Three years ago, I wrote a short meta called “In Praise of Albus Dumbledore.”
I now need to revoke it.
I wrote then:
Amidst the old man's various machinations and manipulations which I find unforgivable, there is one which I must acknowledge may have saved Severus's life, and almost certainly saved his soul.
I refer to that terrible, callous redirecting of Snape's purpose in the aftermath of Lily's murder. Dumbledore used Severus's overwhelming grief and guilt to get him to repledge "anything" to Albus: this time in the service of protecting Lily's child (whom Dumbledore had already written off as slated for execution).
Yet had Dumbledore not done this?
It seems that the two most likely choices Severus would have made on his own were, 1) immediate suicide, or 2) devoting himself to vengeance--to destroying the remnants of the Dark Lord and/or of his organization. Anyone care to think what Snape would be like after a decade of devoting himself to nothing but destroying his love's murderers?
Instead, Dumbledore appealed (falsely, but that's a different problem) to Severus's instinct to defend and serve, and persuaded Severus that the (only) way to honor his love for Lily was to protect the son she had died for. He appealed, in fact, to Severus's best instincts.
For that, at least, Severus owes him.
I no longer credit my own analysis.
I thought, then, that Albus had appealed to Severus’s better instincts in the post-mortem scene in DH 33 for much the same reason that Harry had done so with Black and Lupin in PoA 19, when Harry stopped them from murdering Peter out of hand. Harry there appealed for mercy, not to save Wormtail (as he explained indignantly when Peter tried to fawn on Harry to thank him) but to save Remus and Sirius. He felt that the two should not, must not, “become killers-just for you.”
So Sirius, at Harry’s instigation, gave up the obsession with personally killing James’s betrayer that had been consuming him, and ten minutes later offered himself to Harry as his rightful guardian.
And for the rest of his life, Sirius put Harry ahead of Peter or Voldemort.
I thought, back then, that the choice Sirius made in 1994, at Harry’s prodding, was the one that Severus had made in 1981. At Albus’s. And that Albus, therefore, like Harry, must have pushed for that choice because it was obviously morally right (and psychologically healthier).
However, if “choosing what is right versus what is easy” had been any part of Albus’s reasoning for insisting that Severus devote the remainder of his life to helping Albus protect Lily’s son, then we should have seen Albus pushing in that same direction when influencing other young men.
Such as, oh, Sirius and Harry.
Consider how alike were Sirius and Severus’s positions when the Potters were killed.
Both Severus and Sirius had given single-hearted devotion to one of Harry’s parents. Both had seen their beloved turn away and give primary loyalty and love to another. (At least, the cultural norm was that James should have placed his girlfriend/fiancé/wife and, later, his child, ahead of that mere close-as-a-brother friend. At the very least, Sirius had sometimes to share James’s time and attention while James satisfied the decent appearance of putting his new family first.)
But neither man let the defection (complete or partial) of the beloved shake his own devotion.
Both Sirius and Severus made “a terrible mistake,” which, coupled with another person’s deliberate betrayal of the Potters, led ultimately to the couple’s doom.
Sirius, of course, unlike Severus, stayed close to his “best friend” even as that friend placed another before him. Sirius was rewarded by being made “best man,” and later, godfather of his best friend’s son. And guardian, should anything happen to the Potters.
An honor and a duty which Sirius accepted.
And which Sirius ignored when James was killed. The man James had trusted to protect and care for his son should the worst happen, abandoned the baby to Dumbledore in favor of chasing down James’s betrayer to try to kill him.
Because of this choice, Sirius Black was sent to Azkaban to endure Dementors for a decade, and baby Harry to the loveless Dursleys.
And Sirius accepted Azkaban, so long as he believed his vengeance to be accomplished and Peter dead. He only tried to escape upon realizing his victim had tricked him and survived.
Because Sirius placed avenging James’s death over protecting James’s son. Hate over love. Death over life.
And it took a thirteen-year-old James-lookalike to persuade Sirius to abandon his fanatic quest to kill James’s betrayer himself, in favor of letting the WW administer what passed for justice.
