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licorice-and-rum · 1 month ago

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On Fascism, DEs and Dumbledore - the actual essay lol

Hey, guys! Sorry it took me so long to write this one, I really had some themes to mature before I could put all of my thoughts in writing but I finally feel like I’m ready to talk about what I want to. Before I begin, however, I want to point out a few things:

First of all, I ask all of you to enter this with an open mind because not everything I’ll say here is exactly popular opinion in the HP fandom. And, although I recognize that my perceptions and interpretations are frayed by my own background and way of thinking, my literary analysis is still based off, on some level, of academical knowledge. It doesn’t make it true, of course, but I believe it’s a solid base to have.

Second, this is, in no way, an attack on people who like the Death Eaters (Barty, Regulus, Rosier, Draco, and so on). These people are not the problem I’m talking about here because, to begin with, the characters they like are not exactly the Canon version of them, and then, because a work of fiction doesn’t determine a person’s character.

It's completely normal for popular works of fiction — and that’s especially true in Literature — to have their characters remodeled to fit a better narrative to the time they are inserted in. It happens with Fairytales, it happens with classical books — Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest examples I can give —, it just happens. And the new interpretations are an attempt to almost self-insert: is a mirroring of our interpretations and experiences in those characters we like so much.

That said, I still have a problem with how normalized it has become in our society to make a sad backstory to fascist-like villains and that’s where I would like to start this rant/analysis. This issue is not focused on the Harry Potter characters, however: it has happened in Star Wars (both with Anakin and more recently with The Acolyte), in The Hunger Games (with Snow, although it wasn’t the intention) and many other big films/books/series in the industry.

It has a reason: we’re living through late-stage capitalism, which means capitalism is in shambles and it needs a “emergency button” of sorts, something it can use to establish some kind of control back. That’s why we’ve seen so many far-right parties win elections lately: it’s a normal thing for people to be attracted to fast and simple solutions when things are bad, even though they might not be solutions at all.

Anyway, I digress: the point is, when fascism (capitalism’s emergency button) arises, it needs to have a cultural support so that people can assimilate it better, accept it better so it can maintain itself. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not, by all means, saying that a bunch of men sat down on a white room and decided that now they would start creating Art that endorses/romanticizes fascist narratives, of course not.

This is a natural process, it happens because we, as a general rule, already lean into right wing theorical thinking by living into a capitalist mode of production. So, when capitalism collapses, many of us pull our values farthest into capitalistic mindset because that’s what we understand as secure, as stable. And this translates into art through some favored tropes or classical narratives, such as the Chosen One or the “the system is not corrupted, the people running it are” narrative.

Both of those tropes fit into the Harry Potter series in obvious ways, of course. But lately, I’ve been noticing a really particular characteristic of these narratives/tropes that are used to endorse fascism, which I believe has to do with the time period we’re at right now and who the target-audience is, and that is what I called the “individualization of narratives”.

I’m not gonna be arrogant here and say that I’m the only one who noticed this, of course not, but I haven’t found any works on that, so I’m gonna describe, in my own words, what I think this phenomenon is:

The individualization of narratives, as I call it, refers to the details some characters’ backgrounds have when they are into the “dark side”, the side that is supposed to be the fictional version of fascist-like groups. And those details — or lack thereof — are done in a way the reader can fill in the gaps in such a way to identify and empathize with them.

Again, that’s is not the problem, this happens to every character ever, it even happens with celebrities. Our brains are wired to fill in gaps in a person’s personality or character when we don’t have all the information, it’s a natural reaction. Problem is that, as it’s becoming popular to write a villain with a purpose, a “morally gray” character if you will (although I take issue with how that’s portrayed, which I’ll treat more carefully when I talk about Dumbledore), the fascist-like narratives that became so popular with post-war people, gain a new meaning.

That’s not the doing of the Art itself, it’s just a reflection of political issues that are already here but that are also perpetrated and continued by Art and material cultural production, just like anti-socialism dystopian books were in the Cold War scenario, for example. However, it’s undeniable that this movement serves a purpose, a political purpose, and that is to endorse fascism and fascist narrative. Let’s not get over ourselves here: again, this is not the evil doing of some unknown entity, it’s just a natural process of the current political climate reflecting in cultural production.

