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

A brief aside: Dumbledore finally gives Snape the D.A.D.A. position that Snape has so coveted, for two reasons. First and foremost, Dumbledore is just really desperate to get Slughorn to Hogwarts, so it’s necessary to have both Snape and Slughorn teaching. But Dumbledore also knows that if Snape kills him within the year, he won’t return to the job afterwards, so he isn’t worried about the jinx on the job taking Snape out of the picture prematurely.32

Dumbledore knows from Snape that Voldemort “believes the school will soon be in his grasp, yes.” (DH682) At this point, Dumbledore had just gotten Hogwarts back from Umbridge’s regime, and has seen the damage she wrought: Hagrid attacked and exiled, McGonagall hospitalized, etc. Voldemort would want someone sympathetic running Hogwarts—if one of Voldemort’s minions takes over Hogwarts, things would be even worse than they were under Umbridge.

So Dumbledore creates a contingency plan to protect the students of Hogwarts: have Snape convince Voldemort to appoint him headmaster, so Snape can influence goings-on at Hogwarts. It’s not like a lot of his Death Eaters would make particularly good school administrators—Snape seems the obvious choice. Dumbledore asks Snape for “your word that you will do all in your power to protect the students at Hogwarts?” (DH682)

And if Voldemort does not gain control of Hogwarts before the next term starts, it’s hard to see Headmistress McGonagall welcoming Snape back to his teaching post after Snape killed Dumbledore. So however it works out, Snape need not worry about getting around the jinx to teach D.A.D.A. a second year.

Dumbledore prepares Harry to be his successor in a number of ways. The most obvious is by giving Harry much of the invaluable knowledge Dumbledore has acquired about Tom Riddle, through the use of the memories in the Pensieve. But also significant is that Dumbledore creates a support network for Harry. He allows Harry to bring Ron and Hermione in on the secrets—a most un-Dumbledore-like move, but a necessary one because Harry will need allies. Dumbledore has been grooming the Trio for this since Sorcerer’s Stone; in particular, he places a lot of faith in Hermione to be the brains of the operation since she acquitted herself so admirably saving Sirius and Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban.

Dumbledore picks up a lesson from Voldemort, Fudge, and Scrimgeour: he invests in making Harry a symbol. He needs to make sure all of his allies will rally to Harry’s side when need be. (He also needs a new torch-bearer for the cause, since that was his own role, and who better than the Boy Who Lived and the Chosen One?) We even get a glimpse of how Dumbledore was helping this along—witness this exchange between Kingsley and Lupin: “The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us!” / “Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.” (DH72)

However, Dumbledore unwittingly handicapped Harry by maintaining his penchant for secrets and lies. It served Dumbledore well in Order of the Phoenix to keep everyone in the dark, because Dumbledore is capable of masterminding against Voldemort single-handedly. Harry, on the other hand, could certainly have used the help of powerful adult wizards during his quest. The decision to keep secrets from their followers is something Dumbledore and Voldemort have in common, and Harry follows suit to his detriment.

Dumbledore also keeps up the Horcrux hunt as all this is going on. He knows Voldemort is likely to have made at least one more conventional Horcrux, because there’s the perfect candidate: Slytherin’s locket. It checks all the boxes—historical Hogwarts artifact, trumpets Voldemort’s Slytherin ancestry, is connected to snakes, and is known to have disappeared around Tom Riddle. So Dumbledore begins looking for the next Horcrux,33 and it takes him all of his last remaining year to find its hiding spot.

But at the end of April, Harry finally has a Felix-Felicis-assisted breakthrough, and gets Dumbledore the memory from Slughorn. Dumbledore finally has the answer to the question that’s plagued him for almost two years: Voldemort wanted to make six Horcruxes.

From here on out, it’s fairly straightforward for Dumbledore. The diary and ring are gone. Nagini makes three, though she must be the last one destroyed so as not to arouse Voldemort’s suspicions. Harry’s scar was the unwitting seventh Horcrux, which has a whole separate plan percolating around it. Slytherin’s locket and Hufflepuff’s cup make five. The only unknown is the sixth Horcrux, but some psychoanalysis of Voldemort reveals that it’s likely a relic of Ravenclaw’s.34 All that’s left to do is to hunt down as many of them as possible while still alive, and to show Harry the ropes.

The Last Horcrux Lesson

With so much going on—preparing Harry for the Horcrux hunt, looking for the locket, dealing with new Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour’s interference and Slughorn’s reticence, and plotting out the rest of the war—Dumbledore makes a mistake, and underestimates a teenage boy to his own peril (sound familiar?). Draco Malfoy is spending the entire year trying to kill Dumbledore and grows increasingly sloppy with his attempts. Dumbledore delegates the Draco problem to Snape and assumes Draco won’t actually achieve anything.35

Perhaps if Dumbledore had realized the obvious parallels here, he would not have been so blasé about Draco. Consider: a teenage boy is recruited and groomed by the leader of a given side, charged with a suicide mission, the seemingly impossible task of destroying the opposing side’s general.36 Both teenage boys would receive a crucial bit of assistance from Severus Snape. Yet while Dumbledore had complete faith in Harry succeeding, he did not have as high an opinion of Draco Malfoy.

This results in Dumbledore being extremely cavalier about his ticking clock. He still has not told Harry half of what Harry needs to know about Horcruxes—for example, how to destroy them, which seems a rather crucial point. We can only assume that Dumbledore was planning on showing Harry how to destroy a Horcrux right after they got the locket, preferring to