores and i was stuck on a thought about dumbledore i've had for a while but couldn't really articulate...

when i was a kid i liked him - he reminded me of my grandpa.

when i was a teen i became more critical of him and started to appreciate him as a more grey-area character, rather than what he was (i imagine) intended to be - the good and wise, albeit flawed in some ways, mentor figure.

now each year with each re-read of the books i begin to feel more and more irritated whenever he enters a scene... and i couldn't put my finger on why i felt that way (i put the blame of my irritation on fanfiction - reading about different renditions and interpretations of characters influences how we see them, especially since most of the fanfics i read in the hp fandom are, in the least, dumbledore-critical, if not outright dumbledore bashing)

but yesterday a thought struck me, when i was listening to the chapter of harry's hearing at the ministry, and the thought was that dumbledore, in canon, truly seems extremely cold and emotionless...

(many people have already talked about it, but I guess I wanted to maybe touch on some stuff that is not talked about as often?)

albus dumbledore is always kind, pleasant, composed, and presented in a way that is supposed to give us an impression of a very wise, experienced by life and its sorrows, man.

but i think what happened was that his character ended up becoming the opposite of this image.

for example, let's take his first ever scene in the series:

he meets with mcgonagall, and as they wait for hagrid to arrive with harry, they talk...

"My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this 'You- Know-Who' nonsense - for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort." Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two lemon drops, seemed not to notice. "It all gets so confusing if we keep saying 'You-Know-Who.' I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort's name."

this is the first instance in which my teeth started to grind. of course, the dialogue serves as an intoduction: mcgonagall has to tell us - the audience - who and how significant dumbledore is; in the same scene showcasing voldemort's significance.

the powerful and frightening dark lord, and the powerful, benevolent opposing figure of the story.

but, at the same time, when done this way, it presents a very... strange character... for when we look at this scene through the lenses of the fictional world dumbledore is damn well aware why he was never afraid of voldemort, and should understand why everyone else is, right?

this line paints his modesty in a fake light... (not to mention a lack of empathy to understand why people may be afraid of voldemort) a way for him to show how unremarkable he is, while clearly knowing that he isn't, all to get the points for modesty as well.

it's one thing to be modest while being aware that you may be in some ways special, its another to be 'modest' without acknowledging it, in which case you're either really oblivious or not really honest. and given the story, i wouldn't say that dumbledore is presented as an oblivious character - quite the opposite actually, given how he always seems to know everything - more than any other character. so that would leave us with the option number two...

"I know you haven't, said Professor McGonagall, sounding half exasperated, half admiring. "But you're different. Everyone knows you're the only one You-Know- oh, all right, Voldemort, was frightened of." "You flatter me," said Dumbledore calmly. "Voldemort had powers I will never have." "Only because you're too - well - noble to use them." "It's lucky it's dark. I haven't blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs."

why am i rolling my eyes? oh dumbledore, you're so different and awesome and special and noble and good! excuse me i have to throw up.

this happens over and over and over again; save for one or two instances...

but even this i always lumped into a bit of a biased and irrational dislike of a character, and so i didn't think it a sufficient reason to ever bring it up. what did persuade me to write this post is the constant, constant calmness of albus dumbledore.

now, i don't mind passive, calm, composed or, in a similar way, depressed characters. it's all about who they are, what's their backstory, their role in the story, etc.

dumbledore's calmness coupled with all of those other aspects make him into someone very emotionless; emotionless that is veering into ruthlessness. and this trait, we are told and 'shown', is supposed to be the exact opposite of his percieved personality...

he constantly keeps vital information from other people (even if the information pertains to the matters of life-and-death); allows for others (especially children) to fight his battles; shows up only in very critical moments, when he would have had the power to actually prevent some of the events from happening; and is so calm and collected throughout all of the chaos that ensues that he comes off as if he didn't really care about anyone or anything...

he preaches about love and family, and he certainly believes in it to an extent, but his actions and reactions do not fully confirm the truthfulness of his words. he's more like a general of an army - he hates to see his soldiers die, but he's got to let it, he's the only one who knows about the horcruxes - he's the only one who knows how to defeat voldemort once and for all! so he's got to stay in control...

whilst also, in the same breath, preaching about how dangerous having such control is.

telling everyone how he rejects power, claiming he doesn't have it...

whilst being in the position of absolute control.

control that he gained through his knowledge. his intelligence. his fame. his standing in the wizarding world.

he may not be the minister, but the minister heavily relies on him for most of the story... to such an extent that some people don't respect the minister himself. instead they give this respect and power to dumbledore - other witches and wizards treat dumbledore in a way dumbledore claims to reject.

because power isn't only what you do and say. power comes from other people as well. hell, maybe even more so... people give individuals their power.

you may be the smartest and the strongest person in the world and never gain even an ounce of the power that the renowned and celebrated people of the world have.

most of dumbledore's flaws are part of the writing itself - it's a children's book with a child protagonist. he and his teen friends have to save the day...

so, like with voldemort, dumbledore ends up in the limbo between made claims and the 'reality' of the story.

voldemort is powerful, brilliant; a great wizard - whether they love or hate him, other characters always admit that he was great.

dumbledore is also powerful and brilliant; a good man - most characters will confirm it every once in a while, reminding us of this fact.

but that's the issue i guess... or maybe a blessing... the story is what it is, and so when we - the fans - wish to dig deeper, we'll all end up with a thousand different interpretations of the same character, all fuelled by our own, personal understanding of the text, our own personalities and life experiences and our own ways in which we end up interacting with the source material.

so we'll always create unique explanations. some centered solely on the fictional world's perspective, and some combining fiction with the reality of the written book: its genre and possible real-life influences.

the post was supposed to be shorter, but I couldn't leave some of this stuff out... in the middle of writing i considered taking more time before updating and doing more research (maybe even make it into a much bigger project and go through all of dumbledore's scenes in all of the books)... but i decided to table it for another time.

[iamnmbr3]

#dumbledore is one fucked up person#imagine telling a sixteen year old#that the guy who murdered his parents was fucked up#not because of the later murders#but because he had the sheer audacity#of being a pretty kid while poor and lower class#or a pretty adult later#but he doesn’t see a difference#why exactly is that you might ask via @perilousraven

Tom: *gets creeped on by an older woman of higher social standing*

Dumbledore: Ah yes. As you can see he remained the the same corrupting seductor, using his good looks to lead the innocent astray and conceal his inherently depraved nature, that he was at 11.

Me: There is definitely someone here giving off extremely off the chart rancid vibes right now and it's not Tom Riddle.

I find it incredibly creepy how Dumbledore views Riddle as being this sort of inherently seductive 'femme fatale' type. In book 6 he implies that Tom used his looks to endear himself to his teachers when he started school and hide his supposedly inherently evil and corrupt nature.

Like. Albus. DUDE. Tom was ELEVEN. Why would you assume that teachers would be swayed by or even paying attention to the attractiveness of an eleven year old?! WTAF?

And then he portrays the Hepzibah Smith memory as another example of Tom using his seductive charms for evil. But although he does bring her flowers he doesn't do anything else to encourage her and in fact seems uncomfortable and determined to keep the conversation focused on work.

She is actually the one who is being creepy here given the power differential between them. I mean, yes, Tom is putting up with her because it suits his designs for the moment and could and would kill her in a second if provoked. But even though we know that she certainly doesn't. As far as she knows she's creeping on this young store clerk without wealth or connections whose job depends on keeping her happy.

And certainly while she enjoys his looks and his attention she also seems quite happy with the persona he puts on where he addresses her in a highly respectful manner, not as an equal. She's certainly not complaining about how he calls her Miss Hepzibah or asking him to drop the honorific. She likes that. She likes that he addresses her not much differently than how her House Elf does. She likes his whole "I am only a poor assistant, madam, who must do as he is told" thing. And as far as she knows he is just that, with no particular special power or talent other than his good looks which she evidently appreciates. This is not him leading on and taking advantage of an innocent sweet old lady.

And yes he brings her flowers, presumably to keep her happy, but other than that he tries to keep the conversation professional and steer the discussion towards the purpose of his visit. He doesn't say anything overtly flirtatious or even try to prolong their discussion by asking to see some of her other things.

She brings that up on her own. Nor is there any indication that he is the one that decided to move their relationship in this direction. It seems more like she saw a young and good looking man, apparently far below her in terms of station and magical power, and made her move. He probably isn't the first.

The way she casually touches him is just so creepy to me. And though he tolerates it, he did nothing to encourage or solicit it. Riddle is someone who is in general quite averse to touch. We only see him voluntarily touch one person in 7 books and that's when he touches Harry, just for a second in book 4, just to show that he can. I don't think he enjoys this kind of attention. He was probably glad to kill her for more than just the purpose of getting the cup and the locket.

And yet none of her creepiness is acknowledged. Instead, Dumbledore draws our attention to how Riddle cruelly seduced and murdered a nice old lady whose affections he sought and then betrayed:

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Hello!! So, I saw an argument about Harry's uhm looks? I guess. A lot of people basically headcanon him as someone buff. I digress, I'm part of the uhm more realistic? group. Harry's been starved and abused his entire life. I doubt he'll gain the weight and the height everyone else wants him to have. Years later. maybe. But in 6th year? While on the run? 3 years after the war? Doubt. do you think he would be able to get super tall and buff? Also, do you think its possible he used the same methods the dursleys used to punish himself?

I mean, anyone can headcanon whatever they want, but, I'll try to explain via quotes, what Harry's height and muscle situation is likely to be. I believe the reasons some headcanon him as buff and tall are:

Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub by the throat. Holding him fast with one hand, he pulled out his wand.

(HBP)

He lifts Mundungus by his throat with one hand easily, and he practices Quidditch like 3 times a week at least. This implies that Harry has some muscle on him.

And he's mentioned to be James' height when he's 17:

James was exactly the same height as Harry.

(DH)

Which was supposedly tall, according to both, Harry:

tall and untidy-haired like Harry, the smoky, shadowy form of James Potter

(GoF)

And Voldemort:

the tall black-haired man in his glasses

(DH)

Now, let's put Harry's height in the context of other character heights. Particularly of interest are characters taller than him, to get an image of how tall is "tall." And some shorter characters to help figure out his exact height.

Sirius, Ron, Voldemort, and Dumbledore are all taller than Harry and exceptionally tall in general. They are each likely to be over 6 feet tall, making Harry likely less than 6' (183 cm). Supporting this is this quote:

Once the painful transformation was complete he was more than six feet tall, and from what he could tell from his well-muscled arms, powerfully built.

(DH)

This means Harry is less than 6' and isn't super buff. But, I want to get to his specific height, because I have a lot to say about character heights.

Like, Dumbledore is probably the tallest character who isn't a half-giant because he's towering over everyone except Hagrid and Maxime. In book 6, he's literally taller than all the inferi in the cave:

Dumbledore was on his feet again, pale as any of the surrounding Inferi, but taller than any too,

(HBP)

And Abeforth (who's as tall as Dumbledore) is taller than Ron, who's one of the other tallest characters in the books:

Ron looked slightly sick. Aberforth stood up, tall as Albus, and suddenly terrible in his anger and the intensity of his pain.

(DH)

Making the Dumbledores really tall. My estimate is around a whooping 6'5 (195 cm).

Sirius is mentioned to be taller than Snape, and the tallest Marauder:

said Sirius, standing up. He was rather taller than Snape

(OotP)

To Sirius’s right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter

(DH)

A head, in height, should be around one foot (30.48 cm). As the average height of a man in England in 1998 was around 5'8 (174.4 cm), this would make Sirius around 6'2 (188 cm), therefore taller than average, and Pettigrew around 5'2 (157 cm), shorter than the average, but still both at a reasonable height.

