The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore by Irvin Khaytman (good fiction books to read txt) 📗

It’s small wonder that Draco leaves his first year thoroughly disenchanted with his headmaster. He spends all of second year parroting Lucius: “Father's always said old Dumbledore's the worst thing that's ever happened to this place.” (CS222)

This is a big change of pace from Sorcerer’s Stone, where Hagrid refers to Dumbledore as “the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had.” (SS58)11 It’s made clear later in Chamber of Secrets that a lot of Hogwarts students share Hagrid’s assessment: when McGonagall tells the Great Hall that she has “good news” at the end of the year, the very first guess is “Dumbledore’s coming back!” several people yelled joyfully. (CS284)12 But there is an important difference between the reverence for Dumbledore being widespread and being unanimous; it’s telling that Draco seems perfectly at home disparaging Dumbledore in front of the Slytherins.

In The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Dumbledore refers to his enmity with Lucius Malfoy and attributes it to a disagreement about the appropriateness of the fairytales available in the Hogwarts Library. “This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy’s long campaign to have me removed from my post as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort’s Favorite Death Eater.” (TBB42)

However, one can’t help noticing that this enmity really seemed to foment after Lucius’s son came home from his first year at Hogwarts very upset about Dumbledore’s disregard for the Slytherins. This may explain why Lucius chose that particular year to put in motion his plan to reopen the Chamber of Secrets, which he must have known would provide him an opportunity to remove Dumbledore from office.

Dumbledore Lacking Information

Dumbledore’s reasoning must surely have clued him in as to the identity of Slytherin’s monster. Unlike Harry and his friends, Dumbledore is definitely familiar with various fantastic beasts and where to find them. There must be a very small number of creatures that can kill, Petrify, live for a thousand years, and be controlled only by descendants of a Parselmouth. Dumbledore either shares his suspicions with Snape, or Snape (being very clever in his own right) comes to the same conclusion independently. Either way, Snape takes matters into his own hands at the fateful Dueling Club meeting.

The spell Snape instructs Draco to use—Serpensortia—makes no sense in a dueling context. As online commenter Irene M. Cesca put it: “You throw a snake at your opponent and. . . What?! You cross your fingers that you’re dueling Indiana Jones and that he’s gonna run out screaming like a little kid?” There was something else going on. This is something I’ve puzzled over quite a bit, occasionally tempted to just go with the “Because Plot” explanation, but I think we can make sense of it.

It’s definitely not Dumbledore’s doing—Dumbledore likes to run controlled experiments, and throwing a snake into the middle of the student body isn’t his style. Snape seems surprised by Harry’s Parselmouth abilities, so Snape was not confirming his own theory about Harry. It would appear to me that Snape, knowing the Heir of Slytherin was likely a Parselmouth, was hoping to unmask him or her at the Dueling Club. Humiliating Harry in the process would be a bonus. But Snape is shocked by Harry being the Parselmouth because, whatever else he may think of Harry, it doesn’t make sense to him that Harry is the Heir of Slytherin.

Dumbledore is informed of this. The next day, Justin Finch-Fletchley and Nearly Headless Nick are Petrified, and Dumbledore meets with Harry in his office.13 He tells Hagrid right away, “I do not think that Harry attacked those people.” (CS208) But Dumbledore still wants to pick Harry’s brain. He performs Legilimency on Harry during that meeting and gets quite a bit of material: Draco Malfoy shouting about Mudbloods, a plot concerning Polyjuice, Harry hearing a disembodied voice, and Harry’s fears about his reputation (CS209). So Dumbledore remains as confused as ever.

In the meantime, we see firsthand through some flashbacks where the pattern of Dumbledore’s favoritism of Gryffindors over Slytherins began: in the 1940s, with Tom Riddle and Rubeus Hagrid. Tom Riddle pointed the finger of blame at Hagrid for opening the Chamber of Secrets and killing Moaning Myrtle. Hagrid was expelled, but Dumbledore got him to stay on as assistant gamekeeper. Dumbledore was rightfully suspicious of Tom Riddle,14 and Hagrid was indeed innocent of opening the Chamber of Secrets.

However, there is a larger pattern at work here: when a Gryffindor commits a crime, Dumbledore goes out of his way to ameliorate the sentence and protect the Gryffindor. Hagrid, though not responsible for Myrtle’s death, was raising an acromantula inside the school. Maybe this is my arachnophobia talking, but that does not sound like innocence to me. Hagrid was raising an illegal creature that actively eats humans inside a school. Sure, he trained Aragog well enough to tame his human-eating nature. . . but that doesn’t erase the danger nor the illegality of his actions. I’d expel anyone who raised giant spiders in my school. But Hagrid remains at Hogwarts as assistant gamekeeper and keeps an illicit wand in his umbrella.15 Dumbledore remains loyal to Hagrid, culminating in a very questionable decision to make Hagrid a professor after his name is cleared in 1993. Perhaps if Grubbly-Plank had been a Gryffindor, she would not have been passed over for the job.16

Help Will Always Be Given

Back to the present: to Dumbledore’s great chagrin, he remains helpless for the rest of the school year. Lucius Malfoy even manages a short-lived triumph in his campaign to remove Dumbledore and ousts Dumbledore from Hogwarts. It’s not hard to imagine this as Dumbledore’s darkest hour—removed from Harry and Hogwarts with a basilisk on the loose. It’s doubtful that Dumbledore ever wanted Harry mixed up in all this—Harry’s first year was enough of a trial run, and having him face off against a basilisk could end very badly indeed. But it’s out of Dumbledore’s hands, and Harry is involved, so