Albus and the Birdbath
Thank you, oryx_leucoryx, for this one.
We don’t need to posit mysterious antidotes. We don’t need to posit anything. To understand what was going on in that cave, we just need to read more closely-and to remember Kreacher’s experience.
Kreacher is the key to understanding Albus’s unsuccessful encounter with the Birdbath of Doom.
*
I started by going back and rereading Swythyv’s essay “Merlin’s Legacy,” in which she presents her theory of what was going on with Dumbledore and that cave. I'm going to quote from it at length, but I heartily recommend reading the original, if only for her scathing take on Albus the Fool (not, precisely, Albus the Knave).
(Indeed, the first section opens with Proverbs 26:12: Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there
is more hope of a fool than of him.)
Swythyv points out that:
What Albus Dumbledore was in charge of was the Order of Merlin, which was deeply inserted into Wizarding government - at least through its obvious political prestige, the presence of its First Class members on the Wizengamot, and the election of OMFC Cornelius Fudge as Minister of Magic. However eccentric or independent its members, Dumbledore was the Order of Merlin's Grand Sorcerer, wrapped in the midnight blue robes of Merlin.
Merlin. The exemplar by whom the whole Wizarding world still swears and who, according to legend, was converted to Christianity by St. Mungo. As JKR chose to make this otherwise obscure saint's name stand out for us, perhaps we were meant to pay attention to Merlin's state of spiritual attainment - and therefore, to Dumbledore's.
In "Dumbledore" [her previous essay] we faced why it was prudent to have reservations about Albus Dumbledore: he was a man who had failed many of life's tests and caused many people grief and harm thereby.
A man whose glory was his intellect. A man who admitted that throughout his very long life, his own reasoning and self-justifications had superseded the good of both the few and the many. A man so self-referential in his vision that it compromised his own plans - and made us question whether he was capable of natural affection, let alone agape.
Remorse without change: Guilty. Blind to his own nature, and willfully blind to the effects of his self-rule. Adding error to error without power to do or to be different: Unregenerate, unrenewed. Tormented by failure, without peace or rest: Bound.
…
Albus Dumbledore was literally wrapped in the midnight blue robes of an enlightened spiritual state to which he had not attained: Merlin's.
Including Merlin's grasp upon ancient magic.
Albus boasted of harnessing Lily's sacrifice in the protective charm he placed upon Harry, explaining that it exploited Voldemort's "weak" understanding of "ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated - to his cost." (OotP ch37)
We naturally assumed from such a speech that Albus Dumbledore was strong in his understanding of ancient magic. And more, that he must respect it, must esteem it - perhaps as the very force of Creation, its power subordinate to no human agenda.
We were, of course, wrong.
Albus esteemed himself clever for thinking to use the effects of ancient magic, once someone else had done the heavy lifting - exactly as Voldemort did when he used Harry's blood to reconstitute himself.
It was also Albus Dumbledore who told us that Voldemort failed to understand love, failed to understand the nature and force of loving sacrifice, and failed to understand the worth and power of a whole soul.
Albus Dumbledore himself failed just as gravely in all these matters, culminating in his failure to understand Severus Snape. Severus Snape, the man who asked "What about my soul?" even as Albus Dumbledore considered "a well organized mind" sufficient to be getting on with.
Swythyv then made the argument that the drinker of that emerald potion does not see past regrets but rather prophetic visions of the consequences of hir failings, and that Albus didn’t fear such visions as he should:
Thus he reckoned that, so long as he stayed clear of the water, he could drink whatever addle-pate swill Merlin had rigged up, brush off any puerile visions, and be on his way.
After all, Dumbledore fancied himself smarter than Voldemort and Merlin put together: He was clever enough to wangle with ancient magic and not get himself caught in the gears.
…
Dumbledore was seeing visions far, far worse than merely facing past events that he regretted. Dumbledore was being shown outcomes.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 14:12)
Dumbledore's plan was already past the point of no return: that night was one month before Harry's birthday, to allow the Will to clear. And if Dumbledore didn't make it back to Hogwarts to die at Snape's hand that night, I'll warrant that he'd left arrangements to make it look as though he had.
It would have been the kind of plan that Dumbledore had always loved best: He would be the one to shine by virtue of all his cleverness. He would have invented both a justification for abandoning his responsibilities and a rationalization that this wouldn't do any harm. He would have outsourced the pain and burden of it to other people, including the blame for its eventual failure. And he would have known that it was a moral outrage, but he'd have done it anyway.