Ron is almost as tall as the twins at 11:

“Shut up,” said Ron again. He was almost as tall as the twins already and his nose was still pink where his mother had rubbed it.

(PS)

And, just, really tall in general:

He stepped forward. Not as tall as Ron, he had to crane his neck to read the yellowish label affixed to the shelf right beneath the dusty glass ball.

(OotP)

So I estimate Ron at around 6'3 (190 cm).

Voldemort who grew up on war rations is still described very consistently as tall, regardless of childhood malnourishment:

He was his handsome father in miniature, tall for eleven years old, dark-haired, and pale

(HBP)

tall, pale, dark-haired, and handsome — the teenage Voldemort.

(HBP)

Taller than Bellatrix (who's taller than Harry). Voldemort is also considerably taller than Pettigrew, as he has to bend to reach Pettigrew's arm when both are standing:

Voldemort bent down and pulled out Wormtail’s left arm; he forced the sleeve of Wormtail’s robes up past his elbow

(GoF)

I usually place Voldemort at around the same height as Ron, so 6'3 (190 cm).

Fred and George, though, are mentioned to be shorter and stockier, more similar to Molly's build:

Charlie was built like the twins, shorter and stockier than Percy and Ron, who were both long and lanky.

(GoF)

but are mentioned to shrink to become Harry in book 7:

Hermione and Mundungus were shooting upward; Ron, Fred, and George were shrinking

(DH)

I actually place the twins around 6' (183 cm) so they could be taller than Harry, but shorter than Ron. The twins are likely taller than Charlie.

Bellatrix, as a woman, should also be shorter on average, but considering how tall Sirius is mentioned to be, it appears the Blacks are just considerably taller than the average, even the women:

a tall dark woman with heavy-lidded eyes, who had stood at her trial and proclaimed her continuing allegiance to Lord Voldemort

(OotP)

She was taller than he was, her long black hair rippling down her back, her heavily lidded eyes disdainful as they rested upon him;

(DH)

So I place her at around 6' (183 cm) as well, as an exceptionally tall lady.

So where does this place Harry?

During the first 4 books, Harry is short and small for his age. When he's 13, he and Hermione are bit shorter than Pettigrew:

He was a very short man, hardly taller than Harry and Hermione.

(PoA)

(Ron, noticeably, is taller than Pettigrew at 13)

So, so Harry at 13 was around 5'1 (155 cm). And so was Hermione.

Then in between books 4 and 5 puberty kicks in and probably causes a slight growth spurt that makes him more attractive to girls around him:

Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, the last two of whom gave Harry airy, overly friendly greetings that made him quite sure they had stopped talking about him a split second before. He had more important things to worry about, however:

(OotP)

And then he has another, larger growth spurt between books 5 and 6:

“You’re like Ron,” she [Molly] sighed, looking him up and down. “Both of you look as though you’ve had Stretching Jinxes put on you. I swear Ron’s grown four inches since I last bought him school robes.

(HBP)

“And it doesn’t hurt that you’ve grown about a foot over the summer either,” Hermione finished, ignoring Ron. “I’m tall,” said Ron inconsequentially. [Ron is objectively correct]

(HBP)

Post book 6 growth spurt, we know Harry is below 6' (183 cm) but close enough to 6' to be above the average of 5'8 (174.4 cm) and be considered "tall", and grow "about a foot" after said growth spurt.

I personally place his height at 5'11 (180 cm), to make all of the above make sense.

And while he is physically fit, he is likely very thin from years of malnourishment. So, he likely has some muscle on him, but he's very lean with little to no fat during his Hogwarts years (he'd likely gain more weight as an adult living peacefully with regular meals). So, Harry in the books isn't what I'd call buff, but he has some muscle and can definitely throw a punch. As he grows older post-canon, I think he could get buff if he set his mind to it.

(I actually have notes about the height of a bunch of other characters. Hermione is shorter than Harry and Ron, but noticeably taller than Ginny (5'2 or 157 cm) and probably around 5'4 (162 cm) by book 7. Draco is said to be slightly taller than Harry "Harry did not dare look directly at Draco, but saw him obliquely; a figure slightly taller than he was" - DH, placing Draco at around 6' (183 cm))

For your other question, no, I don't think Harry self-harms, definitely not in any way related to the Dursleys, but that's a different post because I went off about heights.

[slitheringghost]

Unweaving Canon Lily: Master Of Death

Part 2 of this meta is here.

In this meta I wanted to explore how the text portrays Lily as Death. 

Dumbledore tells Harry, “You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.” 

Since Harry mirrors Lily in his sacrifice (“I’ve done what my mother did”), and since Lily is the reason Harry survived the Killing Curse and Voldemort was vanquished (IMO due to deliberate planning by Lily), what goes unsaid, but what readers are meant to weave together, is that Lily too is the Master of Death, and Death itself. 

1.0 Lily as Death

If you pay close attention to the scene of the Potters’ deaths, you’ll see that it parallels the story of Death and The Three Brothers, with Lily as the main one playing Death, and I'll be weaving the two together below to illuminate this (from DH 21 and DH 17):

There were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely, winding road at twilight And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his destination was in sight at last - In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across. He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear... He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in... - However, these brothers were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand - They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure. ...and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead... - “‘And Death spoke to them —’” “Sorry,” interjected Harry, “but Death spoke to them?” “Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!” “Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now.” “Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead —” “This is my last warning —” “Not Harry! Please... have mercy... have mercy... Not Harry! Not Harry! Please — I’ll do anything —” “Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!” ‘Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to continue on their way, and they did so, talking with wonder of the adventure they had had, and admiring Death’s gifts.

(The line about the river being too deep to wade through etc. could probably apply to some other lines too) The most notable connection is Voldemort repeatedly telling Lily to “stand aside” and the line “Death stood aside”. 

The connection to the line “Death stood aside” is reiterated in the language surrounding Voldemort, Lily, and Harry as a trio, with the three of them described as “standing” - because the three of them are Death, and are (one variation of) the three brothers who conquered Death:

He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand... and there she stood, the child in her arms.  The child had not cried all this time: He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib, and he looked up into the intruder’s face with a kind of bright interest  And now he stood at the broken window of Bathilda’s house, immersed in memories of his greatest loss (DH)

More on these lines in my meta about Lily and Harry as Voldemort’s Mirror Of Erised. 

Additionally, Voldemort who also plays Death is described explicitly as a “hooded figure” - “He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak”; but Lily too is a “hooded figure” in a more subtle way, because her face covered by her long hair evokes the hood of a cloak - "the mother entered [...] her long dark-red hair falling over her face." More on this in section 4.0.

2.0 Lily’s arms are Death’s arms

Lily's arms are repeatedly emphasized, especially in the scene of her death where they open towards Voldemort, because they're Death's arms wrapping around both Harry and Voldemort - welcoming for Harry, crushing and choking and drowning for Voldemort.

But though gashes appeared in their sodden rags and their icy skin, they had no blood to spill: They walked on, unfeeling, their shrunken hands outstretched toward him, and as he backed away still farther, he felt arms enclose him from behind, thin, fleshless arms cold as death, and his feet left the ground as they lifted him and began to carry him, slowly and surely, back to the water, and he knew there would be no release, that he would be drowned (HBP 26) “Death’s got an Invisibility Cloak?” Harry interrupted again. “So he can sneak up on people,” said Ron. “Sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking" (DH 21) Thrashing, suffocating, he scrabbled at the strangling chain, his frozen fingers unable to loosen it, and now little lights were popping inside his head, and he was going to drown, there was nothing left, nothing he could do, and the arms that closed around his chest were surely Death’s… (DH 19) […] Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms. (DH 34) - Harry saw Sirius move up the bench to make room for her. She took one look at him, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms, and firmly turned her back on him. (DH 33) It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. (DH 33) there was a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy sitting in his mother’s arms. (DH 16) and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead… (DH 17) Flitwick’s spell hit the suit of armor behind which Snape had taken shelter: With a clatter it came to life. Snape struggled free of the crushing arms and sent it flying back toward his attackers: Harry and Luna had to dive sideways to avoid it as it smashed into the wall and shattered. When Harry looked up again, Snape was in full flight (DH 30)

The suit of armor Snape hides behind is implied as the one by the door where Harry first found the Mirror of Erised, thereby tying it to Lily, who is both Harry and Snape's Mirror of Erised (For more on this, read my meta When Lily Cast Her Life As A Shield”: Analysis of the Shield Charm).

3.0 Lily’s ties to the Deathly Hallows

Since Lily is portrayed as Death, the text gives Lily links to all three Hallows, and I'll go through them below.

3.1 The Elder Wand

The scene with Snape, Lily, and Petunia by the Cokeworth river and Lily picking up the fallen twig evokes the imagery of the river of Death and the Elder Wand:

“‘So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death! So Death crossed to an elder tree on the banks of the river, fashioned a wand from a branch that hung there, and gave it to the oldest brother .” (DH 21) He was now in a small thicket of trees. He could see a sunlit river glittering through their trunks. The shadows cast by the trees made a basin of cool green shade. Two children sat facing each other, cross-legged on the ground. [...] “...and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school, you get letters.” “But I have done magic outside school!” “We’re all right. We haven’t got wands yet. They let you off when you’re a kid and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven,” he nodded importantly, “and they start training you, then you’ve got to go careful.” There was a little silence. Lily had picked up a fallen twig and twirled it in the air, and Harry knew that she was imagining sparks trailing from it. Then she dropped the twig , leaned in toward the boy, and said, “It is real, isn’t it?" (DH 33) There was a crack: A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen. Lily screamed: The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears. (DH 33)

3.2 The Resurrection Stone

An important implication is that it's specifically Lily's soul that came out of the Resurrection Stone and created the versions of James, Sirius, and Remus, the way the Tom Riddle locket horcrux soul piece creates Riddle-Harry and Riddle-Hermione.

Several details point to this - Sirius and Remus look much younger, rather than how they looked when they died; presumably their shades match their appearances in 1981, because they match when Lily last saw them and how she remembers them; likewise, James is stated to look exactly how he did the day he died, because that’s how Lily remembers him.

Lily's shade’s eyes being emphasized is a huge clue that it was Lily’s soul, as eyes are windows to the soul; this idea is echoed in Tom Riddle's eyes in the locket:

Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome as Tom Riddle’s eyes had been before he turned them scarlet and slit-pupiled. Ron raised the sword still higher, and as he did so, Riddle’s eyes gleamed scarlet. His [Ron’s] eyes were wide, and the Riddle-Harry and the Riddle-Hermione were reflected in them, their hair swirling like flames, their eyes shining red, their voices lifted in an evil duet. Ron looked toward him, and Harry thought he saw a trace of scarlet in his eyes. (DH 19) She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough. (DH 34)

Lily’s stated as looking at Harry hungrily - because Lily’s soul has been separated from Harry. 

Interestingly, Lily’s shade and Harry both speak to each other the least - Lily only says four words “You’ve been so brave”, and Harry likewise only tells her “Stay close to me”. This is because Lily's speaking through the others to Harry. The strongest evidence towards this is the echoing here:

“And what use would that be to anyone?” said Dumbledore coldly. “If you loved Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your way forward is clear.” [...] “You know how and why she died. Make sure it was not in vain. Help me protect Lily’s son.” (DH 33) “I didn’t want you to die,” Harry said. These words came without his volition. “Any of you. I’m sorry —” He addressed Lupin more than any of them, beseeching him. “— right after you’d had your son ... Remus, I’m sorry —” “I am sorry too,” said Lupin. “Sorry I will never know him... but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.” A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry’s brow. (DH 34)

Lily also died right after she’d had her son, and this is Lily telling Harry that she’s sorry that she’ll never know him, and he’ll never know her, but she hopes he understands why she sacrificed herself - to vanquish Voldemort and create a better world.