But it still serves a purpose, and what I aim to do with this essay is to demystify a bit this movement in Harry Potter. But first, we have to understand what fascism is:

Capitalism, which begun more or less in the 1600s, is a mode of production (a mold to which our society fit to work within capitalism’s needs of existence). It is based on profit, which means our society is shaped to produce that profit, everything in a society is shaped to serve this purpose, from the industry to our perception of reality — it’s all a capitalism-based ideology.

Again, reminding: that’s not a secret plot to convince people, it’s a natural process of building identity within reality. It happened in feudalism, and before that with Ancient Empires, and so on and on. There’s nothing inheritedly evil in this process.

However, capitalism is a mode of production that demands, in order to continuing to exist, more than society can provide, so it collapses from time to time. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression is one of the most striking examples of capitalism collapsing, and it’s not by happenstance that fascism arose right after this collapse.

As I said before, fascism is capitalism’s emergency button: when systems collapse, that’s where they get more vulnerable to radical change, and the extreme hardships the masses had to endure after its collapse in the 1930s could easily signify a chance for a change in the modes of production throughout the occidental countries of Europe — something that couldn’t happen if capitalism was to survive.

What I mean by bringing all this to the essay is that I want to be very clear with what fascism defends and what it means: it’s the supremacy of not only a country, or exaggerated nationalism, it is also the management and upkeeping of a society’s very structure. And, to be even clearer: that society is white, rich, and patriarchal-based.

There’s a reason why fascism is considered a white-supremacy political movement: because it defends capitalism. And capitalism was built over the need of cheap work force.

Many of you may have thought slavery when I said that, and you’d be correct.

However, with the times progression, that changed into a new form of exploration: because of the past with slavery and exploration of resources of colonized countries, it became easier — and also a natural progression from the dehumanizing of non-white communities to justify slavery — to just cheapen the work force by making non-white communities poorer, more vulnerable and more desperate to fulfill their needs.

That forces those communities — and third world countries as a whole — to accept the money and the exploration of not only first-world countries (colonizer countries) but also big corporations. I could go on and on about all the effects this policy has in non-white communities, from police brutality until the banalization of the violence in large scale (such as the Palestinian genocide) but I want to stay within the scope here.

This justification of slavery, the dehumanization of non-white peoples, is one of the main pillars of capitalism, and as such, it’s the main pillar of fascism. In Harry Potter, the intention is that those characteristics don’t present themselves in race but in blood — not that Rowling is very successful with this, considering the amount of veiled and not-so-veiled racism in her books but whatever.

Now, as I see it, Harry Potter is not a good portrayal of fascism and that has a very clear cause: Rowling’s lack of understanding of what fascism is to begin with, or how the root causes of it affect the system of the wizarding society.

As someone who have studied it, I can say that the blood purity issue wouldn’t be present only in some rich people’s minds, it would be structural to the wizarding world, in a way that would present itself in hardship for muggleborns to get jobs, in jokes that are not funny, in opinions that are degrading, in isolation and discrimination in a day to day level. And of course, there is some of it in the HP books, but it’s not treated as a structural issue — it’s treated as an individual problem.

And that’s where the real problem begins: if we treat fascism as a problem that stems from a person’s own choices instead of a political and collective movement that elevates to a highest level the structural issues that are already there, we fall into the trap of minimizing the problem because, if someone is a fascist because they’re evil, the next question to make is: why are they evil?

Currently, what we’re doing with our villains becomes a problem in these situations: in an attempt to individualize our villains, we make them human. Human in the sense that we can empathize with them, we can understand them. And, for a fascist-like narrative, that’s extremely dangerous because it makes us unconsciously start to endorse their trajectories and choices when we absolutely shouldn’t.

Fascism is not equivalent to rebelliousness.

“Oh, the good side is not so good because they treated this character bad and now he had to turn to a fascist group and decimate people because he’s traumatized.”

See how, when I say it like that, it sounds ridiculous?