After which Sirius was free to offer Harry the loving home the boy had always craved.
(Although that bit didn’t quite work out, after Wormtail’s escape left Sirius, as Dumbledore so helpfully pointed out, without validation for his story….)
But of course Black’s choice that Halloween was made unaided, while Snape, equally grieving and guilty, chose (under Dumbledore’s prodding) a better course.
Right?
So, years ago, I credited Albus’s prodding with having pushed Severus to that better decision.
*
Only, on closer examination, I find two problems with that view. The first is, I realize I’d long been traducing Sirius.
He didn’t initially choose vengeance over caring for his lost friend’s son. He chose to pursue vengeance only when the alternative course was taken from him.
By Albus Dumbledore.
We have Hagrid’s word for that. (All quotes below are from PoA chapter 10 unless otherwise indicated.)
“It was me what rescued Harry from Lily and James’s house after they was killed! Jus’ got him outta the ruins, poor little thing, with a great slash across his forehead, an’ his parents dead… an’ Sirius Black turns up, on that flyin’ motorbike he used ter ride…. White an’ shakin’, he was….
“An’ then he says, ‘Give Harry to me, Hagrid. I’m his godfather, I’ll look after him-‘ Ha! But I’d had me orders from Dumbledore, an’ I told Black no, Dumbledore said Harry was ter go ter his aunt an’ uncle’s. Black argued, but in the end he gave in. Told me ter take his motorbike ter get Harry there. ‘I won’t need it anymore,’ he says.
“I shoulda known there was somethin’ fishy goin’ on then. He loved that motorbike, what was he givin’ it ter me for? Why wouldn’ he need it anymore?”
So.
We might (okay, I do) fault Sirius for ultimately acceding to Dumbledore’s plans for Harry’s disposition when Sirius KNEW that the sisters had not been close, and probably that Tuney feared and hated magic.
In my (always humble) opinion, Sirius would have chosen better had he let Peter and vengeance go and taken Dumbledore to court, if necessary, to wrest custody of Harry from him and/or Mrs. Dursley.
But there is absolutely no question that Sirius’s first instinct had been to honor his commitment to James to care for his child. Only when Dumbles thwarted him, turned him aside from that duty, did Sirius commit himself to a vengeance that must either kill him or send him to Azkaban. (Note that not even consequence-ignoring Sirius ever imagined that he could combine caring for Harry with hunting down Peter!)
It was only after Harry had been denied to him that Sirius gave his motorbike to Hagrid (for transporting the baby, no less!) and set off to hunt down the rat.
Which brings us to the second problem. We must infer that Twinkles stole custody of Harry from Sirius on some basis other than believing Sirius to have been a willing Death Eater and James’s voluntary betrayer.
Because Dumbles had never warned Hagrid not to trust Sirius.
Hagrid’s only reason not to give Harry to his loving godfather had been that he felt Dumbledore’s instructions should take precedence over the dead parents’. Not that he’d been warned that Sirius might be dangerous to the child.
*
The more I think about Twinkles’ not having bothered to warn Hagrid that Sirius Black must really (in logic) be a murderous Death Eater traitor, the queasier I get.
I’d years ago spun a tale of time-twisting in which Twinkles had already examined Harry and determined the toddler to be Tom’s (Albus presumed, sole) Horcrux before ever Albus had sent Hagrid (through time) to Godric’s Hollow. In such a case, our Twinkles would probably figure that letting a Death Eater blast the baby-and therefore his master’s soul-out of existence, would be only poetic justice. And if Hagrid’s life were taken too, well, no unimaginably great loss.
But, first, that explanation requires a lot of extra-canonical contrivance. Further, it requires Dumbles to be much faster on his feet than canon really shows him to have been. And more consciously ruthless than our Albus ever liked to think of himself as being.
Finally, if Albus had really believed Sirius to be a traitor Death Eater who posed an immediate threat to Harry, and had neglected to warn Hagrid of this danger, what if Sirius had killed the Boy Who Lived but not Hagrid?