The breeze lifting Harry’s hair echoes Hermione doing the same thing earlier, who also echoes the gesture of Lily pushing her hair back to look at Harry - AKA that breeze is Lily’s hand brushing Harry’s hair, perhaps kissing his forehead (for more on how Hermione performs the part of Lily, read my meta Hermione As Teacher And Connections To Lily):

She picked up the book and then walked back past him into the tent, but as she did so, she brushed the top of his head lightly with her hand. He closed his eyes at her touch […] (DH 18) “Hermione!” She stirred, then sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her face. “What’s wrong? Harry? Are you all right?” (DH 19)

Other connections include:

1. Harry’s dream with Nagini (Voldemort's symbolic mother) going through the Gaunt ring with the Resurrection Stone and then Lily's grave - in the same chapter the Silver Doe appears, and only a chapter after he visits Lily's grave and sees the memory of her murder, and

2. the Lily from the Resurrection Stone parallels Morfin while he's wearing the Gaunt ring with the Stone in it:

Harry’s dreams were confused and disturbing: Nagini wove in and out of them, first through a gigantic, cracked ring, then through a wreath of Christmas roses. (DH 19) Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough. (DH 34) Morfin pushed the hair out of his dirty face, the better to see Riddle, and Harry saw that he wore Marvolo’s black-stoned ring on his right hand. (HBP 17)

As fandom has pointed out, the real James, Lily, Sirius, and Remus never would’ve told Harry to die and so it’s a theory that it was Death purposely luring Harry - but if you accept that the Resurrection Stone’s shades were all Lily, and that Lily is Master of Death, it would make sense that they all tell Harry to sacrifice himself, because unlike Dumbledore who can only guess, Lily knows that Harry will come back to life, as it was her magic in the first place that caused it to happen (of course, in a way it was Death, because Lily is Death, etc).

3.3 The Invisibility Cloak

Despite the Cloak belonging to James, Lily is implied as the "true owner" as the Master of Death. For more on the Cloak’s link to Lily and how it represents the Aegis which is sometimes featured as a cloak, Lily passing the Cloak onto Harry as Zeus gives Athena the aegis, see the Shield Charm meta.

An important detail regarding both the 1981 flashback and the shades from the Resurrection Stone is that Voldemort, Harry, James, Remus, and Sirius's clothes are mentioned, but what Lily was wearing is never mentioned - because we're meant to make the connection that Lily is Death and Death wears an Invisibility Cloak:

“Nice costume, mister!” He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face […] Beneath the robe he fingered the handle of his wand (DH 17) he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of colored smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired boy in his blue pajamas. (DH 17) James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley’s. Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face. Lupin was younger too, and much less shabby, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back in this familiar place, scene of so many adolescent wanderings. (DH 34)

Note that mentions of Remus's "shabbiness" throughout the series are often references to his clothes ("The stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set of wizard’s robes that had been darned in several places"), so his clothes are referenced, if obliquely.

The text also emphasizes that Voldemort can "see James and Harry clearly", as well as see the child’s face clearly, with the unsaid implication being that he can't see Lily clearly - because her face is covered by her hair that resembles a cloak, perhaps because she's wearing Death's Invisibility Cloak around her shoulders (in a metaphorical sense) or has Disillusioned herself and therefore only part of her body is visible.

Additionally, one way to read the Three Brothers story is that Lily is the third brother who met Death as an old friend - and Harry is the third brother’s son, who she passes down her Cloak to; and when the text tells us that Harry is descended from the Ignotus Peverell, the hidden meaning behind this is that he's descended from Lily.

4.0 Additional details 

“Death’s got an Invisibility Cloak?” Harry interrupted again. “So he can sneak up on people,” said Ron. “Sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking" (DH 21)

Death “running at” people is echoed in Voldemort’s words about Lily, and “flapping his arms and shrieking" is evoked by Lily’s arms opening wide and her screams:

“Dumbledore’s favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter — and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?” (DH 36) He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear (DH 17) At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide (DH 17)

As for Death sneaking up on people. Lily and Voldemort mirror each other here - as Voldemort is sneaking up on the Potters, so Lily is sneaking up on him (from DH 17).

And he made less noise than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark hedge, and stared over it A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he could not hear The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter did not hear.

The wording also echoes Lily’s shade in Priori Incantatem: 

She walked close to Harry, looking down at him, and she spoke in the same distant, echoing voice as the others, but quietly, so that Voldemort, his face now livid with fear as his victims prowled around him, could not hear… (GoF)

More on this in future metas.

-

The part with the small child going up to Voldemort and running away is echoed by Voldemort and Lily, with Lily taking Voldemort’s role and Voldemort playing the child:

“Nice costume, mister!” He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face: Then the child turned and ran away... (DH 17)

Remember, Voldemort turns into a child after he’s vanquished, as we see in GoF, and Harry compares him to a child in DH ("Harry […] thought absurdly of a child counting in a game of hide-and-seek", "His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded.")

As mentioned before, Lily’s hair covering her face is meant to evoke the hood of a cloak and echo Voldemort's face being covered by his cloak, and it’s heavily implied that Voldemort never sees Lily's face or her eyes beneath the hair (remember the Lily from the Resurrection Stone pushes her hair back to see Harry, drawing a contrast to the Lily in the 1981 memory that Voldemort sees).

This is Voldemort first smiling with amusement like that child:

He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear… He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in (DH 17)

When Voldemort murders Harry, he finally sees beneath the hood of Lily’s Cloak (AKA sees Lily's eyes) through Harry, because he’s looking into Harry’s eyes, which are exactly like Lily's, as he casts the Killing Curse on him (Lily and Harry’s eyes also being the color of the Killing Curse):

He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy’s face: He wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry: It had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage — “Avada Kedavra!” (DH 17)

And now Voldemort’s amusement is replaced by fear, and he runs away, exactly like that child:

And then he broke: He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away... far away... (DH 17)

This is what Remus tells Harry about dementors:

“If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself... soulless and evil.” (PoA 10)

Similarly to that quote, Voldemort turned Lily into someone like himself - turned her into Death.

-

The description of the street getting darker in the 1981 memory echoes the description the dementor's darkness, indicating that Voldemort is walking closer to Death:

And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his destination was in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm broken (DH 17) They turned right down the narrow alleyway where Harry had first seen Sirius and which formed a shortcut between Magnolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk. It was empty and much darker than the streets it linked because there were no streetlamps. (OoTP 1) Something had happened to the night. The star-strewn indigo sky was suddenly pitch-black and lightless — the stars, the moon, the misty streetlamps at either end of the alley had vanished [...] They were surrounded by total, impenetrable, silent darkness, as though some giant hand had dropped a thick, icy mantle over the entire alleyway, blinding them. (OoTP 1)

Additionally, we never get an explanation to why Harry and Voldemort see this full memory - it’s the same memory Harry relives with the dementors, however it’s much stronger. Dementors don’t show visual memories, only emotions and voices - and the only thing stronger than dementors is Death itself, so presumably it’s actual Death that made them both view the memory.

Dementors are implied as created by Death and are “Death’s servants”. Therefore the effect of the dementors on Harry (making him relive the moment of Lily’s death and vanquishment of Voldemort, which is the same memory Voldemort and Harry both relive when they get near the site of murder) may be related to Lily’s role as Death.

5.0 Veil of Death

Lily’s role as Death might also be the reason for Harry’s attraction to the Veil of Death, with the implication that it was Lily whispering to Harry being the Veil, as Lily in the Mirror of Erised and the Veil are similarly described:

He had the strangest feeling that there was someone standing right behind the veil on the other side of the archway. Gripping his wand very tightly, he edged around the dais, but there was nobody there. All that could be seen was the other side of the tattered black veil. (OoTP) There he was, reflected in it, white and scared-looking, and there, reflected behind him, were at least ten others. Harry looked over his shoulder — but still, no one was there. Or were they all invisible, too? Was he in fact in a room full of invisible people and this mirror’s trick was that it reflected them, invisible or not? He looked in the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. He reached out a hand and felt the air behind him. If she was really there, he’d touch her, their reflections were so close together, but he felt only air — she and the others existed only in the mirror. (PS) - He took several paces back from the dais and wrenched his eyes from the veil. (OoTP) He tore his eyes away from his mother’s face, whispered, “I’ll come back,” and hurried from the room. (PS)

This implication is also weaved in via it being specifically Luna’s mother who is emphasized regarding the Veil, as well as Lily’s letter in DH described as “a friendly little wave from behind a veil”. 

Lily's long hair covering her face in her death scene also evokes the Veil, and Lily enters the memory through a door - which echoes both the Mirror of Erised and the Veil described as an "ancient doorway".

6.0 Draught of Living Death

JKR describes characters’ clothes often, and I expanded on Lily's tie to the Invisibility Cloak, but notably the only time Lily’s clothes are explicitly mentioned in the series is when she’s wearing a dressing gown outside of Gryffindor tower at night time, about to go to sleep. This is partially an allusion to Lily being in an “enchanted sleep”, like the state of the Draught of Living Death, which includes asphodel as an ingredient, a type of lily - again tying Lily to Death. When Harry needs her, her spirit is awoken from her death-like slumber and she comes to save him.

The Draught of Living Death’s connection to Lily is further shown in HBP, where it’s the potion that wins Harry Felix Felicis, or Liquid Luck - and other than the alliteration with Liquid Luck and Lily, “luck” is constantly used to describe Lily saving Harry from the Killing Curse:

“But Harry — what if You-Know-Who’s with him?” “Well — I was lucky once, wasn’t I?” said Harry, pointing at his scar. “I might get lucky again.” (PS)

(Harry does "get lucky" again - Lily's blood magic saves him from Quirrelmort right after this.)

So. Your mother died to save you. Yes, that’s a powerful counter-charm. […] But after all, it was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. (CoS) “Harry Potter escaped me by a lucky chance.” (GoF)

But of course, it wasn’t luck, it was Lily. (The Draught of Living Death’s modification also includes the number 7, the magically significant number of horcruxes, and the amount of times Lily says “Not Harry” in her final words). 

This ultimately threads to the scene where Harry, under the influence of Felix Felicis, uses the graphic details of Lily’s death - and Lily’s eyes - to manipulate Slughorn into getting the real horcrux memory. More on this link in future metas. 

7.0 Conclusion

To summarize, Lily is portrayed as Death itself and is linked to everything surrounding Death - to the three Deathly Hallows, Death’s arms, dementors, the Veil of Death, the Draught of Living Death.

She’s the one whose magic conquered Death and caused both Voldemort and Harry’s death and resurrections, the one who keeps reaching out from beyond death to save Harry again and again - the true Master of Death.

Thank you to @artemisia-black for helping me with this meta, and credit to slashmarks fics for some of these realizations.

Part 2 of this meta is here.

[maxdibert]

Hi! Could you tell me your top 5 least favorite Harry Potter characters and why?

My 5 most hated characters in Harry Potter are:

5 - Molly Weasley: I can’t stand this woman. I can’t stand how she acts like a morally superior, pure-blood yet holds endless prejudices, especially (and mostly) toward other, younger women. I don’t like her tradwife vibe, and I don’t like how overbearing and suffocating she is. Seriously, in real life, I’d feel the urge to tell her off—she’s that typical annoying woman who doesn’t know where the boundaries are.

4 - Remus Lupin: Zero sympathy for a man almost forty who got a 24-year-old girl pregnant and then abandoned her. Remus Lupin is a coward and a piece of trash, a bullying accomplice who keeps his head down regarding his own actions and needs a 17-year-old to teach him a lesson in manhood. I really wish Tonks had left him and taken off with Teddy to get as far away as possible from that pathetic excuse for a person.