But of course, you probably know that. Again, I’m not accusing people who like those characters of endorsing fascism, what I am saying, however, is that the political climate of today is doing it and it’s reflecting on our art production. What I am calling for is for people to recognize that their view of those characters as they really would be if they were anywhere near reality is not only flawed, it’s entirely wrong.

Snape, Barty Crouch Jr, Evan Rosier, Draco, Bellatrix, the Blacks as a whole — they are not the abused little teenagers who had no choice but to join the Death Eaters. They are fascists, they have always been fascists, even when they suffered. And sure, to some of them, there is more to their characters than this but the truth remains that they, in some capacity, not only endorsed a fascist narrative, they actively perpetuated it to the detriment and the suffering of marginalized peoples.

And none of them had a good, believable, and more importantly, complete redeeming arc.

Our interpretations of them are cool, I love it, I prefer them to many HP characters, to be honest. But that doesn’t change the fact that, if HP was a little bit more real, a little bit closer to reality, those characters wouldn’t be bullied teenagers forced into fascism as a means to become powerful enough to escape their abuse — as if that makes it so much better —, they’d be incels, they’d be bullies themselves.

And that’s not an opinion: we, as a fandom, tend to forget that the DEs are the ones with real societal power in the wizarding world. Most of them are purebloods, most of them are rich, most of them are friends with rich and pureblooded wizards, and they are privileged. They are not ostracized as we like to imagine, they are royalty.

For them, to fight for blood purity is to fight for their own benefit, is to fight to maintain the pillars that keep them unaccountable for their behaviors and privilege whilst at the same time, pushing marginalized people — muggleborns, fantastical creatures, even half-bloods — to a dehumanizing condition. And they don’t feel sorry for this.

Now, the truth is that this is partially Rowling’s fault: her lack of understanding of how deep the issues she’s portraying really run makes it possible for her to interpret her own characters as redeemable because they somehow exchange sides when it fits them.

That’s mostly seen with the Malfoys: neither Draco, Narcissa, nor Lucius ever change sides because they see the suffering of others and think of it as wrong. They change sides when Voldemort’s cruelty starts to weigh on them — their change of loyalties are not coming from empathy for marginalized peoples or decency, it comes from self-preservation.

Kind of the same thing with Snape (I wrote some essays focused on Snape, so if anyone is interested, here’s the first, then the second).

Now, of course, that’s not to say those characters weren’t abused on someway or suffered but that’s the thing: no abuse in the world justifies the persecution, torture and killing of innocent people. To offer a counterpoint, the marginalized peoples the Death Eaters persecuted are also traumatized in some, they also can have had abusive parents and/or families but that is not taken into account when we talk about the Death Eater’s own traumas.

The narrative that the Death Eaters were abused their whole childhoods is so strong today in fandom that most people don’t stop to think that those teenagers probably were horrible people. Yes, maybe horrible because some of them were abused, I’m not denying that, but still horrible, which means they wouldn’t accept help. To hold them responsible for their own doings and their own privileges would seem for them as a persecution against them — just like fascist-like narratives often portray pro-LGBTQ+ or non-white policies and/or narratives.

It is also one of the reasons I take issue with the Slytherin portrayal of abused kids ostracized by the rest of the school. It’s really just isolating fascist narrative and only partially based on truth but I don’t think I want to stretch this conversation now (I can write more about it later if you want though).

So no, respectfully, I refuse to accept that those people — mostly men and rich people, I am forced to point out — would be anything but disgusting, and that’s where I take issue with some behaviors within the HP fandom. Because we’re being influenced by almost two decades of fan fiction and the current political climate, it’s very often that I find people who are sincerely incapable of dissociating fandom to canon.

Hence, the actually infuriating villainization of Albus Dumbledore.

Now, that’s a topic that makes me impatient AF. Not only because it is based on a strong fetishization of who Dumbledore really was, and what he could and couldn’t do, but also because it is a clear example of most people’s inability to differentiate between what they’re reading for fun and what they are internalizing from that media.