Surely the subsequent Ministry investigation would have established that, no, the headmaster hadn’t warned Hagrid against Black? And then someone might have wondered why Dumbledore should have kept his loyal follower in the dark about such an obvious danger.
Especially given what Minerva could testify. “James Potter told Dumbledore that Black would die rather than tell where they were, that Black was planning to go into hiding himself… and yet, Dumbledore remained worried. I remember him offering to be the Potters’ Secret Keeper himself.”
“He suspected Black?” gasped Madam Rosmerta.
“He was sure that somebody close to the Potters had been keeping You-Know-Who informed of their movements,” said Professor McGonagall darkly. “Indeed, he had suspected for some time that someone on our side had turned traitor and was passing a lot of information to You-Know-Who.”
Wouldn’t Albus have risked censure for the Boy Who Lived’s untimely death?
Wouldn’t Dumbles have worried a bit about that?
*
Well, not necessarily. Not if it had never crossed Dumbles’ mind initially that Black (if he did turn up) might pose any threat to Hagrid or Harry.
Not if Albus’s actual original concern about using James’s loyal friend as the Potters’ Secret Keeper had been that Black must inevitably betray them involuntarily.
*
Let’s pause here to consider Twinkle’s preferred mode of misleading: a literal truth that, as presented, leads his auditors to a false conclusion. Which they draw all on their very very own, so their misperceptions aren’t Albus’s responsibility, really.
Really.
You remember, like how in book one Dumbles explained to Harry all about the Severus/James enmity, and how Snape resented James for having saved Snape’s life….
So remind me: what, precisely, was the evidence that sent Sirius Black to Azkaban without a trial?
“A street full of eyewitnesses swore they saw Sirius murder Pettigrew. I myself gave evidence to the Ministry that Sirius had been the Potters’ Secret Keeper.” (PoA 21)
Dumbles did not state, note, that he personally gave evidence that “Black was tired of his double-agent role, he was ready to declare his support openly for You-Know-Who, and he seems to have planned this for the moment of the Potters’ death.”
Fudge’s explanation to Rosmerta was the Ministry’s interpretation of what Dumbledore’s evidence had meant. NOT what Dumbles had actually committed himself to saying in his official statement.
And of course, Sirius really was condemned to life (death) in Azkaban for something far “Worse than murdering all those poor people.”
After all, a dozen Muggles and a fat little incompetent are no great loss. (Note that Dumbles didn’t even mention the irrelevant Muggle deaths in his summary of the evidence against Sirius.)
No, “The worst he did [which] isn’t widely known” was to join You-Know-Who and betray the Potters to him.
Which Sirius was known to have done on the basis of the martyred Peter’s sobbed, “Lily and James, Sirius! How could you? (Fudge’s dramatic, but decade-plus later retelling of the eyewitnesses’ account-one wonders about its accuracy.)
And on the basis of Dumbledore’s sworn statement that the Potters had not only considered using Black as their Secret Keeper (despite Albus’s misgivings on that score, as made known to Minerva)-they did indeed make Black their Secret Keeper.
Therefore, obviously, if You-Know-Who subsequently found and killed the Potters, it must have been because their Secret Keeper had secretly been the Dark Lord’s loyal servant and had gleefully taken the first opportunity to hand them over to his master.
*
Except, of course, that that inference does not follow. At all.
There are at least half-a-dozen ways Tom might have caught up with the Potters besides their Secret Keeper having secretly been Tom’s fanatic servant.
Sirius might simply have overestimated his ability to hold a secret (against a Legilimens!) while being tortured. The easiest way to break a Fidelius is surely to break the Secret Keeper.
Well, the second easiest. The easiest must surely be to trick or enchant the Secret Keeper into happily revealing the secret to the wrong person.
Had I been tasked with getting the secret from Sirius, I wouldn’t have bothered with the Cruciatus. I’d have tried Amortencia. Or Polyjuice. Or a nice simple little Confundus Charm: “I’m Poppy Pomfrey, and James asked you to tell me the Potters’ location immediately because poor little Harry is sick and they don’t dare take him to St. Mungo’s.”