3 - Dumbledore: Starting with the fact that the entire problem of the story basically stems from his irresponsibility with Tom Riddle, which already showed that he was a terrible teacher. He only shows concern for students who can serve his purposes or suck up to him, and his involvement throughout the story shows a moral stance I find nauseating. I mean, he’s a guy who has the nerve to lecture his former students who “chose the wrong path,” but when those same students were under his care, he constantly neglected and rejected them just because they didn’t belong to a certain house. He had the audacity to call Severus Snape “miserable” when it was Dumbledore himself who allowed Snape to be bullied and almost killed without lifting a finger to stop it or punish the bullies. This same Dumbledore scolds Draco Malfoy for not trusting him when from Draco’s first day at Hogwarts, all he saw from the old man was favoritism toward a certain house and certain students, completely ignoring the rest. Honestly, I’d have banned him from teaching. There’s a lot said about Snape as a teacher, but Dumbledore was responsible for everything, allowed terrible things to happen, and turned his back on many vulnerable children and teenagers. Then he acted all surprised when they ended up in bad places. Screw him, hypocritical old man.

2 - Ginny Weasley: The “I’m not like other girls,” the “shut up, Hermione, you don’t know anything about Quidditch,” the “everyone look at me, I hex people, I’m one of the boys, I’m not vain but I’m hot, but I’m not prissy,” the “I make fun of girls who are pretty, flirty, and feminine because I’m a textbook pick-me girl” who is shoved into the end of the series. She’s a character who didn’t matter at all throughout the story; she’s barely mentioned in some books, but suddenly she’s Harry’s love interest because J.K. Rowling needed all her characters to end up married with 468749284 kids, and Harry needed to be part of the Weasley family. So, they had to do something. Ginny is a terrible character, going from irrelevant to some sort of Mary Sue who even the Slytherins drool over and who, of course, is not a “typical girl” because being a “typical girl” in Rowling’s world is somehow the original sin. So, she’s great at sports, hexes people, pulls pranks because she’s so cool, uh uh uh, she’s not like the others, uh uh uh, but she has internalized misogyny that you can smell from here to China. Honestly, someone should have slapped her for being so damn stupid.

1 - James Potter: There’s nothing I haven’t already said about James Potter. He’s a character who really grinds my gears because they try to sell him as some kind of hero, but he was just a spoiled rich kid who decided to torment a poor, vulnerable boy simply because that boy was friends with his crush. He used his social power and status to get away with all the crap he pulled, attacked in groups, lied to his girlfriend saying he’d stopped bullying people when he really hadn’t, and when he was supposed to be locked up in a house with his wife and son, he was off fooling around with his best friend. James Potter was an ass, and defending him is defending classism, elitism, and whitewashing social classes. I’m not going to explain why.

[iamnmbr3]

@thecarnivorousmuffinmeta raises excellent points as usual. This reminds me that I've been thinking for a while about how Dumbledore's relationship with Harry may be impacted by the bizarre fixation he has on Tom.

We know from from Diary!Tom that Harry apparently looks a little bit like him. Plus of course, in some ways Harry literally IS Tom Riddle in the sense that he is a Horcrux and contains a piece of Tom's soul inside him and has some of his powers. But unlike Tom, Harry looks up to and is loyal to Dumbledore.

Perhaps he isn't quite as unconditionally trusting of Dumbledore as some might think (as argued well here by @hollowed-theory-hall) but certainly he does, in broad strokes, trust and like him in a way Tom never did (for understandable reasons).

Also, unlike Tom, Harry is not a skilled Legilimens (or indeed even allowed to be made aware of the existence of Legilimency and Occlumency for quite some time) and so Dumbledore also gets constant unfettered access to his mind, something that I think Tom denied him. We know that he read Tom's mind against his will in the orphanage but Tom probably got skilled enough at Occlumency to keep Dumbledore out pretty quickly. Certainly he was able to keep the details of opening the Chamber of Secrets and his creation of a Horcrux secret.

And even in the orphanage, I think we could argue that when he is described as having a "closed" look following Dumbledore's incursion into his mind, he may in fact be practicing an instinctive form of Occlumency already since it's something he had a natural talent for and his powers were already quite developed and since similar descriptions of "closed" expressions are often used in the books to give a visual cue to hint at when characters are magically guarding their thoughts.

So I think Dumbledore would've had very little opportunity to invade Tom's mind. Which is something that he seems to have quite a nasty habit of doing. The implication of the books is that he reads Harry's mind regularly. And not just Harry's. He presumably knows so much about what goes on and about the inner feelings and insecurities of students under his care - including Harry but also others like Ron for example - because he makes a habit of just casually invading their minds and reading their thoughts.

This is. Deeply creepy. (And that's not even getting into the times he apparently straight up made himself invisible and followed Harry around in first year to spy on him - I swear the more you think about Dumbledore the creepier you realize he is).

It's rather striking in this context that Hogwarts students don't seem to be made aware of the possibility that their minds can be accessed or taught how to defend themselves.

Given that he makes a habit of doing something so incredibly invasive and that he has a particular fixation when it comes to Tom, I would suspect that he found Tom's ability to deny him access to his thoughts and feelings deeply galling. (Though I'm sure he did all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify his feelings about it).

And then we have Harry - who looks something like Tom and has a literal piece of Tom's soul inside him and is connected to Tom through a mystical prophecy - but who unlike Tom gives him respect and unresistant obedience and (unknowingly) allows Dumbledore unfettered access to dip into his thoughts whenever he wants. Harry, is both the weapon that Dumbledore will use to punish and destroy Tom, and also the "good" and "pure" version of Tom who reacts "properly" to Dumbledore and allows him the things Tom never would.

This is not a true summation of Harry's character (or Tom's for that matter) but I think it may well be how Dumbledore sees it (partly probably at a subconscious level because I think he lies to himself almost as much as he lies to others). And I think that colors how he interacts with Harry.

Do you think Tom was the only student Dumbledore hated? I think Tom probably isn't the only Unfavorite Student and there are more out there that Dumbledore was successful at sabotaging.

(Side thought do you think Moody started out on Dumbledore's bad list but then worked very hard to "redeem" himself by trusting Dumbledore in all things and that's why he's so weirdly loyal to Dumbledore?)

Dumbledore and Hating People

The thing is that Tom Riddle does seem to hold a special place in Dumbledore's heart.

There are other characters we see who are also loathsome/have qualities that Dumbledore despises but it's in different ways/not to the same degree.

Dumbledore utterly loathes Lockhart, purposefully sets him up with the job so as to either destroy his reputation fundamentally or kill him. However, I'd say Dumbledore is contemptuous and dismissive of Lockhart. Dumbledore has 0 interest in the man beyond destroying him, and doesn't spend much time thinking about him beyond getting him in the castle and letting the curse do its work.

Dumbledore is dismissive and contemptuous of Cornelius Fudge, but again, doesn't focus on him much beyond pitying his shortsightedness and holding him in general contempt.

Dumbledore similarly doesn't love the Dursleys but it feels like that's in a way of he has 0 opinion or interest in Vernon and just... a very weird treatment of Petunia. I wouldn't even say he dislikes them, in fact, I think he likes the idea of them beyond the general disappointment in not treating Harry exactly the way he'd like (except they are doing that but he'll never say as much).

While we don't know that Dumbledore doesn't have stashes of memories he's painfully collected over the years, going to anyone who ever interacted with Tom Riddle and asking "please give me every memory you have ever had" only for the vast majority of them to slam the door in his face, given the focus he has on Tom Riddle it seems... unlikely...

Add this in with Tom's "dark glamour", the way Dumbledore talks about him, the way he pontificates about him as if he's a fictional character and Dumbledore is writing fanfiction and metas about the man, and we're looking at a... I'll call it a fixation where Tom hit all the right buttons for Albus Dumbledore in a way that other people just haven't.

Basically, the people we see Dumbledore hate just aren't hot enough (or are women so Dumbledore doesn't care).

I'll put it this way. Harry's easily Dumbledore's second fixation, he puts a lot of work into this boy, but Dumbledore's way less... into him is the only way I can put it, than Tom. Harry's there as a vehicle/means to destroy Tom and acts as a foil to Tom. Everything about Harry for Dumbledore is presented as "in contrast to Tom Riddle" and that's telling to me.

As for hating students...

I think most of the time Dumbledore just doesn't give a fuck.

With Draco who was actively endangering the student body, nearly killing several students to ultimately kill Dumbledore, and ultimately letting Death Eaters (including Fenrir fucking Grayback) into the castle where it's a miracle no one died/got lycanthropy Dumbledore was into it and a) knew the whole time b) did nothing to stop it because then Tom would hurt Draco. (It's too bad Katie Bell got cursed for six months in the process of that huh Dumbledore or you didn't approach Draco with that offer to give him clemency until the last five minutes of your life).

I doubt Dumbledore knows who Crabbe and Goyle even are.

And he seemed to favor the Marauders (rampant known bullies) and not care about Severus at the time and now thinks quite highly of Severus for having redeemed himself for love/following a narrative Dumbledore likes while also being unable to not do what Dumbledore wants.

He only cares about Ron and Hermione in relation to Harry and just likes the general idea of them (Dumbledore is very big on the "idea" of people).

Dumbledore and Moody

I don't think so.

We've seen the redemption story Dumbledore likes and that's Severus Snape's. Dumbledore likes a narrative, Moody having been disliked then just choosing to be a sycophant would be very unimpressive for Dumbledore because he'd see no reason for Moody to have changed/not an impressive enough reason.

It has to be for true love, friendship, some reason that is a compelling narrative to Dumbledore.

Everything for Dumbledore fits into these narratives from Merope dying in childbirth (she just didn't love enough), to Lily being murdered (she loved her son so much she sacrificed herself), to Snape (his love for her means he is now undyingly loyal to her son), to everything.

Plus, I don't get that feeling about Moody.

Dumbledore has plenty of people unquestioningly loyal to him, he cultivates the Order such that this is the case, it's not so much that Moody's an outlier for being so loyal but the fact that he is in the Order of the Phoenix at all means he must be this loyal to survive there (notice Percy is not a member). In the Order we're seeing the people who survived the litmus test of "actively not questioning Dumbledore in any decision he ever makes" (see HBP and the Christmas Party and shooting down of Harry's "Draco's up to something and Snape is too" for reasons that are simply "I trust Dumbledore completely" and nothing else).

If Moody wasn't like that, he wouldn't be in the Order.

So, I think Moody's just like the rest of them and I don't see a reason why he would have ever been different.

[potions-of-dark-devotion]

Why doesn’t anyone in the Order of the Phoenix , even the marauders, tell Harry Potter stories about his parents, positive or negative? Like they tell him things like “you’re so much like your father” or “you look so much like you mother” or “we used to get into trouble all the time” but never “oh hey your did this one time I remember….ect” or “your mom did this weird thing once it was so funny ect…” like stories like this would be a goldmine to Harry of identity and belonging. How well did they all know each other???

[bookwormangie]

I recently saw a post on tiktok about Neville as a potentially great chosen one if he had been picked, and I wanted to share my thoughts and rant a little because I don’t have much else to talk about, lol.

I believe ppl are missing a crucial point here. If Voldemort had targeted Neville instead of Harry, things would have played out very differently. Neville most likely wouldn’t have survived at all and wouldn’t have become "the Boy Who Lived."