Let’s begin with that: Dumbledore is not some evil mastermind, and he is not equivalent to Voldemort. He is a flawed character, that’s true, but he is not a villain. And to think so is to play into the narrative that, because the “good side” fails, or makes wrong decisions, or even actively makes bad decisions, or immoral decisions in times of war, that is somehow equivalent to the “bad side”.

It is not.

That narrative is the same narrative that allows Israel to build an equivalence between Hamas’ violent acts and their own when in truth, as reproachable as some Hamas’ decisions may be according to various perspectives, their violence is a reaction to heavy and even more violent oppression.

What I mean is, even if Dumbledore failed in some of his decision-making in the Harry Potter books, even if we may believe we could do better, Dumbledore is a true morally gray character. But first, to make the point I want to make, we have to understand him:

For this, I will first separate his two identities as they appear throughout Harry Potter: as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Dumbledore plays a role as a leader and role model, but he is also a person with flaws and mistakes like anyone else. These are the two main “faces” of Albus Dumbledore for this defense post, so now let's analyze them more closely:

The first "face" we see of Dumbledore is that of the leader, and this is primarily because of Harry who, at eleven years old, sees Dumbledore as the kind of man he would like to emulate. This also happens with many other wizards throughout the story: it's clear to anyone that most of the people within Harry’s personal circle like and admire Dumbledore, while those who despise him are often the “bad” characters (Lucius Malfoy is probably one of the earliest examples of this).

Although that doesn’t mean they are somehow starstruck by the headmaster: Sirius, Snape, the Weasley parents, Moody, even James and Lily, they all question Dumbledore and his decision making at some point in the books. They end up following through more times than not, that’s true, but trust in someone is different than blind-faith. Those characters accept Dumbledore’s leadership because they trust him, not because they think he’s some type of a god.

However, we see things through Harry’s point of view, and Harry is a child who has no parents, no model figures, no one who really supports that role to him until his eleventh year. It's easy, then, to see how the leader face Dumbledore presents is one of someone the characters (and readers) can trust not to fail, and even easier to view him as someone with great power. This is the fandom’s biggest mistake in viewing him.

Shall we now remember a bit of Dumbledore’s history and delve into his personal side?

As a young man, he met Grindelwald and, according to J.K. Rowling, fell in love with him, as well as with his goal of seeking the Deathly Hallows and becoming the most powerful wizards of all time.

In the last Harry Potter book, in the King's Cross chapter, Dumbledore himself confesses to Harry how the desire for power blinded him to what was truly important, how power was his greatest weakness, and therefore what made him unworthy of it. This is why Dumbledore remained as the headmaster of Hogwarts when he could have so easily become more important in the wizarding community (besides, of course, his love for the students): to keep himself away from power.

Here's the quote (It might be a bit different in the original, considering I’m translating it from Portuguese):

“‘I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory... Invincible Masters of Death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore!... The years passed. There were rumors about him. They said he had obtained a wand of immense power. Meanwhile, I was offered the position of Minister for Magic, not once, but several times. Naturally, I refused. I learned that I could not be trusted with power.’

‘But you'd have been better than Fudge or Scrimgeour!’ said Harry.

‘Would I?’ asked Dumbledore heavily. ‘I am not so sure. I proved as a very young man that power was my weakness and my temptation. It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.’”

This is what the fandom most fails to understand: the admiration of wizards for Dumbledore makes him influential, but not powerful, and this becomes especially clear during the end of The Goblet of Fire and throughout The Order of the Phoenix.

One of the first signs of this in the fourth book is when Fudge refuses to believe Dumbledore about Voldemort’s return: let's remember that, until that point, Fudge sought Dumbledore’s advice for his decisions as Minister of Magic precisely because the headmaster had the respect of much of the wizarding population. But when Fudge, who has the actual power, puts his foot down and says that Dumbledore no longer has influence over the Ministry’s choices, Dumbledore lacks the power to deny it, to stop it.

If he did, it would be safe to say that he would have used his power over the Ministry to convince everyone that Voldemort had indeed returned, and more, to mobilize the Ministry against Voldemort. But none of this happens simply because Dumbledore does not have that power.