(And if I were really cruel, I’d let Sirius go afterwards, unscathed, too late to intervene, to realize what he’d inadvertently done. I’LL give you “white and shaking!”)
(In fact, it had always been a possibility that the leak within the Order and/or the Potter’s circle had never been a conscious, willing traitor at all, just a dupe. Review Swythyv’s suggestions about what Rosmerta might have believed she was doing, under that Imperius.)
Alternatively, Dark Arts expert Tom might have known a way around the Fidelius Charm.
Or, the Fidelius Charm might have been miscast by those inexperienced but arrogant children, who’d refused the headmaster’s offered assistance….
(Of course, it’s also possible that Albus had cast the charm himself with a Polyjuiced Peter, in which case that last explanation would not have occurred to Albus. Just as his vanity would never have allowed him to consider that the Marauders would or could successfully have fooled him as to who had really been made the Secret Keeper.)
Finally, Sirius might have turned traitor to the Order (and more problematically, to his James) for some reason, but remained divided in his feelings. In which case it was unlikely that he’d feel such devotion to his master that he’d want to wreak vengeance on James’s son.
Indeed, the only solution to the twin problems of how much it was Sirius’s fault that Tom eventually caught up with the Potters, and whether Harry would have been in danger from him afterwards, that can be flatly ruled out on the evidence was Hagrid’s unsophisticated analysis: “But what if I’d given Harry to him, eh? I bet he’d’ve pitched him off the bike halfway out ter sea. His bes’ friends’ son! But when a wizard goes over ter the Dark Side, there’s nothin’ and no one that matters to ‘em anymore.”
Nope. Doesn’t work.
If Sirius had become such a conscienceless killer that he’d not only betray his best friend for his master’s sake, but kill a defenseless child out of simple pique that the baby had survived and his master hadn’t, then Sirius wouldn’t have asked Hagrid politely for his godson’s custody, argued that James had chosen him as guardian, and gone away after giving his favorite possession to the man who’d frustrated him.
Nor would he have needed to pitch a baby into the sea to kill him off.
The Sirius of Hagrid’s fevered imagination (and the Ministry’s) would simply have cast Avada Kedavra on Harry, and probably on Hagrid as well.
*
So, no. Dumbledore’s sending Hagrid to fetch Harry without a warning about that nefarious traitor Black was much more likely to have been because Albus had never considered Black in that light than because Albus had privately hoped that the treacherous Black would kill off both Harry and Hagrid.
And Sirius’s behavior would have confirmed that impression for Twinkles. By Hagrid’s account, the man had been distraught and grief-stricken, and his first thought had been for toddler Harry, now his responsibility.
Dumbles must have felt confirmed in his private judgment that Sirius simply hadn’t been up to the task of being Secret Keeper, that Sirius had been tricked (not coerced-he was alive, after all) into revealing the Potter’s location to the wrong person.
Which, of course, in a sense was true.
Why, then, keep the baby from his designated guardian? And what did Twinkles expect the distraught and shattered young man (that other distraught and shattered young man who’d inadvertently betrayed his best-beloved to death) to do, after being deprived of his rightful role as guardian?
The latter first. Obviously, Sirius would either suicide, or, much more likely, go on a Death Eater hunt. Either a general rampage, or a hunt to find and kill the specific Death Eater who’d managed to trick him into betraying James.
Which, if that person weren’t already known to have been a Death Eater, would have left Sirius in a difficult legal position. Facing Azkaban, in fact. For a vicious attack on an apparent innocent.
And Peter, the next day? Did Dumbles ever realize Peter to have been the Death Eater who’d tricked Sirius?
Possibly, but not at all necessarily.
After all, if anyone attacked Sirius first, Sirius’s instinct would always have been to strike back, hard. And if Peter-Peter, that fat little hanger-on who’d licked James’s arse so shamelessly, who’d been tolerated as useful but had never been anything like the double act’s admitted equal-had accused Sirius of deliberately betraying James….
Well.
Sirius would have been raw with grief and guilt and self-rage at his involuntary betrayal. An accusation like that, and from Wormtail, might have sent him over the edge.
