#is unfortunately almost certaintly a major part of how her worldbuilding felt so sincere and realistic to us as kids

[whetstonefires]

i saw your reblog of lesbianincelsnape’s post, i really want to hear your thoughts on how dumbledore and snape are similar

Oh! Sure, why not. 😂 I'll do my best.

So the position I'm adopting here is basically that Dumbledore is secretly a lot like Snape.

Specifically, the person Snape was, at that crucial juncture in his life when Dumbledore stepped up as his patron, reminded Dumbledore so much of himself at the parallel point in his own life it was like getting punched in the stomach every time he looked at him.

(I've also said elsewhere I think he was probably jealous that Voldemort and Lily were separate people. Like!)

The extremely vital point in Albus Dumbledore's backstory that gets neglected an astonishing amount is: his father went to Azkaban for anti-muggle hate crimes, and never came out.

But it wasn't really a hate crime. It was an honor killing, or vigilante justice. It was revenge for an assault on his daughter that could not be prosecuted thanks to the Statute of Secrecy.

The Dumbledore family was destroyed by 1) muggles and 2) the government. And then their mom died.

And that's where Grindelwald found him. Recently out of school and recently orphaned, brilliant and isolated and embittered, all his lauded potential being squandered on having to stay home and care indefinitely for his disabled sister. And knowing exactly who to blame. This is an alienated youth.

Aberforth was 100% correct to come over all 'what the fuck Rousseau you're just going off with this asshole to chase your weird dreams and leaving us?' although dueling about it was obviously foolish, but it's not surprising Albus could be radicalized at that point, even without factoring in the crush.

It wouldn't be really surprising, just disappointing, if Grindelwald had led with much more blatantly evil rhetoric than 'we will tear down this broken system with all its hideous injustices and erect a new one where we will personally ensure justice and rule over the muggles for their own good' and still gotten him.

But regardless. First he was that brilliant, embittered, horribly lonely young englishman signing himself away on a charismatic figure's fascist agenda. And then he was the slightly older, broken young man whose selfish choices had killed a young woman he loved, but had failed to care for properly.

Dumbledore despised the first one but he respects the sentiment of remorse enough to be able to sympathize with the second. He's built his whole identity from that point in his own life.

Which gets him right in that weird mental spot he's clearly got, where he wants to believe in redemption more than anything but also believes people can never really change. And that he, for example, can't be trusted to attempt major reforms to society or government considering the circumstances of his original resolution to unfuck the system.

So although Snape doesn't know it they've got this super complicated relationship where Dumbedore identifies with him a lot, and alternately cuts him inappropriate amounts of slack and is Very Weird And Passive-Aggressive With Him because of it.

What's most interesting here is that while he did usher the guy into the life choice that had ultimately allowed him to feel like he was doing something meaningful without grasping too outrageously at power (without any apparent understanding of the differences of context and psychology that stopped teaching from being fulfilling for Snape in the same way, or of the ways this could be bad for students) Dumbledore did not seriously pressure Snape to adopt his specific coping mechanisms.

Is this because he understood that this would be inappropriate and unhelpful, or more broadly unethical, or because he lacked the introspective awareness to realize that he had e.g. spent the last 70 years in a weird internal war with his 20-year-old self? Who can say.

Interesting that the result was that Snape just stayed that exact person for the rest of his life though.