Thus, it becomes easier to differentiate power from influence.

It’s Fudge’s power that causes the Ministry as an organization and the wizarding media to turn against the Headmaster, and Dumbledore doesn’t have the power to stop it, but he has enough influence to still be heard by part of the wizarding population. It’s Fudge’s power that leads to Harry’s expulsion from Hogwarts at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, but it’s Dumbledore’s influence that convinces the Ministry to agree to a trial, and it’s his influence that moves the people present to listen to his defense of Harry during that trial. If Dumbledore had power over these events, Harry wouldn’t even have had a trial — something the Headmaster categorically calls an absurdity.

Therefore, Dumbledore doesn’t have power; he has influence, and there’s a difference between what he can actually do and what the fandom seems to believe he can do. Dumbledore has no power over the Ministry; he can’t boss anyone around except, perhaps, the Hogwarts staff and the Order of the Phoenix, a group whose members agreed to make him leader.

What he really has are people willing to listen to his advice and thoughts, as well as inclined to follow him, but that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily do everything Dumbledore says (Sirius, anyone?).

It’s important to separate these two concepts for this analysis to continue because it will make Dumbledore’s actions make much more sense in this discussion. That said, let’s now begin to analyze “The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore”:

The main criticisms I see regarding Dumbledore revolve around Harry’s life and the decisions the Headmaster made concerning him.

Before I begin, however, I want to point out that, despite Dumbledore’s flaws, he is still a leader (just like Harry), and as a leader, he bears responsibility for the lives of the people he has chosen to protect (just like Harry). It’s important to keep this in mind so that I can highlight a few things later.

So, let’s start with when the prophecy is heard and Voldemort begins hunting Harry instead of Neville. It’s important to emphasize here that, once a prophecy is made in the Harry Potter universe and the people the prophecy is about start acting according it, it’s going to happen; there’s no way around it, or at least that’s what we’re told as canon. That’s why, as soon as the prophecy is made and Voldemort actively choses to hunt them down, everyone knows that Harry (or Neville) will be the one to face Voldemort, and one of them will die — hopefully Voldemort.

Although he’s the one to whom the prophecy was made, Dumbledore has no control over it: there’s no way to avoid the fact that Harry (or Neville) would face Voldemort at some point in their lives once Snape overhears it and tells Voldemort. All he — and everyone else — can do is give the Chosen One the tools and knowledge necessary to face Voldemort with the best possible chance of winning — which he does later on by becoming Harry’s primary mentor.

Then the Potters are “chosen” and go into hiding in Godric’s Hollow, making Peter the Secret Keeper. Some more information on this choice: Dumbledore offered to be the Secret Keeper, but James and Lily refused and preferred to choose Sirius. However, they switched to Peter without telling anyone, not even Dumbledore. This is another thing I see the fandom complaining about a lot, but it’s explicitly canon that no one besides Sirius, James, Lily, and Peter knew about the switch.

This wasn’t because they didn’t trust Dumbledore, but because Albus was in the middle of the storm as one of Voldemort’s biggest targets. The Potters didn’t reject Dumbledore as their Secret Keeper because they didn’t trust him (they wouldn’t even be in the Order if that were the case, don’t you think?), but because they were thinking primarily of Harry’s safety, and placing their family’s safety in the hands of the second biggest target of Voldemort in that war simply doesn’t seem like a wise move.

So, there’s no reason, even up to the third book, for Dumbledore to suspect that Sirius is innocent and try to intervene to get him some kind of trial or chance to explain himself. There’s no indication that Dumbledore had contact with Sirius before he was sent to Azkaban, so how could the Headmaster be blamed for that?

Again, it’s important to emphasize that Dumbledore has influence.

Even if he wanted Sirius to have a trial, there’s no evidence that he could make it happen, since everything pointed to Sirius as the culprit — remembering that there’s a big difference between a trial for underage magic and the murder of thirteen Muggles, plus the whole Secret Keeper and high-profile situation. In fact, it’s also good to remember that as soon as Dumbledore learns the truth, he does everything in his power — even sending Harry and Hermione back in time — to save Sirius from being kissed by the Dementors.