Now he was being forced to see not just the evil that he had done, but to know the evil that his actions would cause - and he was being shown what he was meant to do about it.
*
And here, finally, is where Swythyv and I part ways. She thought that Albus, drinking the emerald potion, died to his old life and was reborn (too late to do very much good, mind you).
But I see no sign of such reformation. The Albus on the tower, using false courtesy to taunt his enemies and offering Draco a way out far too late to allow the boy to take it, the self-satisfied liar of King’s Cross, seem no more spiritually enlightened than before.
Kreacher’s experience is the key. He saw terrible visions in that cave, yes, and experienced great pain. So great that the whole time he was drinking, he was begging to be saved from the experience.
And then he returned home. Essentially unaltered.
And so did Albus.
For the same reason.
Neither of them was spiritually transformed.
Because neither of them drank voluntarily.
*
As anyone who knows anything at all about abuse will recognize, experiencing suffering is not, of itself, intrinsically spiritually uplifting. Only a romantic who’s never experienced or witnessed bullying could think its victim automatically purified. Severus was never ennobled by being bullied mercilessly by the Marauders, nor Harry improved by Dudley’s Harry-hunting, nor Ron uplifted by Draco’s repeated taunts about his family’s poverty.
Now, we may as readers feel increased sympathy for them in their pain, indeed empathize with their all-too-human humiliation and rage, feel that we’d feel the same in their places…. However, being tormented did not, in fact, turn any of them into angels. If anything, being tormented gave them all obstacles that they would be required eventually to transcend to advance spiritually-that understandable, human, humiliation and rage and sense of injustice. But the experience of being bullied did not, while giving them wrongs to transcend, simultaneously give them any spiritual tools with which to transcend them.
So involuntary suffering has no ennobling properties. Have we managed to grasp that? Experiencing pain does not, of itself, make someone a better person.
But choosing to suffer for a cause may, precisely because one is making a choice. Because one is placing
that cause ahead of one’s personal convenience or comfort. It is precisely one’s declaration that the cause is worth suffering for, that makes one’s suffering for it of possible value.
(Flashback to Little Women here, and Beth’s death from tuberculosis-it seems also possible to make an occasion of random suffering into an occasion of spiritual growth, but that requires embracing the pain voluntarily as a trial sent-by God, in that case-to purify one. Besides requiring a certain religious orientation, it still comes down to a matter of choice-choosing to embrace the pain in hopes of being purified by it rather than struggling against or merely enduring it.)
So voluntarily undergoing a trial by ordeal can embody the extent of one’s commitment. Can both exhibit one’s commitment and reinforce it.
In the case of the birdbath, presumably the commitment must be to spiritual change: to true vision, repentance and reformation. Regeneration.
Voluntarily invoking visions of one’s most shameful weaknesses, one’s worst errors, and the evils that might flow from them-willingly examining, more and more deeply, one’s own flaws, with a commitment to overcoming them-that’s very different from being forced by someone else to see “terrible things,” even terrible things about oneself, even if the things seen are the same.
It’s the difference, if you will, between making a sincere full confession, begging for penance, trying to reform-and having someone you hate critique your every flaw while you sing, “La la la, I can’t hear you.”
It doesn’t matter if the substance of the criticism might be the same; it cannot have the same effect.
So. Here’s Kreacher’s experience, in full:
“Kreacher drank, and as he drank he saw terrible things… Kreacher’s insides burned… Kreacher cried for Master Regulus to save him, he cried for his Mistress Black, but the Dark Lord only laughed… He made Kreacher drink all the potion.”
Kreacher wasn’t purified by his visions or his pain, because he didn’t accept them. He wanted only to escape, to be saved from experiencing them.
Neither was Albus, for the same reason.
The intention of the drinker is vital. And the drinker’s will is tested, rigorously-the physical pain, and the spiritual agony, deepen with every cup. Only if the candidate willingly drains the grail of seeing to its last bitter dregs will the drinker complete the ordeal and be purified.
Why else should there be twelve cups of potion in that birdbath, if continuing to drink voluntarily even as drinking grew harder were not the very point of the trial?
Consider that boat: if Albus’s analysis is to be trusted at all, that boat will carry one adult magic-user over the water. Alone, or accompanied by a slave or a child.
As in, a knight and his squire, or a master and his servant.
What it won’t carry is two equals. A would-be initiate, and an equal. Someone who might be expected to hold the initiate to hir purpose, if s/he faltered.