Enough to cast, perhaps, an enraged Incendio at the source of such an incendiary accusation.
Who’d happened to be standing in front of a gas main in the middle of a crowd of Muggles.
And then Sirius would be a mass-murderer. By accident. As he’d been his best friend’s betrayer. By accident.
All Albus would have had to do at that point to put Sirius permanently out of his way was to confirm gravely that Black had indeed been the Potter’s Secret Keeper and must have betrayed them, and let the Ministry draw their inferences: that Black’s betrayal had been voluntary and that Sirius was, indeed, therefore, the worst sort of Death Eater.
Couldn’t have worked out better for Twinkles if he’d tried.
*
Because Sirius, if James had left a will, had had a legal claim to Harry. And was the only living witch or wizard who did have anything like a firm legal claim. (As opposed to bribery-assisted hopes or speculations.)
*
James Potter died. That’s a fact. Let’s start with facts. James Potter died (or more properly, was murdered).
Leaving, we presume, sole custody of his son to that son’s mother, if she survived him, and to the boy’s godfather Sirius, James’s best friend, if she did not.
Just how carefully would a notoriously careless twenty-one-year-old have phrased these stipulations in a perhaps hastily-drawn-up will?
James Potter died. And his wife survived him. By at least a minute. So she would have become Harry’s sole guardian at James’s death.
And so at her subsequent death, Harry’s custody went legally to… whom?
We don’t know.
But we do know that no one ever questioned the legality of Twinkles placing Harry with Petunia Dursley.
Only (timidly) Petunia’s suitability.
If James’s will had given sole custody to his surviving spouse, and if Lily didn’t leave a will specifying otherwise (or if her will had been, cough, lost, say by the executor), Lily’s sole surviving immediate relation, her sister, might be the only person with an obvious legal claim to Harry’s custody. Especially since James Potter left no surviving parents or siblings, though a daunting cloud of second-cousins-thrice-removed.
But the man named as residuary guardian (if that’s the term) in the father’s will could probably have made a strong case in court to be granted custody. Particularly, in a Wizarding court, if he were a rich wizard with (still) influential relatives, and the mother’s sister a mere Muggle who didn’t want Harry anyhow.
But not, of course, if that man were in Azkaban. Either for vigilante violence against Death Eaters, or as a suspected Death Eater himself.
Who was James’s executor?
Well, who was the keeper of his keys?
Who gave Hagrid the key to the Potter vault, when it was time for the boy first to visit Gringotts?
My mother died last summer, and I have never held her keys. Nor have my brothers. The keeper of her keys is my sister. Not as (one of) Mom’s heirs.
As my mother’s executor.
How else could Albus have held onto that Gringotts key?
What, you think the Goblins give them to just anyone? Or just anyone other Wizards seem to kow-tow to?
Legalities, folks. Goblins pay attention to legal niceties.
*
(If James had never signed a will naming Sirius as Harry’s guardian and Albus as executor, Sirius-if out of trouble-might still have made a successful application based on James’s expressed wishes and his own status as named godfather. So Dumbles would still have needed Black out of the way, if he didn’t want him to raise Harry. But in that case, it’s hard to explain how Dumbledore should have ended up with the Potters’ keys and making high-handed dispositions of their high-profile heir with no questions apparently being asked.)
*
I’ve come round to Oryx_leucoryx’s way of thinking (“Filling Some Gaps About the First War, Part 6”). Albus placed Harry with the Dursleys as part of a power grab. By doing so he could control, entirely, the upbringing of the Boy Who Lived.
He probably did not initially intend to leave Harry there forever. Just for long enough to settle the legal dust, to make sure no one (else) in the Wizarding World could make a successful claim upon the boy.
I say this because of the exact terms of the protective spell Albus created using the power of Lily’s sacrifice: “You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, there he [Tom] cannot hurt you.” (OotP 37)
Only, why make a grab for Harry in the first place?
Okay, we can see why anyone ambitious (the Malfoys, say) might want to control Harry-raise him, give him a right way of thinking, get him firmly on Our Side-after baby Potter had become known as the Boy Who Lived, the super baby whose powers were strong enough to vanquish Lord Voldemort.