But going back a bit, a week after Peter becomes the Secret Keeper, he reveals the Potters’ location to Voldemort, and on Halloween night in 1981, Voldemort goes to Godric’s Hollow and kills James, then Lily, then tries to kill Harry but fails.

This event needs to be broken down into two parts. The first is about Lily’s protection: when she chooses to die even though Voldemort gave her a chance to live, Lily protects Harry, and that’s the reason he survives that encounter with the Dark Lord, who also “dies.”

Since the fourth book, there’s a very specific characteristic of this protection that’s seen many times but never explicitly stated, which is the fact that Lily’s protection has a blood-related nature. In other words, Lily’s protection is especially tied to blood, which is why Voldemort chose Harry’s blood to resurrect himself: because in that way, he also “has” Lily’s blood and, consequently, her protection, which frees him to harm Harry in a way he couldn’t before.

And this is the point I want to reach: Dumbledore chooses the Dursleys to raise Harry not because he wants him to suffer, but because Petunia is the only one who carries Lily’s blood and, therefore, the only one who can ensure that Lily’s protection — the thing for which her sister died — continues to work. The blood Petunia shares with Lily even prevents Voldemort, even after the resurrection ritual, because her blood makes Lily’s protection even stronger.

And it’s good to remember that this measure ends up saving Harry in The Philosopher’s Stone — Quirrell and Voldemort couldn’t touch him because of Lily’s protection, guaranteed by his living in the same house as Petunia — and keeps him safe in the Dursleys’ house for sixteen years, until Harry turns seventeen and the protection finally stops working, even though he still lived with Petunia.

Once again, people overestimate Dumbledore’s ability to act: he had no control over the nature of Lily’s protection; he acted to keep Harry as safe as possible within what he could actually control.

Unfortunately, the choices presented in that situation were either to leave him protected from Voldemort’s assassination attempts or spare him the suffering of growing up with the Dursleys.

Neither choice was ideal, but this is where Dumbledore’s leadership character comes in: Harry’s responsibility to face Voldemort was no longer a choice, even though he was only a year old, because of the prophecy. So, it makes much more sense for him to protect Harry from the greater threat (Voldemort) while ensuring that Harry would have more time to develop and grow before having to face him again.

Dumbledore didn’t make the choice to give Harry to the Dursleys joyfully, wanting him to suffer, but thinking about giving him more time and more opportunities to be a child than he would have had if Lily’s protection weren’t ensured. Obviously, this doesn’t work out very well because the Dursleys are especially cruel to Harry in a way that Dumbledore hadn’t really foreseen, something he himself admits in The Half-Blood Prince:

“‘[...] Harry, whom Lord Voldemort has already tried to kill on several occasions, is in much more danger than on the day I left him on your doorstep, fifteen years ago, with a letter explaining that his parents had been murdered and expressing the hope that you would care for him as a son.’

Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained light and calm, and did not betray his anger, Harry felt a certain coldness emanating from him. He also noticed that the Dursleys huddled together almost imperceptibly.

‘You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry as a son. In your care, he has only known neglect and often cruelty...’”

But it’s important to note that Dumbledore didn’t have good options regarding Harry’s custody; he didn’t have the power to change how Lily’s protection worked; he was working with what he had, which wasn’t much.

The second part of this event focuses more on Voldemort and Harry and is probably the most controversial regarding Dumbledore: the creation of the Horcrux inside Harry and how this is somehow seen as Dumbledore’s fault — hence the famous phrase about being “raised like a pig for slaughter,” but... let’s be honest? What, exactly, could Dumbledore have done against the fact that Harry became a Horcrux?

Once again, here’s the exaggerated view of Dumbledore’s power that the fandom seems to have: he had no control over what happened to the Potters in Godric’s Hollow on Halloween night in 1981. He had no power over Lily’s protection or the Horcrux in Harry. He has no power over Lily’s protection, nor over the Horcrux in Harry. The only thing he has the power to do is to act in a way that ensures his plan guarantees Voldemort’s ultimate defeat and thus saves the entire wizarding world.