If all it took to create a second Merlin, of great power and great spiritual attainment, was to force someone to choke down that potion, any warlord could have turned any hedge magician into a Merlin by doing exactly what Tom did to Kreacher-drag him out and make him drink!
Instant Merlin: just add water!
I think not.
Consider again the birdbath of doom and its potion: if Albus’s analysis is to be trusted at all, it is canon that somehow it reads intention. Because two paragraphs after Albus informs Harry airily that the potion cannot be scooped up, he conjures a goblet and does exactly that.
So-that potion can’t be scooped up to be bailed out of the basin, but it can be scooped up to be drunk?
Really, if drinking were required, the candidate for initiation should rightfully have to lap the potion with his tongue like an animal!
But no, the birdbath or the potion can tell the difference between scooping it to bail and scooping it to drink.
Note, by the way, that the potion can be scooped-to be drunk-by someone other than the drinker. Swythyv thought that this implied that the initiation requires two: one to drink, and one to offer the draught.
But I think it might be more an allowance for “the spirit being willing, but the flesh weak.” The candidate, after all, might well be elderly and frail of body, physically unable to keep dipping the cup while wracked by paroxysms of pain and by visions. It is strength of purpose, not strength of body, that is being tested here. With each cup, both the visions and the physical pain grow harder to bear. Will the drinker persevere despite this physical and emotional agony? Will the candidate complete the ordeal? Will s/he keep dipping the cup, or keep demanding that hir companion give hir to drink?
And Albus didn’t.
He managed three (of twelve) cupfuls, and then look at what he said:
His face was twitching as though he was deeply asleep, but dreaming a horrible dream.
"I don't want...Don't make me ..."
"...don't like...want to stop..." [Harry makes him drink the fourth cup]
"No..." he groaned,… “I don’t want to… I don’t want to… let me go…”
"Make it stop, make it stop" moaned Dumbledore. [Fifth cup]
Dumbledore screamed….
"No, no, no, no, I can't, I can't, don't make me, I don't want to..." [Sixth cup]
"It's all my fault, all my fault," he sobbed. "Please make it stop, I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I'll never, never again ..." [Seventh cup]
Dumbledore began to cower as though invisible torturers surrounded him ... "Don't hurt them, don't hurt them, please, please, it's my fault, hurt me instead ...” [Eighth cup]
And now he fell forward, screaming again, hammering his fists upon the ground,... "Please, please, please, no...not that, not that, I'll do anything..."[Ninth cup]
... he yelled again as though his insides were on fire. "No more, please, no more..." [Tenth cup]
Dumbledore began to scream in more anguish than ever, ""I want to die! I want to die! Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die!"[Eleventh cup]
"KILL ME!" [Harry forces him to drink the twelfth and last cup]
And indeed, Harry thinks for a time that he has killed Albus-
Dumbledore… with a great, rattling gasp, rolled over onto his face….
“No,” said Harry, shaking Dumbledore, “no, you’re not dead, you said it wasn’t poison, wake up, wake up- ”
Remember, before thinking he’d outright killed his beloved mentor, Harry at various points had to forcibly tip the drink down Albus’s throat and/or to lie outrageously to get Albus to swallow:
"This will make it stop, Professor…. This-this one will [kill you]!” gasped Harry. (HBP ch26)
Seriously. Who ever heard of a proposed initiate trying to back out of the trial after it started, but being deemed to have completed it satisfactorily merely because a third party physically forced a semblance of compliance?
That’s like giving an apostate a martyr’s crown merely because s/he died anyhow after formally renouncing the faith!
Swythyv thought that Albus had the arrogance to think he could drink the potion and be unaffected by it. I think that Albus’s arrogance went deeper than that-he thought that he could game the ordeal itself. Trick his way through it. Outsmart it.
Albus had just enough self-knowledge to know that he hadn’t the moral strength to pass this test. He knew that his own courage and resolution would fail. So he bound Harry with a promise, and plotted to use-to exploit-the boy’s resolve in place of his own.
Just as he bound Severus with a promise to kill him, relying on Severus’s courage and resolution-and let Severus face the mortal pain and the soul-damage of killing someone he loved.
Let’s really think about what Albus did in the cave. He demanded of Harry-a minor child under his protection!-that the boy endure the pain and soul-damage of, in effect, torturing someone he loved. At length. Someone who screamed repeatedly in agony and begged Harry to release him….
Twinkles trusted Harry to be ultimately obedient to his orders and to have the resolution necessary to carry them out, as Albus did NOT trust his own resolve not to falter.