Firstly, let’s discuss Snape. His role in Harry’s survival is massive. Snape’s love for Lily led him to ask Voldemort to spare her, and he then went to Dumbledore to beg for her protection. The Potters went into hiding, and Dumbledore cast the fidelius charm. Unfortunately, they were eventually betrayed by Peter. Since Snape wouldn’t have done this for the Longbottoms, they wouldn’t have gone into hiding (unless Dumbledore had been tipped off by someone else). This would have made it easier for Voldemort to find them.

Secondly, the protection Harry received from his mother’s sacrifice was unique. Lily’s choice to sacrifice herself for Harry created a magical protection that caused Voldemort’s curse to rebound, leading to his temporary downfall. This was possible because Voldemort gave her the choice to step aside. Alice and Frank, though loving and brave, wouldn’t have had the same opportunity to step aside for Neville. Snape wouldn’t have asked Voldemort to spare them, so Voldemort wouldn’t have given them a chance to step aside. As a result, Neville wouldn’t have received the same sacrificial protection, and Voldemort would have succeeded in killing him.

In short, if Voldemort had targeted Neville, the lack of Snape’s intervention and the absence of the Fidelius Charm and sacrificial protection would likely have led to the Longbottoms' deaths. Neville wouldn’t have become the boy who lived, and the wizarding world’s history would have been completely different.

I personally speculate that if Voldemort had succeeded in killing Neville, he might have then turned his attention to Harry to prevent the prophecy from coming true. Given Voldemort’s nature, he would likely have sought to eliminate any remaining threat. Snape would've intervened (assuming he was aware), potentially resulting in a scenario similar to the one we know. This would mean Harry could still become the chosen one and “the Boy Who Lived,” despite the different circumstances. It’s an intriguing thought—how fate might realign even when the paths change.

This has probably been discussed before, but I just needed to yap a little. It’s been a while since I posted!

[kait-bait8]

Dumbledore offering Draco mercy is a really emotional moment.

Imagine being a bully your entire life, raised by violent parents who talk about the death of those they don’t like as if it’s nothing. Raised around violence. Then, at the age of 16, you’re given the task to kill an old man. A powerful man yes, but an old man. You know if you don’t kill him, you and your family will be killed.

So all year you try and find ways of killing him that don’t involve you having to look him in the eyes. Cursed necklaces and poisoned mead that get passed to him by others so you’re removed. But they don’t work so you keep working on your plan and telling yourself that murder is nothing, killing is nothing. You are violent and you can do this.

And then your moment comes and you are face to face with a weak, frail man who can barely stand. You tell him you are going to kill him and he is telling you something no one has ever told you: you are not a killer. You are not a murderer. You are not violent. You are an innocent child and you can choose to remain so.

And you stand there, terrified, and you know he is right.

[wisteria-lodge]

Since you’ve talked about Molly and Draco, can you talk about Snape as well? When you said that there was a disconnect with Snape’s character I honestly wasn’t sure if you meant the audience was supposed to like him more or less than they actually do.

This is a complicated one, because Book 1-3 Snape and Book 5-7 Snape are written so differently that I actually want to talk about them as two separate characters. 

Book 1-3 Snape… kind of sucks. Maybe he sucks in a way you find funny (which I completely get. A lot of comedy - especially British comedy - revolves around finding the humor in really *mean* people. Snape is *written* to be funny in a dry, acerbic, Roald Dahl kind of way.) But maybe Snape sucks in a way that’s not fun for you, he’s just upsetting and cruel. Either way, he’s petty, unfair, a bully, completely unreasonable, and doesn’t really appear to have any redeeming qualities. Snape protects Harry in Book 1 only because James Potter saved his life and, according to Dumbledore:  

“Professor Snape couldn’t bear being in your father’s debt. . . . I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father’s memory in peace. . . .” 

Later on, Snape’s motivation will become “Protect Harry because you couldn’t protect Lily.” But there’s no hint of that here.

I actually think it’s very likely that ‘Snape was in love with Lily’ is a plotline added during Book 4, because 1-3 Snape’s motivation is so completely focused on JAMES. He hates Harry because he looks like James, he hates James because (according to Lupin) he’s “jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch field.” Within the context of the series it’s easy to say that Lupin is lying, and with good reason… but in the context of the first three books, I think that’s just meant to be true? Snape, as we know, is a stealth quidditch hooligan the way McGonagall is. Also… James’ characterization shifts around. He’s not a bully in the first three books, he’s Head Boy… and that Head Boy thing doesn’t quite gel with what we hear from Sirius later: 

“No one would have made me a prefect, I spent too much time in detention with James. Lupin was the good boy, he got the badge.”

(I know JKR plans things out in advance, but she absolutely does change things on the fly. Arthur Weasley not getting killed by Nagini is an easy example that we definitely know about. And come on - the entire last book is a Deathly Hallows fetch-quest. Was there really no way to slip in a reference to Beedle the Bard - or a super-powerful semi-mythical wand - anywhere in the first six books?) 

So, in books 1-3, there's no hint that Snape is a potion prodigy, particularly powerful, or even particularly clever. He wrote a logic puzzle and “knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts.” But that’s it. “Potion Master” isn’t an advanced rank, it’s just the posh British boarding school way of saying “teacher.” (Like headmaster = head teacher.) Early Snape is also a lot more *emotional* than he is later on, when his ability to “Master yourself!... control your anger, discipline your mind!” becomes extremely plot relevant. Like, can you picture 5-7 Snape (or Alan Rickman, who plays a distinctly later-books Snape) doing any of this? 

Snape was beside himself. “OUT WITH IT, POTTER!” he bellowed. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”  “Professor Snape!” shrieked Madam Pomfrey. “Control yourself!”  “See here, Snape, be reasonable,” said Fudge. “This door’s been locked, we just saw —”  “THEY HELPED HIM ESCAPE, I KNOW IT!” Snape howled, pointing at Harry and Hermione. His face was twisted; spit was flying from his mouth.  “Calm down, man!” Fudge barked. “You’re talking nonsense!”  “YOU DON’T KNOW POTTER!” shrieked Snape. “HE DID IT, I KNOW HE DID IT —”

In Movie 3, Snape gets a cool protective moment where he shoves the kids behind him during the werewolf attack. In Book 3, Snape is unconscious during the entire werewolf attack because Harry, Ron and Hermione simultaneously decide he’s too dangerous, and too much of a liability to keep around. Here are are some bangers from Book 3 Snape: 

- “Don’t ask me to fathom the way a werewolf’s mind works.”   - “KEEP QUIET, YOU STUPID GIRL!” Snape shouted, looking suddenly quite deranged. “DON’T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!” - “Up to the castle?... I don’t think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the dementors once we get out of the Willow. They’ll be very pleased to see you, Black . . . pleased enough to give you a little Kiss, I daresay. . . .”  - “I’ll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the dementors will have a Kiss for him too —”

If you sort of squint you can maybe say - okay, maybe this is a PTSD response. Like I’m writing a Snape POV fic right now, you can make it work. But it’s not work the books do for you, and it’s not the characterization choice they make in the films. 

BUT. Snape goes through a little bit of a revamp/retcon in Book 4. It’s totally deliberate - he’s Book 1-3 Snape at the beginning, then he basically vanishes from the narrative… the reader kind of forgets about him…  until it comes up during Karkaroff’s trial that Dumbledore ABSOLUTELY trusts him, even though he was a Death Eater. So now when Snape turns up at the climax - he’s a figure of intrigue, and it makes sense that he’s one of the two people Dumbledore brings with him to deal with Barty. Honestly, it’s a pretty cool magic trick. We buy it when - instead of hissing and spitting and hopping around like he does when he confronts Fudge at the end of Book 3 - Book 4 Snape deals with Fudge like this: 

Snape strode forward… pulling up the left sleeve of his robes as he went. He stuck out his forearm and showed it to Fudge, who recoiled.  “There,” said Snape harshly. “There. The Dark Mark. It is not as clear as it was an hour or so ago, when it burned black, but you can still see it. (...) This Mark has been growing clearer all year. Karkaroff’s too. Why do you think Karkaroff fled tonight? We both felt the Mark burn. We both knew he had returned. Karkaroff fears the Dark Lord’s vengeance.”

Calm, collected, focused. This is a character who you’re supposed to take seriously, a character who you are supposed to respect. 

I think it’s very interesting that after Book 4, we don’t see Snape *bully* the students during class again. He’s strict, and he’s a hard grader, and Harry still thinks he’s unfair, but like… the narrative framing is on his side now. 

“Tell me, Potter,” said Snape softly, “can you read?”  Draco Malfoy laughed.  “Yes, I can,” said Harry, his fingers clenched tightly around his wand.  “Read the third line of the instructions for me, Potter.”  Harry squinted at the blackboard(… ) His heart sank. He had not added syrup of hellebore, but had proceeded straight to the fourth line of the instructions after allowing his potion to simmer for seven minutes.  “Did you do everything on the third line, Potter?” “No,” said Harry very quietly.  “I beg your pardon?” “No,” said Harry, more loudly. “I forgot the hellebore...”  “I know you did, Potter, which means that this mess is utterly worthless. Evanesco.” The contents of Harry’s potion vanished; he was left standing foolishly beside an empty cauldron. “Those of you who have managed to read the instructions, fill one flagon with a sample of your potion, label it clearly with your name, and bring it up to my desk for testing.” (...)  “That was really unfair,” said Hermione consolingly, sitting down next to Harry  (...) “Yeah, well,” said Harry, glowering at his plate, “since when has Snape ever been fair to me?”

Like he isn’t nice, but he also isn’t asking Harry questions he can’t possibly know the answers to, threatening to kill someone’s pet, or calling Hermione ugly. He didn’t even take away house points. And - during the next lesson, we are told that the approach Snape took with Harry actually worked?

Determined not to give Snape an excuse to fail him this lesson, Harry read and reread every line of the instructions on the blackboard at least three times before acting on them. His Strengthening Solution was not precisely the clear turquoise shade of Hermione’s but it was at least blue rather than pink, like Neville’s, and he delivered a flask of it to Snape’s desk at the end of the lesson with a feeling of mingled defiance and relief. 

I want to do one more close read, on a excerpt from Book 5: 

Harry realized how much Professor McGonagall cared about beating Slytherin when she abstained from giving them homework in the week leading up to the match. (...)  Nobody could quite believe their ears until she looked directly at Harry and Ron and said grimly, “I’ve become accustomed to seeing the Quidditch Cup in my study, boys, and I really don’t want to have to hand it over to Professor Snape, so use the extra time to practice, won’t you?” Snape was no less obviously partisan: He had booked the Quidditch pitch for Slytherin practice so often that the Gryffindors had difficulty getting on it to play. He was also turning a deaf ear to the many reports of Slytherin attempts to hex Gryffindor players in the corridors. When Alicia Spinnet turned up in the hospital wing with her eyebrows growing so thick and fast that they obscured her vision and obstructed her mouth, Snape insisted that she must have attempted a Hair-Thickening Charm on herself and refused to listen to the fourteen eyewitnesses who insisted that they had seen the Slytherin Keeper, Miles Bletchley, hit her from behind with a jinx.

This has a very similar structure to the sequence when Snape refuses to punish Draco for enlarging Hermione’s teeth. Slytherins and Gryffindors having an altercation, Gryffindor girl gets caught in the crossfire. BUT a few key things have been changed. One - the section is told in second-hand narration, which makes it less emotional than the teeth-scene. Two - the section begins with comparing Snape to McGonagall: she’s being biased/helping out her students too, so it’s only fair if he does it as well. Three - his insult isn’t “Your face has always looked like that,” it’s “You must have messed up a spell,” which is a lot less personal, and a lot less mean. (If anything, Snape is subtly insulting her for casting a cosmetic charm/being too girly… and being a girly-girl is an inherently suspect characteristic in JKR’s world.) Everything about this passage is set up to create a “Snape the Bully” moment… that kind of excuses Snape. 