I hate it when people say Dumbledore “raised Harry like a pig for slaughter” simply because he knew that Harry would have to die for the Horcrux to be destroyed, as if he had any other option in the matter. Harry’s fate was sealed as soon as Lily’s protection saved him and a part of Voldemort’s soul entered him; Dumbledore bears no responsibility for what happened that night.

So what Dumbledore can do regarding Harry having to die is exactly… nothing. He literally has no power to change this fact, no matter how much he wants to — and he does, because he loves Harry, as he himself says in Order of the Phoenix. But Dumbledore is still a leader, and he still needs to think about the best plan of action to ensure that people continue to have hope and that they can truly see that hope — of being free from Voldemort and his reign of terror — come true. And if that meant Harry had to die to destroy the Horcrux, then that was it. Period.

But it’s also important to point out that Dumbledore didn’t force Harry into anything: by the time Harry receives the information that he needs to die to ensure the salvation of everyone and Voldemort’s mortality, all the people who know this — Dumbledore and Snape, in this case — are dead and unable to do anything if Harry decided to simply run away and leave everyone to fend for themselves because he didn’t want to die.

But, as I pointed out before, Harry is a leader. And he fully accepts the responsibility of this role the moment he decides to face death: he goes to Voldemort willing to die by his own choice, wanting to save those who matter to him, those who trust him to end Voldemort. Not because Dumbledore ordered him, but because he — Harry — is a leader, and a leader sacrifices himself for his cause when necessary.

Saying that Dumbledore was the “cause” of Harry’s death, besides being wrong, also takes away from the greatness of Harry’s choice in that situation. Harry is the protagonist of his own story, and he is always making decisions based on his own mind and beliefs (going after the Philosopher’s Stone, entering the Chamber of Secrets, sparing Pettigrew, going after Sirius in the Department of Mysteries, pursuing the Horcruxes, etc.), so it’s completely unfair for people to place the responsibility for his choice to die on Dumbledore’s shoulders just because the Headmaster gave him the information that Harry was a Horcrux. Harry always acted according to his own mind based on the information he had been given — why would it be any different with the Horcrux inside him?

It simply wouldn’t be. Dumbledore gave the information, but it was Harry who decided what to do with it.

Furthermore, it’s worth noting that Dumbledore didn’t tell Harry about having to die to destroy the Horcrux inside him earlier because (a) Harry was a child, and (b) Dumbledore didn’t want to take away Harry’s hope. Additionally, after the fourth book, there was still the possibility that Harry could survive because, by performing the resurrection ritual, Voldemort intertwined his life with Harry’s, thus giving Harry a chance not to die when allowing the Horcrux to be destroyed. So why would Dumbledore tell a teenager that he would have to die at some point in the future… if there was a chance Harry might come back? It seems (to me, at least) like an unnecessary cruelty to place that burden on someone for so long.

So the biggest issue I see with the fandom in relation to Dumbledore is the belief that he had power over things that were completely beyond his reach. Dumbledore was a leader doing the best he could with what he had, within the limitations presented to him and his own experience.

Moreover, it’s admirable that Dumbledore had such a dark and flawed past and acknowledged each of his mistakes, always acting to ensure that he wouldn’t repeat them. It was the events of his adolescence that led him to always remember to value what truly mattered: love and people. He grew through his own pain, through the consequences of his own mistakes; he never forgot or repressed what happened to Ariana — which would certainly have been much easier — but instead, he used that painful event to become a better person.

That’s a morally gray character, that’s someone who had been stuck between a rock and a hard place and did what he thought was best, that’s a character who did the best he could with what he was given. And I really don’t like how fascist-like characters are more often than not considered more complex because of trauma than characters like Dumbledore.

But I guess that’s a bit because we can actually empathize with them better by being convinced that they didn’t have a choice, or that they were somehow forced into those choices even if they really didn’t want to and that might be the case, but to be honest, after seeing what fascist narratives do to marginalized people, I can’t say I care much about it. Anyway, be my guest to comment on my analysis but please be kind, I won’t engage in rage baits nor Zionists, Free Palestine loves <3

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