And he was right on both counts. His own courage failed a mere quarter of the way through the trial, and he started begging to be released. (Let this cup be taken from me… not as Thou wilt, but as I will.)
After an additional three cups Albus seemed to experience some remorse, but if indeed the remorse was sincere, it was as short-lived as his courage. “don’t hurt them, it’s my fault, hurt me instead” gave way after a mere two more cups to a repetition of the plea “no more, please,” then to “I want to die,” and finally to “KILL ME!”.
Sorry, but the man who goes FROM “hurt me instead” TO “kill me”-to begging that his companion imperil his soul to save Our Hero from the pain of continuing to see the truth about himself-has used the last quarter of his spiritual trial to make a rather remarkable Pilgrim’s Regress.
Wasn’t there another occasion in canon when someone said, “I wish I were dead,” to be answered sternly, “And what use would that be to anyone?” Scratches head, trying to place it….
And he never dreamed for a moment of being selfish enough to demand that another commit murder to save him from his pain.
But Albus was absolutely correct in thinking that Harry would have the resolution that he did not-and that Harry would have enough trust to follow his orders blindly, to force Albus to keep drinking despite the urgent entreaties to stop, and despite the screams of agony that rent Harry’s soul and heart.
Note further that Albus in effect tricked Harry into promising to obey him. He initially told Harry (ch. 25), “I take you with me on one condition-that you obey any command I might give you at once, and without question.”
“Of course.”
“Be sure to understand me, Harry. I mean that you must follow even such orders as ‘run,’ ‘hide,’ or ‘go back.’ Do I have your word?”
“I-yes, of course.”
“If I tell you to hide, you will do so?”
“Yes.”
“If I tell you to flee, you will obey?”
“Yes.”
“If I tell you to leave me and save yourself, you will do as I tell you?”
“I-”
“Harry!”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“Yes, sir.”
Harry clearly thought he knew the most unpalatable thing that might be asked of him, and Albus led him to believe that he did. Only to spring on him, once they were before the birdbath, “Harry, it will be your job to make sure I keep drinking, even if you have to tip the potion into my protesting mouth. You understand?”
… Harry did not speak. Was this why he had been invited along-so that he could force-feed Dumbledore a potion that might cause him unendurable pain? [Yep, boy, you’ve got it. He brought you there to turn you into a torturer. Look on the bright side-after you’ve tortured someone you love, it’ll be much, much easier to do it to someone you hate.]
“You remember,” said Dumbledore, “the condition on which I brought you with me?”
“But what if-”
“You swore, did you not, to follow any command I gave you?”
“Yes, but-”
“I warned you, did I not, that there might be danger?”
“Yes,” said Harry, ‘but-”
“Well, then, you have my orders.”
“Why can’t I drink the potion instead?” asked Harry desperately.
“Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less valuable. Once and for all, Harry, do I have your word that you will do all in your power to make me keep drinking?”
“Couldn’t-?”
“Do I have it?”
“But-“
“Your word, Harry.”
“I-all right, but-”
Before Harry could make any further protest, Dumbledore lowered the crystal goblet into the potion.
It’s the same bait-and-switch on an open-ended promise that Albus had used earlier to get Severus to agree to kill him. Con your loyal followers into promising “anything” and then zap them with an order they would have refused, and argue they’d already agreed to obey it. Albus even uses the same wording: “I have your word that you will do all in your power to protect the students of Hogwarts?” which somehow turned a little later into “You must kill me.”
It’s the same thing all over again. Further, it’s the exact same pattern Swythyv observed before in Albus’s approach to ancient sacrificial magic: someone else, in this case a CHILD, was to do the heavy lifting, and clever Albus expected to make use of THE CHILD’S capacity for devotion, courage, and sacrifice to reap the benefits of completing the ordeal!
As Albus had previously used Lily’s; as Albus continued to use Snape’s.
But, see, although Harry passed the test of resolution, although his trust in his mentor and his resolve were in fact equal to the horrific task Albus had foisted off on him, Albus himself still failed. Whatever determination Dumbles had to do good, whatever ability he retained to repent, whatever willingness he could dredge up to face his flaws and errors, was grossly insufficient when put to the test of that potion.
As Albus had expected, which is why he tried to do an end run around the problem by placing the burden for ensuring he completed the ordeal on Harry.
But you cannot callously exploit someone else’s courage and sense of duty and love for you to compensate for your own lack of honor and courage and love. It doesn’t work that way. Not for a trial whose essence is owning and transcending your flaws.