(Oh God, would Lucius have wanted someone capable of vanquishing the Dark Lord who could be indoctrinated to be loyal to his family!)
But that Boy Who Lived propaganda was put about in the first place by Albus-he didn’t believe that rot! He knew that Harry’s unique and destined role in defeating Voldemort was to die to take Tom’s soul-fragment from the world.
Or rather, Albus knew that. After he’d determined the toddler to be the Harrycrux.
What had Albus thought before?
*
Jodel has pointed out that Dumbles seems all along to have operated as though he firmly believed in that Prophecy: believed that Wizarding Britain’s only hope of finally defeating Tom and his followers was to cower abjectly until a Prophesied babe as yet unborn got himself born and eventually did the job for them.
Well.
There was a British wizard once, wasn’t there, who is best remembered for his role in providing for the birth of, training and shaping the youth of, and finally advising and providing magic for, a great hero-leader?
For being a kingmaker?
The kingmaker?
The undisputed sole maker and supporter of Britain’s legendary king, King Arthur?
Who, with the benefit of his wizard-mentor’s training, sage advice, and unparalleled magical prowess, defeated undefeatable enemies and brought a Golden Age of peace and prosperity to Britain?
(A king, incidentally, whom this wizard had taken from his parents to be raised, not as a pampered princeling, but fostered in humble ignorance of his great destiny….)
Go ahead. Try.
Try to persuade me that Albus Dumbledore wouldn’t have been seduced by the vision of himself as the second Merlin. That he wouldn’t have imagined his destined role to be, obviously, the sage advisor and prodigiously skilled magician behind the young hero’s every fated victory.
The new Arthur would courageously act against Tom, the ultimate threat to Britain; Albus would provide the wisdom and the magic that would make the hero’s actions ultimately successful. (And he would be given the final credit, in the British magical community at least.)
And Albus would be lauded forever, as the first Merlin was.
Why, Albus is even another Half-Blood! (Though Percival was merely a criminal dwizard, not a reputed demon. And Kendra, that I’ve heard of, was never regarded as a princess among Muggles.)
But that’s the kind of role Twinkles was always really cut out for, you know. Albus had long known himself to be unfit to wield direct power. But to be the power behind the throne? To tell others what to do, and offer constructive critiques of how they didn’t quite follow his specifications if their actions should fail to produce the desired results? (Or occasionally, humbly, to admit that he’d been at fault for not remembering that those struggling to obey his suggestions are so much weaker and slower of thought than he.)
Oh, YES. Dumbles was all OVER that idea when he first heard the Prophecy and realized that Voldemort was Fated to be vanquished by a babe as yet unborn, and that to Albus alone had been granted the information to identify the future hero. He saw his destined role entire, and it suited him to a fare-thee-well.
No wonder he let Snape run off to Voldemort with the bit he’d heard! Tom must eventually “mark” the young hero to fulfill the prophecy’s stipulations, so Tom must naturally be given every encouragement to do so.
Albus would need to make sure that he was positioned to play a suitable role in the unborn hero’s life by placing himself as mentor/leader to the parents of prospectives….
Then, in the fullness of time, the Potters declined their leader’s gracious offer to be their Secret Keeper in favor of trusting their mere friend. And Albus saw in their intransigence exactly how the Prophecy would-must-now play itself out.
Sirius would fail, of course, and Lord Voldemort thereby be enabled to confront his eventual nemesis and “mark” the babe as his equal in some mystic manner.
It was remotely possible that the parents might survive, but realize they were not qualified to safely raise their marked-by-greatness son, and so would allow Albus to spirit him away to a proper fosterage.
More likely, Tom might spare Lily only, at Severus’s behest. Lily was much more reasonable than Marauder James, and would hopefully accept Albus’s offer to keep her child safe and train him for his destiny with becoming gratitude.
However, given Tom’s nature, it was most likely of all that the parents would both die, leaving Albus, their executor, with undisputed control over their child. A pity, but they’d chosen their own fates by placing their ultimate trust in someone else ahead of Albus. And self-willed as they were showing themselves to be, they might have interfered when it came time for Albus to take the young hero seriously in hand.
