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

Chapter 2:

Albus Dumbledore and the

Chamber of Secrets

After the events of Sorcerer’s Stone, Dumbledore must have been optimistic that he (and Harry) would have some time to relax. Voldemort just got trounced by an eleven-year-old and is off haunting Albania again. Nothing for Dumbledore to worry about besides Fudge pestering him. He is not even concerned about telling Harry about the prophecy yet: “I was too happy to think that I did not have to do it on that particular day. You were too young, much too young.”7 (OP838)

For the first two months of the school year, Dumbledore does remain relatively worry-free, give or take an incident with a flying car. But his serene existence comes crashing down on Halloween with a Petrified cat and some dramatic graffiti, declaring that “The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened.”

At this point, Dumbledore knows that Tom Riddle is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin (CS333) and is fairly confident that Riddle opened the Chamber the last time, fifty years ago. So he knows that Voldemort is somehow behind it, but a quick check of his sources will reveal that Voldemort is still in Albania. So, as he says to McGonagall, “The question is not who. The question is how. . . .” (CS181)

Foiled by a Malfoy for the First Time

Dumbledore is very rarely at a loss as to what’s going on, but he is tripped up (rather hilariously) by Lucius Malfoy’s spite. As most fans who have delved into HP theorizing have come to accept, Lucius’s original plan was to plant the diary on Harry, which would lead to Harry’s expulsion, at the very least. However, Lucius gets so angry at Mr. Weasley at Flourish & Blotts that instead, he impulsively plants the diary on Ginny in an act of pure spite. I won’t bother expounding on this theory, as many other writers have already done so.8

This is the crucial piece of information that Dumbledore is missing. He watches Harry and his friends very closely but does not extend the same scrutiny to Ginny Weasley. If Lucius had proceeded with the original plan, Dumbledore would have figured it out in a heartbeat, and Chamber of Secrets would have been a much shorter book. But the elder Malfoy’s impetuosity proved to be the biggest factor in his limited success; Dumbledore can reason his way out of any situation, but he has a harder time dealing with people being irrational.

The irony is that Dumbledore may actually be responsible, in a roundabout way, for the headache Lucius Malfoy causes him that year. Lucius Malfoy does care for his son, and Draco came home from Hogwarts rather upset about how things were going.

When we meet Draco at Borgin & Burkes after Harry has a Floo Powder mishap, he is sullenly complaining about favoritism at Hogwarts (CS50). Lucius’s responses to Draco indicate that this topic has come up frequently over the summer. While the initial impression given is that of Draco being a whiner, his grievances are not without merit.

Under the veneer of being far removed from the day-to-day life of Hogwarts,9 Dumbledore is no less partisan towards his house than Snape or McGonagall. In Sorcerer’s Stone, for example, McGonagall “speak[s] to Professor Dumbledore [to] see if we can’t bend the first-year rule” (SS152) to allow Harry to join the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. Given that Harry winds up on the Quidditch team, Dumbledore must have given the okay. As Hermione puts it, this is “a reward for breaking rules” (SS166) that is horribly unfair to just about the entire student body.10 Would it really have been so terrible if Harry waited another year before joining the Quidditch team?

But the event that irredeemably ruined Dumbledore’s image for all Slytherins was the Leaving Feast in Sorcerer’s Stone, where Dumbledore goes out of his way to crush the Slytherins’ hopes. Dumbledore is perfectly within his rights to award points to the Trio for going on an adventure, and to Neville for standing up to friends. However, the way he does it is unnecessarily cruel to a quarter of the school.

Dumbledore lets the entire school go into the Leaving Feast, thinking Slytherin had won the house cup. The Great Hall

was decked out in the Slytherin colors of green and silver to celebrate Slytherin's winning the house cup for the seventh year in a row. A huge banner showing the Slytherin serpent covered the wall behind the High Table. (SS304)

Is that enough of a fake-out? No. Dumbledore then lists the points totals, all but announcing that Slytherin had won. “A storm of cheering and stamping broke out from the Slytherin table.” Harry isn’t happy about it, but one has to imagine that this meant an awful lot to the Slytherins—especially the first years, who’d never won the house cup before, and had spent a year being instilled with the belief that winning the house cup is of paramount importance.

“Yes, Yes, well done, Slytherin,” said Dumbledore. “However, recent events must be taken into account.”

The room went very still. The Slytherins' smiles faded a little. (SS305)

Dumbledore has a flair for the theatrical, and he draws this out for maximum effect. He announces the points for the trio, one by one. He makes sure to give just enough points to tie Gryffindor with Slytherin, for maximum drama. There are no guidelines for how many points are awarded for playing chess or for “pure nerve,” so this is Dumbledore choosing point totals purely to stage a spectacle for an audience. At that point, the Slytherins are surely thinking, “Fine, even if we tied, at least we still won.” And then Dumbledore goes ahead and crushes the Slytherins by awarding Neville ten points.

“Which means,” Dumbledore called over the storm of applause, for even Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were celebrating the downfall of Slytherin, “we need a little change of decoration.”

He clapped his hands. In an instant, the green hangings became scarlet and the silver became gold; the huge Slytherin serpent vanished