This time, for once, Albus had to do his own heavy lifting.
And Albus, naturally, failed.
So, Albus’s clever little plan to game the trial-by-potion also failed.
No purification for him, no access to Merlin’s exalted spiritual state or power….
It’s fitting that he didn’t even succeed in the lesser quest of retrieving a Horcrux.
Everything Albus did in that cave was absolutely for naught, as it should have been.
Because Albus had had the utter hubris to try to cheat his way through a spiritual trial.
*
One last thing.
Surely no one here supposes that Albus had just located the cave that very afternoon, and decided that it would make a nice evening jaunt-and oh, by the way, Albus had promised Harry to take him along on the very next hunt…. let the boy get his feet wet Horcrux-hunting, as it were? And if it just happens to be Tom’s best-guarded Horcrux, and the one that Albus absolutely cannot get to without assistance (and Snape would never have allowed Albus to be the drinker), what an astounding and fortunate coincidence!
You know, when you think about it, a very, very last-minute gamble by a dying man to undergo Merlin’s initiatory ordeal might have many motivations. As indeed might Tom’s usurpation of that cave.
Some of the legends about Merlin, after all, state that he vanished from the world of men because he was imprisoned through a woman’s wiles. Imprisoned, not killed.
Some legends say, further, that Merlin’s protégé was immortal. "Rex quondum, rexque futurum,"
The legends hint that there may be a fourth route to immortality. Not the Philosopher’s Stone, not the Hallows, not a Horcrux. A mystery known only to Merlin… and perhaps to be revealed to a successor proven worthy by passing the ordeal of the cave.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all. If it doesn’t work, Albus can always fall back on the plan of turning his most loyal servant into a murderer.
But Jodel (Red Hen, “Living Waters”) speculated that indeed the real reason for the trip to the cave on the night scheduled for Albus’s death was that Albus, being smarter than Tom, and acknowledging in principle the importance of a whole soul, wanted to repair his own before his imminent death. With potion-induced remorse, if need be, as he wisely doubted his ability to produce enough of the real thing.
If so, that plan didn’t work either.
For Albus, in the end, was granted precisely what he begged for under the potion’s clarifying influence: to die almost at once, as spiritually blind as he had lived, and still inflicting damage on better men’s souls.
We don’t need to posit mysterious antidotes. We don’t need to posit anything. To understand what was going on in that cave, we just need to read more closely-and to remember Kreacher’s experience.
Kreacher is the key to understanding Albus’s unsuccessful encounter with the Birdbath of Doom.
*
I started by going back and rereading Swythyv’s essay “Merlin’s Legacy,” in which she presents her theory of what was going on with Dumbledore and that cave. I'm going to quote from it at length, but I heartily recommend reading the original, if only for her scathing take on Albus the Fool (not, precisely, Albus the Knave).
(Indeed, the first section opens with Proverbs 26:12: Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there
is more hope of a fool than of him.)
Swythyv points out that:
What Albus Dumbledore was in charge of was the Order of Merlin, which was deeply inserted into Wizarding government - at least through its obvious political prestige, the presence of its First Class members on the Wizengamot, and the election of OMFC Cornelius Fudge as Minister of Magic. However eccentric or independent its members, Dumbledore was the Order of Merlin's Grand Sorcerer, wrapped in the midnight blue robes of Merlin.
Merlin. The exemplar by whom the whole Wizarding world still swears and who, according to legend, was converted to Christianity by St. Mungo. As JKR chose to make this otherwise obscure saint's name stand out for us, perhaps we were meant to pay attention to Merlin's state of spiritual attainment - and therefore, to Dumbledore's.
In "Dumbledore" [her previous essay] we faced why it was prudent to have reservations about Albus Dumbledore: he was a man who had failed many of life's tests and caused many people grief and harm thereby.
A man whose glory was his intellect. A man who admitted that throughout his very long life, his own reasoning and self-justifications had superseded the good of both the few and the many. A man so self-referential in his vision that it compromised his own plans - and made us question whether he was capable of natural affection, let alone agape.
Remorse without change: Guilty. Blind to his own nature, and willfully blind to the effects of his self-rule. Adding error to error without power to do or to be different: Unregenerate, unrenewed. Tormented by failure, without peace or rest: Bound.
…
Albus Dumbledore was literally wrapped in the midnight blue robes of an enlightened spiritual state to which he had not attained: Merlin's.
Including Merlin's grasp upon ancient magic.