So their deaths might be for the greater good, really….
Undisputed control save for Sirius, that is. Who was an arrogant scion of the Blacks, as unamenable to Albus’s influence as James was proving himself to be (despite the favor he had shown them both!), and whom no one could envision as a potential Sir Ector. Sirius could not be expected to raise his godson to be humble, or chivalrous, or devoted to anything at all but the reckless and rather vicious notion of “sport” that Sirius had shared with his best friend.
No, should the Potter parents both die, the prophesied child must NOT be permitted ever to fall into Sirius’s possession. (Nine-tenths of the law, after all.)
And though the Secret Keeper might betray the Potters because of torture to near-death or insanity, it was equally likely that he’d be tricked or englamoured into that betrayal.
But so long as James died first, or at least not obviously second, Albus saw the way to work the issue, from a legal standpoint.
And how likely was it that James, if at home, should not be the first to die, flinging himself heedlessly at his enemy?
Better make sure he’d be at home then….
(Or, how fortunate it is that I’ve been neglecting to give that interesting Cloak back to its rightful owner! )
(Indeed, we know approximately when the Fidelius Charm was cast-about a week before Halloween. But when was it first discussed as the next level of defense for the Potters? When did Albus first learn James meant in that event to choose another as his Secret Keeper? Canon is silent, so speculation may run rampant. It’s even possible that Albus “borrowed” the Cloak for this reason first, and only subsequently realized what a prize had come into his possession….)
*
Sending Hagrid to fetch little Harry from the ruins of his parents’ house, then, was a brilliant stroke on Albus’s part.
Hagrid would be utterly useless at protecting Harry from Death Eaters willing to use the Killing Curse to avenge their lost Lord. But Albus didn’t expect Hagrid to face that.
What Albus DID expect Hagrid to face was what Hagrid actually did face: someone wanting to argue about Harry’s custody. From the Ministry or from the Order.
Had Albus gone himself to fetch Prophecy-boy, he’d have had to justify his decision while jockeying with his interlocutor(s) for possession. Undignified, at the least. And the point might have been raised that, even if placing Harry with Lily’s sister was indisputably legal, it could hardly be in the boy’s best interests to go to magic-haters. And Albus had no counter to that argument. He’d have to admit the placement was against the child’s immediate interests.
But Hagrid could not be argued with. Hagrid wouldn’t argue about Harry’s placement; he couldn’t. He couldn’t be expected to listen to good reasons against the plan he was implementing, and try to counter them logically.
Hagrid wouldn’t listen to objections, however well-founded; he’d merely refuse to surrender Harry to anyone in disobedience to Dumbledore’s orders.
Anyone truly determined to take Harry would have had to wrest the baby from Hagrid by magical force, and no one from the Order would have been very willing to do that. And most likely, no one from the Ministry would have had the brass, given Hagrid’s legal standing.
As the person deputized by the Potters’ executor to bring their orphaned son to his legal guardian.
Indeed, had Sirius tried to take Harry by violence from Hagrid, Sirius would likely have committed an Azkaban-worthy crime right there.
But Sirius wouldn’t try to do it. Hagrid was one of the few people he liked, as well as a fellow Order member. And Sirius was hardly in a position to fault another for unswerving loyalty.
So Sirius let Hagrid take Harry away from him, and gave Hagrid his beloved motorbike, and abandoned himself instead to hunting down that damned Death Eater who’d tricked him into betraying the Potters. Without any care for what the obvious consequences (to Sirius himself) would be.
“I wish… I wish I were dead,” had claimed that other devoted and bereaved young man, and I’m sure that Sirius felt the same. He didn’t care what became of him, the worse the better, once the traitor had paid for his crime.
Though I think now that he would have kept himself alive and his nose squeaky-clean, had he been given to understand how badly his godson would suffer for his not having done so.
*
All exactly as Albus had anticipated, though not even Albus could have predicted with what thoroughness Sirius would end up convicting himself.