So, what do we have? There are the people that think Book 1-3 Snape just went too far, and you can soften the narrative framing around him, and you can add in as many tragic backstories as you want, and it doesn’t really matter. THAT is definitely not what JKR wants you to think. She wants to bring you along for the ride, and (as you can tell from the framing) she's started to like Snape a lot.

HOWEVER. I do not think that the fan who likes 5-7 Alan Rickman Snape is… quite seeing the same thing she is. I get the sense that in the text, Snape’s tragic backstory is not meant to *explain* his bad behavior so much as it is meant to *excuse* it. He stays mean and bad-tempered… but he’s allowed to be, both because he is always acting in service to a Good Cause, and because he was abused at home, bullied at school, etc. A big part of why I think JKR likes writing Snape so much (and why she’s so protective of him) is because she likes the idea of being as nasty as you like… but for it to be allowed because you’ve suffered, and also because you’re in the right. Sadly I think this describes a lot of her current online interactions. 

JKR also loves the idea of *pining.* (It is crazy how long the main characters’ pining/longing/will-they-won’t-they thing in the Cormoran Strike books has lasted.) It’s a very safe kind of romance, and (again, sadly) you can tell from her writing that romance is not generally something that feels safe to her. Snape is sometimes characterized by those who dislike the character as an incel-type who wants to possess Lily, and I just don’t think that’s in the text. If anything it’s the other way around. Snape has some unconsummated, medieval courtly love thing going on, where he has decided to live his life in Lily’s service. 

I wrote about why I think Draco Malfoy (unintentionally) appeals to fans. With Snape…  I actually think a lot of his current (unintentional) appeal comes from the way a softer Snape reframes the narrative into something more complex, and especially the way it reframes Dumbledore. Manipulative/Morally Grey Dumbledore is a *very* popular fan interpretation, and the way you get that is with a sympathetic Severus Snape. 

“You disgust me,” said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little. (...)  “Hide them all, then,” he croaked. “Keep her — them — safe. Please.”  “And what will you give me in return, Severus?”  “In — in return?” Snape gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry expected him to protest, but after a long moment he said, “Anything.”

The implications here are really far reaching. Because to me, the main question when it comes to Snape is - why does he STAY at Hogwarts? He clearly hates it, why doesn’t he just leave? If you’re talking about 1-3 Snape, it's because he’s eternally holding out for the Defense Against the Dark Arts job, and he’s just kind of a twisted miserable guy who would probably be equally miserable everywhere. 

But books 5-7 add the context that he’s brilliant, he’s brave, he’s principled, he’s got a sense of humor. He seems close with the Malfoys. He has *options.* So now the (unintended?) implication is… he doesn’t leave because Dumbledore won’t let him. The fact that he keeps applying for the DADA job becomes dark and borderline suicidal when we learn it’s cursed, and that Snape knows it’s cursed. If he takes it, he’ll leave (or die) at the end of the year. That means, every year, he’s tacitly asking Dumbledore “Can I leave?” And Dumbledore is answering “No.” 

That’s such an interesting, juicy character dynamic. Snape is being kept miserable on purpose because… he’s easier to control that way? And if that’s true… then oh boy is it sinister that Dumbledore left Harry with the Dursleys. He knew he was raising Harry “like a pig for slaughter” (as Snape puts it.) And if Harry doesn’t have a support system, if he’s miserable, if Dumbledore can swoop in as his savior… then doesn’t that make him so much easier to control? 

[rickktish]

Some unsolicited Harry Potter Thoughts and Headcanons

Ron Weasley is one of my favorite characters. Ron Weasley should have died from the poison in Slughorn's office when he was 16 so that y'all would treat him with the respect he deserves instead of shitting on him and replacing him with Draco in Leather Pants.

The entire reason Dumbledore is so fucked up actually has nothing to do with his sordid past; it comes from the (Doylist) fact that he was a plot device in a children's book until the main characters (and thus the audience) got old enough that it needed to become a YA series, and then had to find ways to justify is plot device-ness after being magically transformed into a character. The justification did not succeed.

Harry and Ginny were fine as a ship. Not spectacular, but fine. But if the series had come out 10-20 years later than it did I would be frothing at the mouth that Harry ended up with Ron's sister instead of Ron.

Draco Malfoy was a victim of circumstance in that he was raised by racists to be a racist. Draco Malfoy did not change his mind about his racism by the end of the series, but he did change his mind about the cult leader his parents had raised him to worship, and he deserves credit for that. Do not give him credit for what we do not have evidence of him doing, namely becoming not racist. No one in his family did that. Don't pretend that they did just to make them look shinier.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were all bad friends at different points in the series, but as far as I can recall only Harry and Hermione exhibited actively toxic behavior. Ron had his disagreement with Hermione in book 3 and with Harry in book 4, but he had valid points in PoA (owner of a pet is responsible for that pet's actions) and was operating under false assumptions which he clearly communicated in GoF ("I thought you might've told me if it was the Cloak... because it wouldn't covered both of us, wouldn't it? But you found another way, did you?") before getting his head out of his ass ("Harry," he said, very seriously, "whoever put your name in that goblet -- I -- I reckon they're trying to do you in!") Followed by a sincere apology, interrupted though it was ("Ron opened his mouth uncertainly. Harry knew Ron was about to apologize and suddenly found he didn't need to hear it. "It's okay," he said, before Ron could get the words out. "Forget it." |"No," said Ron, "I shouldn't've--"| "Forget it," Harry said. Ron grinned nervously at him, and Harry grinned back.) Ron also apologized after leaving in DH. If anyone can remember a single instance of either Harry or Hermione apologizing to Ron for something they did that was wrong or for direct harm rather than accidental harm they've done, would you please add it to this post? I'm hoping it's just been too long since I did an in-depth read of the series and I've forgotten something, because I genuinely can't remember a time and I haven't been successful in locating one by my cursory searches through my ebook editions. I would genuinely like to be wrong about this, please and thank you.

I believe with my whole soul that the reason Dumbledore didn't get Sirius out of prison was because he was having Grindelwald flashbacks. Person I trusted with my whole soul turned out to be pro-enslavement/genocide? Person my students trusted with their magically concealed location appears to have turned out to be pro-Voldemort (and everything he uses to justify his pursuit of power)? He literally did not believe any doubts he might have held about Sirius' guilt, because he hasn't trusted his own judgement since he was 18 and his little sister died. also he 1) canonically did not know that Sirius wasn't the secret keeper and 2) probably did not know that Sirius never had a trial, so there's also that.

Harry and Ron 100% should have gone to the Yule Ball together. I would forgive their not ending up together so long as they had gone and had a fantastic time. Unfortunately, GoF was written in 2000, and we missed out for it.

Hermione would be an emotionally (and potentially physically) abusive spouse to Ron, not because I feel any need to put her down or bash her in any way, but because she wasn't willing to tell him that she was into him and instead conjured birds to attack him when she caught him kissing another girl. I think with time, effort, and a decent dose of humility, they could work it out, but at some point their kids are going to be chatting with friends and reveal the most casually fucked up shit about their parents' relationship to someone who's going to look utterly horrified and poor Rose and Hugo will have no idea why because to them it will be completely normal.

Childhood is thinking Dumbledore is the good guy and Snape is the bad guy. Angsty teenhood is thinking Snape is the good guy and Dumbledore "raised Harry like a pig for slaughter." Maturity is realizing that Snape did good things for really fucked up reasons like "I'm obsessed with the woman whose husband and child I would have seen killed so I could have another chance to get in her pants but unfortunately she's dead so I guess I have to keep her child who I hate alive" while also actively causing (directed) severe harm to the children under his care, and that Dumbledore did fucked up things for some good reasons like "I can't let this person who tortured animals as a child and committed murder in his teens destroy the world" and for some bad reasons like "I would literally die right now but unfortunately I have shit to do" (I honestly think everyone somehow missed the fact that Dumbledore was suicidal?? in spite of the fact that he committed assisted suicide?? I'm not quite sure how, but I suspect it has something to do with the woobification of Snape, so. there's that) while also causing (mostly indirect) moderate to severe harm to all who were in his care including, but not limited to, the government officials who asked him for advice, the staff and children at the school he ran, and his own family. The essential difference comes because Snape acted as he did toward others because he hated the world and everything in it, especially children, whereas Dumbledore acted as he did toward others because he couldn't make up his mind whether or not the ends justified the means and his life was entirely defined by the practice of both intentional and unintentional self-sabotage.

This absolutely might be giving Rowling too much credit, but I grew up with fairy tales of goblins who stole and guarded gold and didn't learn that goblins were a racist caricature based in antisemitism until I was in my late teens or early twenties by reading a post about how writing goblins as bankers meant that Rowling is antisemitic. I also genuinely didn't believe it at first, because I grew up in a culture that reveres Judaism and the Jewish people as God's chosen and the source for the foundation of mankind's relationship with God, and I had to seriously work to believe that the slightly goofy, slightly gross fairy tale creature I was familiar with could have such a disgusting connotation. I strongly suspect that Rowling herself had no idea until she started being accused of racism, at which point she pulled her classic schtick and doubled down, radicalizing rather than being open to being told she might be wrong. Sometimes you grow up with something being so normal and part of the regular zeitgeist that it never occurs to you that it could have its origins in racism. (I experienced this myself recently from a post about the origin of the popularity of private pools in the US, which I always thought were just a rich people status symbol. Even though I've known about the issue of pool discrimination since my mom, who attended a formerly black-only middle school in Alabama as a child, read me picture books about it when I was in elementary school, I didn't put it together until I read the post.) The quality of your character is determined then by how you respond to the criticism rather than whether or not you knew before the accusations began. The end result is the same, but I feel like holding her responsible for knowledge we have no way of telling if she knew before she started being accused of having it is bad-faith criticism, and I'd much rather hold her accountable for wrongs I know she's committed rather than ones I can only speculate about.

Dudley Dursley deserved his redemption. He grew up with the rule "Don't be like Harry" and figured out by the end of the series that Harry was a person, which is better than either of his parents managed. I honestly think a good dose of the real world-- maybe university or something-- would give him the foundation he would need to separate himself from his parents' beliefs and become a halfway decent human being. I wish the best for Dudley Dursley.

Neville Longbottom deserved better. In every possible way.

[ashesandhackles]

Harry and Dumbledore: Crisis of Faith

The Life and Lies of Dumbledore chapter from DH lives rent free in my head, and I would love to get on my soapbox about why. It's no secret that DH is an allegorical tale with Harry as Christ figure and Dumbledore positioned as God figure - often represented by the symbolism of the all-seeing eye. The eye in the mirror (which turns out to Aberforth, who sends Dobby to the rescue), the symbol of Deathly Hallows in Dumbledore's signature.

Eye symbolism:

A flash of brightest blue. Harry froze, his cut finger slipping on the jagged edge of the mirror again. He had imagined it, he must have done... If anything was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore would never pierce him again.

and

 Above what Harry assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, he could not be sure) , there was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.

The Deathly Hallows or the Gifts of Death is marked by a triangular eye - and it is explicitly seen as God's eye in Christian art and iconography.

So now, back to the chapter, where Harry completely loses faith:

The sun was coming up: The pure, colorless vastness of the sky stretched over him, indifferent to him and his suffering. Harry sat down in the tent entrance and took a deep breath of clean air.

The chapter opens with the smallness of Harry against the vast sky, a bird's eye view shot to really highlight how vulnerable he feels. On the heels of the chapters where he sees himself and his family immortalised in statues and have their bombed home preserved as memorial - a site people take comfort from the legend of Harry, and Harry takes comfort from the graffiti they left behind - it feels especially isolated. The vulnerability is glaring: Harry has lost the protection of the twin cores. The church bells are distant.