Albus boasted of harnessing Lily's sacrifice in the protective charm he placed upon Harry, explaining that it exploited Voldemort's "weak" understanding of "ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated - to his cost." (OotP ch37)
We naturally assumed from such a speech that Albus Dumbledore was strong in his understanding of ancient magic. And more, that he must respect it, must esteem it - perhaps as the very force of Creation, its power subordinate to no human agenda.
We were, of course, wrong.
Albus esteemed himself clever for thinking to use the effects of ancient magic, once someone else had done the heavy lifting - exactly as Voldemort did when he used Harry's blood to reconstitute himself.
It was also Albus Dumbledore who told us that Voldemort failed to understand love, failed to understand the nature and force of loving sacrifice, and failed to understand the worth and power of a whole soul.
Albus Dumbledore himself failed just as gravely in all these matters, culminating in his failure to understand Severus Snape. Severus Snape, the man who asked "What about my soul?" even as Albus Dumbledore considered "a well organized mind" sufficient to be getting on with.
Swythyv then made the argument that the drinker of that emerald potion does not see past regrets but rather prophetic visions of the consequences of hir failings, and that Albus didn’t fear such visions as he should:
Thus he reckoned that, so long as he stayed clear of the water, he could drink whatever addle-pate swill Merlin had rigged up, brush off any puerile visions, and be on his way.
After all, Dumbledore fancied himself smarter than Voldemort and Merlin put together: He was clever enough to wangle with ancient magic and not get himself caught in the gears.
…
Dumbledore was seeing visions far, far worse than merely facing past events that he regretted. Dumbledore was being shown outcomes.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 14:12)
Dumbledore's plan was already past the point of no return: that night was one month before Harry's birthday, to allow the Will to clear. And if Dumbledore didn't make it back to Hogwarts to die at Snape's hand that night, I'll warrant that he'd left arrangements to make it look as though he had.
It would have been the kind of plan that Dumbledore had always loved best: He would be the one to shine by virtue of all his cleverness. He would have invented both a justification for abandoning his responsibilities and a rationalization that this wouldn't do any harm. He would have outsourced the pain and burden of it to other people, including the blame for its eventual failure. And he would have known that it was a moral outrage, but he'd have done it anyway.
Now he was being forced to see not just the evil that he had done, but to know the evil that his actions would cause - and he was being shown what he was meant to do about it.
*
And here, finally, is where Swythyv and I part ways. She thought that Albus, drinking the emerald potion, died to his old life and was reborn (too late to do very much good, mind you).
But I see no sign of such reformation. The Albus on the tower, using false courtesy to taunt his enemies and offering Draco a way out far too late to allow the boy to take it, the self-satisfied liar of King’s Cross, seem no more spiritually enlightened than before.
Kreacher’s experience is the key. He saw terrible visions in that cave, yes, and experienced great pain. So great that the whole time he was drinking, he was begging to be saved from the experience.
And then he returned home. Essentially unaltered.
And so did Albus.
For the same reason.
Neither of them was spiritually transformed.
Because neither of them drank voluntarily.
*
As anyone who knows anything at all about abuse will recognize, experiencing suffering is not, of itself, intrinsically spiritually uplifting. Only a romantic who’s never experienced or witnessed bullying could think its victim automatically purified. Severus was never ennobled by being bullied mercilessly by the Marauders, nor Harry improved by Dudley’s Harry-hunting, nor Ron uplifted by Draco’s repeated taunts about his family’s poverty.
Now, we may as readers feel increased sympathy for them in their pain, indeed empathize with their all-too-human humiliation and rage, feel that we’d feel the same in their places…. However, being tormented did not, in fact, turn any of them into angels. If anything, being tormented gave them all obstacles that they would be required eventually to transcend to advance spiritually-that understandable, human, humiliation and rage and sense of injustice. But the experience of being bullied did not, while giving them wrongs to transcend, simultaneously give them any spiritual tools with which to transcend them.
So involuntary suffering has no ennobling properties. Have we managed to grasp that? Experiencing pain does not, of itself, make someone a better person.
But choosing to suffer for a cause may, precisely because one is making a choice. Because one is placing
that cause ahead of one’s personal convenience or comfort. It is precisely one’s declaration that the cause is worth suffering for, that makes one’s suffering for it of possible value.