But please note that somehow along the way here, a passionate young man self-dedicated to protecting and caring for his godson, James’s child, had been replaced by another newly dedicated to Albus, to help Dumbledore protect-not, note, protect and care for---Lily’s son.
I defy anyone to argue that the toddler in question was the winner in this exchange.
*
Finally, consider for a moment the artistry of employing Fridwulfa’s son to steal an orphan from the Wizarding World in order to throw him to his mother’s alien people. Who could be expected never fully to accept the child and to shower him with contempt and abuse.
It was the half-giant’s loyal strength that Twinkles placed between Harry and the wizard who would have nurtured the child out of loyalty to his dead father; Hagrid’s loving hands that that Twinkles chose to bear the boy to a unloving and violent home.
Out of blind loyalty and love for the wizard who’d saved Hagrid from a like fate.
As Phineas Nigellus once commented, one might disagree with Dumbledore on many counts, but one cannot deny that he’s got style.
All his own.
Let’s turn at last to the Boy Who Lived, and how Albus mentored him.
I started by considering how Albus redirected Severus, in the aftermath of Lily’s death, to commit himself absolutely to a fresh purpose: helping Albus protect Lily’s son.
And I pointed out that if Albus had pushed Severus to that commitment because he knew protection to be a higher, better life-purpose than revenge, then we should have seen Albus similarly pushing other youths to choose love over hate.
Instead, we saw Albus use his influence to turn Sirius from guardianship to vengeance.
Indirectly, but effectively.
However, canon also shows us Albus providing direct guidance to another bereft young man from whom Albus intended to extort another absolute commitment.
Asking for everything, and offering either love or death, protection or vengeance, as motivation.
In HBP 23, Albus finally solicited Harry’s absolute dedication to kill or die to defeat Voldemort (die trying; Harry initially thought Dumbledore meant, but somehow that eventually morphed into just dying).
And with Harry, Albus used the opposite appeal, conflating love with lust for vengeance:
“If Voldemort had never murdered your father, would he have imparted in you a furious desire for revenge? Of course not! … Don’t you see? Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! ... [emphasis mine]
“Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!”
Harry… thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat.
“I’d want him finished,” said Harry quietly. “And I’d want to do it.”
“Of course you would!” cried Dumbledore.
Good boy, good boy!
Roll over. Beg. Stay. That’s it, that’s it; there’s a good boy! Here’s your treat and your pat.
You’ve agreed that wanting to commit murder makes you morally better and more loving than the murderer you burn to kill. Wriggling your tail all the time.
*
However, in the event, Harry was actually morally superior to Twinkles’ indoctrination. When Harry did finally set out to die at Tom’s hands, he wasn’t gloating that he was about to get a form of revenge by making stupid Tom in effect commit suicide.
Instead, Harry was determined that he “would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it.” (DH 34) (And the innocent was persuaded that THIS was what Albus had expected of him. Oh, poor Harry!)
And so in King’s Cross, Albus (if that was Albus) changed his strategy. He tempted Harry to return to kill Tom, not by reminding him of his incomplete vengeance (“Tom’s still alive, Harry! You can go back now and kill him yourself, yum yum!”), but of the people Harry might protect. “By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present.” (DH35)
But that consideration (ensuring that fewer souls were maimed, fewer families torn apart, by taking the burden on himself) wasn’t what Dumbles appealed to initially with Harry.
Only when it became incontrovertibly clear that Harry’s “saving-people-thing” truly was more important to Harry than any lust for retribution (since it’s what drove him to surrender to Tom), did Dumbles switch tactics to make protecting others the basis of his application for Harry’s continued obedience.
For so long as Albus thought that burning desire for retribution would most move Harry to act as Albus wished, to that lust he appealed. And deliberately fanned its flames.
*
So, no, Albus himself has no moral preference. Whatever works, is his motto.
Love, hate, protection, vengeance, life, death-when I’m angling for your complete submission to my orders, I’ll use whichever bait I think will hook your soul the most inextricably.
Let me fish it out, and dangle it before your nose, and assure you that obeying ME unquestioningly is the best, the only way to attain it….
That’s our canon!Albus.