His senses had been spiked by the calamity of losing his wand. He looked out over a valley blanketed in snow, distant church bells chiming through the glittering silence.

Harry does not deal with vulnerability, most specifically helplessness very well. As a child raised in an abusive environment - his savior complex is rooted in needing to have agency. We see him grappling with what he perceives as complete abandonment from Dumbledore: 'Dumbledore had left them to grope in the darkness, to wrestle with unknown and undreamed-of terrors, alone and unaided: Nothing was explained, nothing was given freely, they had no sword, and now, Harry had no wand.'

And then, Harry reads the chapter titled Greater Good from Rita Skeeter's book.

So what was Albus doing, if not comforting his wild young brother? The answer, it seems, is ensuring the continued imprisonment of his sister.

This is important, because Harry's feelings about this are made clear in earlier chapters:

Could Dumbledore have let such things happen? Had he been like Dudley, content to watch neglect and abuse as long as it did not affect him? Could he have turned his back on a sister who was being imprisoned and hidden?

Harry is projecting onto Ariana Dumbledore, specifically with his experience of the Dursleys. He had once raged at Dumbledore in OOTP: "People don't like being locked up! You did it to me last summer!"

Harry's grievance with Dumbledore is not just about this exchange, but a specific choice Dumbledore made for his physical safety with blood wards. The narrative comes close to acknowledging it, in OOTP:

“Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well — not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle’s doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years.” He paused. Harry said nothing.

to

“She doesn’t love me,” said Harry at once. “She doesn’t give a damn — ” “But she took you,” Dumbledore cut across him. “She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother’s sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you.”

to

He knew one thing, though: unhappy as he felt at the moment, he would greatly miss Hogwarts in a few days' time when he was back at number four, Privet Drive. Even though he now understood exactly why he had to return there every summer, he did not feel any better about it. Indeed, he had never dreaded his return more.

Harry understands it then, so it is striking that the only time he allows himself to get truly angry at the position Dumbledore put him in this chapter, through Ariana:

 “I’m not trying to defend what Dumbledore wrote,” said Hermione. “All that ‘right to rule’ rubbish, it’s ‘Magic Is Might’ all over again. But Harry, his mother had just died, he was stuck alone in the house —”   “Alone? He wasn’t alone! He had his brother and sister for company, his Squib sister he was keeping locked up —”

“I don’t believe it,” said Hermione. She stood up too. “Whatever was wrong with that girl, I don’t think she was a Squib. The Dumbledore we knew would never, ever have allowed —”   “The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn’t want to conquer Muggles by force!” Harry shouted, his voice echoing across the empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose into the air, squawking and spiraling against the pearly sky.

I am especially struck by the image of Harry's angry shouting making blackbirds fly into the pearly sky, and spiral over him. Blackbirds are associated with mystery, secrets and are seen as messengers to netherworld - this combined with the image of pearly white sky (heavens/God) seems intentional. It is carrying Harry's disillusionment to the heavens.

And then, the quote that pierces my soul, which is the heart of this chapter:

“Maybe I am!” Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his head, hardly knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect himself from the weight of his own disillusionment. “Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And again! And again! And don’t expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me even though I don’t trust you! Never the whole truth! Never!”

It is reminiscent of Snape's "you have used me! I have spied for you, lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you" - basically, "why have you forsaken me?" moment.

 He had trusted Dumbledore, believed him the embodiment of goodness and wisdom. All was ashes: How much more could he lose? 

The chapter being set in whiteness and emptiness, reminiscent of King's Cross chapter where Harry does get his answers from Dumbledore.

And then Hermione, who has modified her parents memories, can confidently assert that "He loved you, I know he loved you", because her love for her parents, for Ron, can also be sacrificed at the altar of greater good, even if it means doing things that would hurt them (not choosing to go with Ron) and dismiss their agency (as is with her parents). It doesn't mean she doesn't love them.

  “I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me.”

Harry ends the chapter with seeking comfort from Hermione's touch, brushing his hair - wishing he could believe that Dumbledore really cared. (shoutout to @bluethepineapple meta here about this chapter)

And it is then where Dumbledore's gifts come in motion next chapter: his Deluminator lets Ron find his way back. Snape, effectively Dumbledore's man, sends the doe. Harry counts on what he learned from Dumbledore to destroy the Horcrux - he gives Ron the opportunity to wield the sword:

As certainly as he had known that the doe was benign, he knew that Ron had to be the one to wield the sword. Dumbledore had at least taught Harry something about certain kinds of magic, of the incalculable power of certain acts.

And then by Shell Cottage, Harry accepts Dumbledore's plan as is, and reaffirms his faith in Dumbledore's idea of Greater Good:

Dobby would never be able to tell them who had sent him to the cellar, but Harry knew what he had seen. A piercing blue eye had looked out of the mirror fragment, and then help had come. Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.

And then Harry chooses to stay on path Dumbledore laid out for him, only wishing now that he simply understood the man:

When Harry had finished speaking (about Voldemort), Ron shook his head.   “You really understand him.”   “Bits of him,” said Harry. “Bits . . . I just wish I’d understood Dumbledore as much. But we’ll see. Come on — Ollivander now.”

And finally, he starts to understand Dumbledore - through his conversation with Aberforth:

"And Albus was free, wasn’t he? Free of the burden of his sister, free to become the greatest wizard of the —”   “He was never free,” said Harry.   “I beg your pardon?” said Aberforth.   “Never,” said Harry. “The night that your brother died, he drank a potion that drove him out of his mind. He started screaming, pleading with someone who wasn’t there. ‘Don’t hurt them, please . . . hurt me instead.’”   “He thought he was back there with you and Grindelwald, I know he did,” said Harry, remembering Dumbledore whimpering, pleading. “He thought he was watching Grindelwald hurting you and Ariana. . . . It was torture to him, if you’d seen him then, you wouldn’t say he was free.”

Finally, he gets his chance to have a conversation with Dumbledore at the crossroads of life and death. TLDR: Deathly Hallows is an allegorical tale and it is best to treat it as such and roll with it, because otherwise it's deus ex machina galore.

[iamnmbr3]

Me writing meta about Tom Riddle: *checks the book 3 times for accuracy, extrapolates based on the text, clearly denotes things that are just headcanons not specifically supported by evidence*

Albus Dumbledore writing meta about Tom Riddle: lol yeah idk his vibes were just always rancid. no i don't need to "cite my sources" wtf???

[iamnmbr3]

#that’s a thorough look into dumbledore’s failings as a military leader#which is not the same as a strategist#he employs complex strategies oh yes he does#but it’s all to benefit him more than anyone else#which means his strategies don’t extend to good leadership#that would be unnecessary#and at some points quite probably counter to his actual goals#if the enemy isn’t seen as invincible then who’d agree to using whatever means possible#such as child soldiers#or child sacrifice#those are the kind of strategies he uses via @perilousraven

Ughhh, that ask about Dumbledore telling Tom he’s incapable of love just really sets me off cause that such a fucked up thing to say to a kid.

Like, Dumbledore is such a dick to Tom about the whole “you can’t feel love thing”. Even if Tom went the ‘traditional’ life route and got a wife and had five children with her and by all appearances seemed extremely happy and fulfilled with his family and life, Dumbledore would be in the corner muttering to himself about how Tom is using that poor woman and children and he couldn’t even possibly like, let alone love, them.

To be fair, Dumbledore's canon hobby is saying fucked up things to children.

He does it all the time to Harry too.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Harry was never really Dumbledore's man

So, in HBP Harry says himself:

“Well, it is clear to me that he has done a very good job on you,” said Scrimgeour, his eyes cold and hard behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Dumbledore’s man through and through, aren’t you, Potter?” “Yeah, I am,” said Harry.

(HBP, 348)

But, I'm here to argue Harry actually has many many doubts and reservations about Dumbledore throughout all books (even HBP), and I find it interesting how Harry convinced the Wizarding world (and the readers) that he's Dumbledore's man when he isn't. Not really.

(Just makes me all the more annoyed at him calling his son Albus...)

I'm going to go through some examples of Harry showing his doubts about Dumbledore way before book 7. Because Harry is an abused, distrusting boy, and Dumbledore isn't actually an exception to that until very late into the books. And even when Harry chooses to trust Dumbledore's intentions, he never fully trusts his judgment.

“D’you think he meant you to do it?” said Ron. “Sending you your father’s cloak and everything?” “Well, ” Hermione exploded, “if he did — I mean to say that’s terrible — you could have been killed.” “No, it isn’t,” said Harry thoughtfully. “He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could….”

(PS, 217)

This quote above is from the ending of Philosopher's Stone and the outlook Harry, Ron, and Hermione have on Dumbledore and his behavior is the same as seen in the later books. So I wanted to talk about each of them and how they see Dumbledore because this quote really sets the tone for the rest of the series.

Ron is doubtful and distrustful. The situation is odd, and he's clever, he analyzed the situation and came to a frightening conclusion — the whole ordeal seemed planned by Dumbledore. And Ron isn't scared of voicing this question.

Hermione, while not always a rule-follower, respects Dumbledore and his authority. A lot. So, she doesn't believe Dumbledore could've planned it as it would reflect badly on his character and authority. Hermione is a very loyal person, and once she decides she respects someone she is willfully blind to their flaws (we see it with her later in the series).

Harry, while he's clever enough to notice the same things Ron did and come to the same conclusion — that Dumbledore planned for an 11-year-old to face Voldemort — he attributes good intentions to Dumbledore. Harry sees the situation and draws his conclusions, but chooses to hope/believe Dumbledore's intentions were good ones.

Harry’s brain seemed to have jammed. He stared numbly at Riddle, at the orphaned boy who had grown up to murder Harry’s own parents, and so many others. . . . At last he forced himself to speak. “You’re not,” he said, his quiet voice full of hatred. “Not what?” snapped Riddle. “Not the greatest sorcerer in the world,” said Harry, breathing fast. “Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore. Everyone says so. Even when you were strong, you didn’t dare try and take over at Hogwarts. Dumbledore saw through you when you were at school and he still frightens you now, wherever you’re hiding these days —” The smile had gone from Riddle’s face, to be replaced by a very ugly look. “Dumbledore’s been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me!” he hissed. “He’s not as gone as you might think!” Harry retorted. He was speaking at random, wanting to scare Riddle, wishing rather than believing it to be true —

(CoS, 282)

This is one of the scenes people call to to show how much faith Harry has in Dumbledore (even Dumbledore himself), the thing is, Harry says (in his mind) he's just saying things to try and scare Tom. To try and buy time, or unbalance Tom so he may have a chance at escape.

The important note is that Harry doesn't actually believe what he's saying to Tom. He's just saying what he thinks would bother Tom the most.

Harry had never shared this piece of information with anybody. He was very fond of his wand, and as far as he was concerned its relation to Voldemort’s wand was something it couldn’t help — rather as he couldn’t help being related to Aunt Petunia. However, he really hoped that Mr. Ollivander wasn’t about to tell the room about it. He had a funny feeling Rita Skeeter’s Quick-Quotes Quill might just explode with excitement if he did.

(GoF, 310)

This part about telling no one about his wand's connection to Voldemort is true. He never told anyone by that point in GoF. Not Ron, not Hermione, not Dumbledore, not even Sirius.