(Flashback to Little Women here, and Beth’s death from tuberculosis-it seems also possible to make an occasion of random suffering into an occasion of spiritual growth, but that requires embracing the pain voluntarily as a trial sent-by God, in that case-to purify one. Besides requiring a certain religious orientation, it still comes down to a matter of choice-choosing to embrace the pain in hopes of being purified by it rather than struggling against or merely enduring it.)
So voluntarily undergoing a trial by ordeal can embody the extent of one’s commitment. Can both exhibit one’s commitment and reinforce it.
In the case of the birdbath, presumably the commitment must be to spiritual change: to true vision, repentance and reformation. Regeneration.
Voluntarily invoking visions of one’s most shameful weaknesses, one’s worst errors, and the evils that might flow from them-willingly examining, more and more deeply, one’s own flaws, with a commitment to overcoming them-that’s very different from being forced by someone else to see “terrible things,” even terrible things about oneself, even if the things seen are the same.
It’s the difference, if you will, between making a sincere full confession, begging for penance, trying to reform-and having someone you hate critique your every flaw while you sing, “La la la, I can’t hear you.”
It doesn’t matter if the substance of the criticism might be the same; it cannot have the same effect.
So. Here’s Kreacher’s experience, in full:
“Kreacher drank, and as he drank he saw terrible things… Kreacher’s insides burned… Kreacher cried for Master Regulus to save him, he cried for his Mistress Black, but the Dark Lord only laughed… He made Kreacher drink all the potion.”
Kreacher wasn’t purified by his visions or his pain, because he didn’t accept them. He wanted only to escape, to be saved from experiencing them.
Neither was Albus, for the same reason.
The intention of the drinker is vital. And the drinker’s will is tested, rigorously-the physical pain, and the spiritual agony, deepen with every cup. Only if the candidate willingly drains the grail of seeing to its last bitter dregs will the drinker complete the ordeal and be purified.
Why else should there be twelve cups of potion in that birdbath, if continuing to drink voluntarily even as drinking grew harder were not the very point of the trial?
Consider that boat: if Albus’s analysis is to be trusted at all, that boat will carry one adult magic-user over the water. Alone, or accompanied by a slave or a child.
As in, a knight and his squire, or a master and his servant.
What it won’t carry is two equals. A would-be initiate, and an equal. Someone who might be expected to hold the initiate to hir purpose, if s/he faltered.
If all it took to create a second Merlin, of great power and great spiritual attainment, was to force someone to choke down that potion, any warlord could have turned any hedge magician into a Merlin by doing exactly what Tom did to Kreacher-drag him out and make him drink!
Instant Merlin: just add water!
I think not.
Consider again the birdbath of doom and its potion: if Albus’s analysis is to be trusted at all, it is canon that somehow it reads intention. Because two paragraphs after Albus informs Harry airily that the potion cannot be scooped up, he conjures a goblet and does exactly that.
So-that potion can’t be scooped up to be bailed out of the basin, but it can be scooped up to be drunk?
Really, if drinking were required, the candidate for initiation should rightfully have to lap the potion with his tongue like an animal!
But no, the birdbath or the potion can tell the difference between scooping it to bail and scooping it to drink.
Note, by the way, that the potion can be scooped-to be drunk-by someone other than the drinker. Swythyv thought that this implied that the initiation requires two: one to drink, and one to offer the draught.
But I think it might be more an allowance for “the spirit being willing, but the flesh weak.” The candidate, after all, might well be elderly and frail of body, physically unable to keep dipping the cup while wracked by paroxysms of pain and by visions. It is strength of purpose, not strength of body, that is being tested here. With each cup, both the visions and the physical pain grow harder to bear. Will the drinker persevere despite this physical and emotional agony? Will the candidate complete the ordeal? Will s/he keep dipping the cup, or keep demanding that hir companion give hir to drink?
And Albus didn’t.
He managed three (of twelve) cupfuls, and then look at what he said:
His face was twitching as though he was deeply asleep, but dreaming a horrible dream.
"I don't want...Don't make me ..."
"...don't like...want to stop..." [Harry makes him drink the fourth cup]
"No..." he groaned,… “I don’t want to… I don’t want to… let me go…”
"Make it stop, make it stop" moaned Dumbledore. [Fifth cup]
Dumbledore screamed….