As I mentioned above, Harry is abused and distrustful. He's not at all Dumbledore's perfect soldier who trusts him with everything. In GoF, Harry decides against telling Dumbledore about his dreams and the pain in his scar:

“Your scar hurt? Harry, that’s really serious. . . . Write to Professor Dumbledore! And I’ll go and check Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. . . . Maybe there’s something in there about curse scars. . . .” Yes, that would be Hermione’s advice: Go straight to the headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. [...] As for informing the headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, fulllength wizard’s robes, and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion onto his long crooked nose. Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry’s owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to anyone, even without an address. But what would he write? Dear Professor Dumbledore, Sorry to bother you, but my scar hurt this morning. Yours sincerely, Harry Potter. Even inside his head the words sounded stupid.

(GoF, 21)

Harry doesn't wish to share secrets with Dumbledore, nor does he feel comfortable to go to him with his troubles (his go-to adult while Sirius was around was always Sirius). Again, Hermione is mentioned as the one who trusts Dumbledore's authority, in Harry's head, but he's right, he knows her well.

Harry actually spends a good portion of the series purposefully trying to hide information from Dumbledore. (I'm saying 'trying ' because Dumbledore always found out, but not because Harry told him).

“He seemed to think it was best,” said Hermione rather breathlessly. “Dumbledore, I mean.” “Right,” said Harry. He noticed that her hands too bore the marks of Hedwig’s beak and found that he was not at all sorry. “I think he thought you were safest with the Muggles —” Ron began. “Yeah?” said Harry, raising his eyebrows. “Have either of you been attacked by dementors this summer?” “Well, no — but that’s why he’s had people from the Order of the Phoenix tailing you all the time -” Harry felt a great jolt in his guts as though he had just missed a step going downstairs. So everyone had known he was being followed except him. “Didn’t work that well, though, did it?” said Harry, doing his utmost to keep his voice even. “Had to look after myself after all, didn’t I?” “He was so angry,” said Hermione in an almost awestruck voice. “Dumbledore. We saw him. When he found out Mundungus had left before his shift had ended. He was scary.” “Well, I’m glad he left,” Harry said coldly. “If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have done magic and Dumbledore would probably have left me at Privet Drive all summer.”

(OotP, 63)

Harry is angry here, true, but he doubts Dumbledore's idea of what's "safe" for him. He's actually glad for the dementors because he doubts Dumbledore would've brought him over if it wasn't an emergency.

And Harry is right to be doubtful and suspicious. He's right that he's less safe at the Dursleys than at Grimmauld Place. He's right to feel angry and betrayed at literally everyone knowing he's being followed except for him. He's right Dumbledore probably wouldn't have brought him if it wasn't for the dementor attack. Harry is correct in each and every one of his assessments of Dumbledore's character and decisions here.

“No,” said Harry, shaking his head. “It’s more like . . . his mood, I suppose. I’m just getting flashes of what mood he’s in. . . . Dumbledore said something like this was happening last year. . . . He said that when Voldemort was near me, or when he was feeling hatred, I could tell. Well, now I’m feeling it when he’s pleased too. . . .” There was a pause. The wind and rain lashed at the building. “You’ve got to tell someone,” said Ron. “I told Sirius last time.” “Well, tell him about this time!” “Can’t, can I?” said Harry grimly. “Umbridge is watching the owls and the fires, remember?” “Well then, Dumbledore —” “I’ve just told you, he already knows,” said Harry shortly, getting to his feet, taking his cloak off his peg, and swinging it around himself. “There’s no point telling him again.” Ron did up the fastening of his own cloak, watching Harry thoughtfully. “Dumbledore’d want to know,” he said. Harry shrugged. “C’mon . . . we’ve still got Silencing Charms to practice . . .”

(OotP, 382)

Remember I mentioned Harry hiding things from Dumbledore? This is one of such occasions. There are more in GoF that I didn't copy, but this is an example of Voldemort-related, dangerous information Harry is hiding from Dumbledore because he doesn't trust him and doesn't feel comfortable telling him things.

“It’s lessons with Snape that are making it worse,” said Harry flatly. “I’m getting sick of my scar hurting, and I’m getting bored walking down that corridor every night.” He rubbed his forehead angrily. “I just wish the door would open, I’m sick of standing staring at it —” “That’s not funny,” said Hermione sharply. “Dumbledore doesn’t want you to have dreams about that corridor at all, or he wouldn’t have asked Snape to teach you Occlumency. You’re just going to have to work a bit harder in your lessons.” “I am working!” said Harry, nettled. “You try it sometime, Snape trying to get inside your head, it’s not a bundle of laughs, you know!” “Maybe . . .” said Ron slowly. “Maybe what?” said Hermione rather snappishly. “Maybe it’s not Harry’s fault he can’t close his mind,” said Ron darkly. “What do you mean?” said Hermione. “Well, maybe Snape isn’t really trying to help Harry. . . .” Harry and Hermione stared at him. Ron looked darkly and meaningfully from one to the other. “Maybe,” he said again in a lower voice, “he’s actually trying to open Harry’s mind a bit wider . . . make it easier for You-Know —” “Shut up, Ron,” said Hermione angrily. “How many times have you suspected Snape, and when have you ever been right? Dumbledore trusts him, he works for the Order, that ought to be enough.” “He used to be a Death Eater,” said Ron stubbornly. “And we’ve never seen proof that he really swapped sides. . . .” “Dumbledore trusts him,” Hermione repeated. “And if we can’t trust Dumbledore, we can’t trust anyone.”

(OotP, 554)

Again we see the same exact dynamic from first year. Hermione is loyal to Dumbledore, not even considering he might be wrong about something, or not have their best interests at heart. Ron and Harry on the other hand, are both open to the possibility that things aren't so simple. They don't think Dumbledore is intentionally harming Harry, but they think he's wrong about Snape. Something Hermione, Arthur and Molly would never consider.

(This is actually the most annoying thing in Hermione's character for me, her unshakable faith in Dumbledore, who doesn't deserve her trust)

“. . . so you see what this means?” Harry finished at a gallop. “Dumbledore won’t be here tonight, so Malfoy’s going to have another clear shot at whatever he’s up to. No, listen to me!” he hissed angrily, as both Ron and Hermione showed every sign of interrupting. “I know it was Malfoy celebrating in the Room of Requirement. Here —” He shoved the Marauder’s Map into Hermione’s hands. “You’ve got to watch him and you’ve got to watch Snape too. Use anyone else who you can rustle up from the D.A., Hermione, those contact Galleons will still work, right? Dumbledore says he’s put extra protection in the school, but if Snape’s involved, he’ll know what Dumbledore’s protection is, and how to avoid it — but he won’t be expecting you lot to be on the watch, will he?” “Harry —” began Hermione, her eyes huge with fear.

(HBP, 552)

Even in book 6, the book Harry grows the most comfortable and trusting towards Dumbledore, even then, he doesn't trust Dumbledore. He thinks (and somewhat rightly so because he doesn't know of Snape and Dumbledore's plan) that Dumbledore is wrong about Snape. that Dumbledore is wrong about Malfoy. Harry doesn't trust that whatever protections Dumbledore would leave would be enough (and they weren't).

Even at the end of HBP, the point in the series where Harry has the most faith in Dumbledore, Harry still doesn't trust Dumbledore's judgment or his ability to protect the school. Even after Dumbledore calls Harry out on it, telling him the safety of the students is important to him, Harry still tells Ron and Hermione to get the DA to protect the school without notifying Dumbledore.

And Dumbledore raised Harry to feel responsible for the school's safety, Harry is doing what he was "bred" to do. But he does it behind Dumbledore's back, because like every adult, Harry deep down expects to be let down. After all, he's used to saving the school himself.

So, no, Harry never really trusted Dumbledore fully. At least, not Dumbledore's judgment. Harry does believe Dumbledore's intentions are good for the most part, even if ineffective.

“He never told me his sister was a Squib,” said Harry, without thinking, still cold inside. “And why on earth would he tell you?” screeched Muriel, swaying a little in her seat as she attempted to focus upon Harry [...] Where was saintly Albus while Ariana was locked in the cellar? Off being brilliant at Hogwarts, and never mind what was going on in his own house!” “What d’you mean, locked in the cellar?” asked Harry. “What is this?” Doge looked wretched. Auntie Muriel cackled again and answered Harry. [...] Numbly Harry thought of how the Dursleys had once shut him up, locked him away, kept him out of sight, all for the crime of being a wizard. Had Dumbledore’s sister suffered the same fate in reverse: imprisoned for her lack of magic? Had Dumbledore truly left her to her fate while he went off to Hogwarts to prove himself brilliant and talented?

(DH, 135-137)

And in Deathley Hollows, Harry is very quick to start questioning and doubting Dumbledore. Especially when compared to Hermione:

“Harry—” But he shook his head. Some inner certainty had crashed down inside him; it was exactly as he had felt after Ron left. He had trusted Dumbledore, believed him the embodiment of goodness and wisdom. All was ashes: How much more could he lose? Ron, Dumbledore, the phoenix wand . . . “Harry.” She seemed to have heard his thoughts. “Listen to me. It—it doesn’t make very nice reading—” “Yeah, you could say that—” “—but don’t forget, Harry this is Rita Skeeter writing.” “You did read that letter to Grindelwald, didn’t you?” “Yes, I—I did.” She hesitated, looking upset, cradling her tea in her cold hands.

(DH, 311)

Harry is hurt, he feels betrayed, because while he never 100% trusted Dumbledore's judgment, he trusted his intentions. He trusted Dumbledore was good and cared for him. He feels cold and betrayed, showing trust in his intentions. But his readiness to accept Skeeter's and Muriel's accusations so quickly shows he always had his doubts about Dumbledore and they never really left, even if he wanted to trust him, he never did, not fully.

Hermione, on the other hand, who was always loyal and trusted Dumbledore (both his intentions and judgment) 100%, tries to rationalize Dumbledore's actions and convince herself everyone who says bad things about him is lying.

Harry doesn't. Because out of the Golden Trio, Hermione was always Dumbledore's woman, Ron and Harry... not really. Not as much.

“That old berk,” muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. “Thought the sun shone out of my brother’s every office, he did. Well, so did plenty of people, you three included, by the looks of it.” Harry kept quiet. He did not want to express the doubts and uncertainties about Dumbledore that had riddled him for months now. He had made his choice while he dug Dobby’s grave, he had decided to continue along the winding, dangerous path indicated for him by Albus Dumbledore, to accept that he had not been told everything that he wanted to know, but simply to trust. He had no desire to doubt again; he did not want to hear anything that would deflect him from his purpose. He met Aberforth’s gaze, which was so strikingly like his brothers’: The bright blue eyes gave the same impression that they were X-raying the object of their scrutiny, and Harry thought that Aberforth knew what he was thinking and despised him for it. “Professor Dumbledore cared about Harry, very much,” said Hermione in a low voice. “Did he now?” said Aberforth. “Funny thing how many of the people my brother cared about very much ended up in a worse state than if he’d left ’em well alone.”

(DH, 478)

More of how Harry thinks about Dumbledore, showing, again, how he always had his doubts and reservations but he chooses to trust Dumbledore's intentions because otherwise, he doesn't think he has any hope to defeat Voldemort. He chooses to keep following Dumbledore's path because he has no real choice but to trust what he sees as the only path that'll lead to Voldemort's destruction. But Harry has plenty of doubts about Dumbledore.

Hermione, on the other hand, has little to no doubts. She doesn't allow herself to doubt.

And this pattern, of Harry doubting Dumbledore again and again, never truly trusting him, just trusting his plan will kill Voldemort... like, how does that lead Harry to want to name his kid 'Albus'? I just don't get it...

TL;DR

Harry likes to say he's Dumbledore's man, but he always had his reservations, even when he choose to ignore them since trusting Dumbledore's plan felt like his only chance at survival. Hermione is much more trusting of Dumbledore than Harry is.