"No, no, no, no, I can't, I can't, don't make me, I don't want to..." [Sixth cup]
"It's all my fault, all my fault," he sobbed. "Please make it stop, I know I did wrong, oh please make it stop and I'll never, never again ..." [Seventh cup]
Dumbledore began to cower as though invisible torturers surrounded him ... "Don't hurt them, don't hurt them, please, please, it's my fault, hurt me instead ...” [Eighth cup]
And now he fell forward, screaming again, hammering his fists upon the ground,... "Please, please, please, no...not that, not that, I'll do anything..."[Ninth cup]
... he yelled again as though his insides were on fire. "No more, please, no more..." [Tenth cup]
Dumbledore began to scream in more anguish than ever, ""I want to die! I want to die! Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die!"[Eleventh cup]
"KILL ME!" [Harry forces him to drink the twelfth and last cup]
And indeed, Harry thinks for a time that he has killed Albus-
Dumbledore… with a great, rattling gasp, rolled over onto his face….
“No,” said Harry, shaking Dumbledore, “no, you’re not dead, you said it wasn’t poison, wake up, wake up- ”
Remember, before thinking he’d outright killed his beloved mentor, Harry at various points had to forcibly tip the drink down Albus’s throat and/or to lie outrageously to get Albus to swallow:
"This will make it stop, Professor…. This-this one will [kill you]!” gasped Harry. (HBP ch26)
Seriously. Who ever heard of a proposed initiate trying to back out of the trial after it started, but being deemed to have completed it satisfactorily merely because a third party physically forced a semblance of compliance?
That’s like giving an apostate a martyr’s crown merely because s/he died anyhow after formally renouncing the faith!
Swythyv thought that Albus had the arrogance to think he could drink the potion and be unaffected by it. I think that Albus’s arrogance went deeper than that-he thought that he could game the ordeal itself. Trick his way through it. Outsmart it.
Albus had just enough self-knowledge to know that he hadn’t the moral strength to pass this test. He knew that his own courage and resolution would fail. So he bound Harry with a promise, and plotted to use-to exploit-the boy’s resolve in place of his own.
Just as he bound Severus with a promise to kill him, relying on Severus’s courage and resolution-and let Severus face the mortal pain and the soul-damage of killing someone he loved.
Let’s really think about what Albus did in the cave. He demanded of Harry-a minor child under his protection!-that the boy endure the pain and soul-damage of, in effect, torturing someone he loved. At length. Someone who screamed repeatedly in agony and begged Harry to release him….
Twinkles trusted Harry to be ultimately obedient to his orders and to have the resolution necessary to carry them out, as Albus did NOT trust his own resolve not to falter.
And he was right on both counts. His own courage failed a mere quarter of the way through the trial, and he started begging to be released. (Let this cup be taken from me… not as Thou wilt, but as I will.)
After an additional three cups Albus seemed to experience some remorse, but if indeed the remorse was sincere, it was as short-lived as his courage. “don’t hurt them, it’s my fault, hurt me instead” gave way after a mere two more cups to a repetition of the plea “no more, please,” then to “I want to die,” and finally to “KILL ME!”.
Sorry, but the man who goes FROM “hurt me instead” TO “kill me”-to begging that his companion imperil his soul to save Our Hero from the pain of continuing to see the truth about himself-has used the last quarter of his spiritual trial to make a rather remarkable Pilgrim’s Regress.
Wasn’t there another occasion in canon when someone said, “I wish I were dead,” to be answered sternly, “And what use would that be to anyone?” Scratches head, trying to place it….
And he never dreamed for a moment of being selfish enough to demand that another commit murder to save him from his pain.
But Albus was absolutely correct in thinking that Harry would have the resolution that he did not-and that Harry would have enough trust to follow his orders blindly, to force Albus to keep drinking despite the urgent entreaties to stop, and despite the screams of agony that rent Harry’s soul and heart.
Note further that Albus in effect tricked Harry into promising to obey him. He initially told Harry (ch. 25), “I take you with me on one condition-that you obey any command I might give you at once, and without question.”
“Of course.”
“Be sure to understand me, Harry. I mean that you must follow even such orders as ‘run,’ ‘hide,’ or ‘go back.’ Do I have your word?”
“I-yes, of course.”
“If I tell you to hide, you will do so?”
“Yes.”
“If I tell you to flee, you will obey?”
“Yes.”
“If I tell you to leave me and save yourself, you will do as I tell you?”
“I-”
“Harry!”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“Yes, sir.”
Harry clearly thought he knew the most unpalatable thing that might be asked of him, and Albus led him to believe that he did. Only to spring on him, once they were before the birdbath, “Harry, it will be your job to make sure I keep drinking, even if you have to tip the potion into my protesting mouth. You understand?”
… Harry did not speak. Was this why he had been invited along-so that he could force-feed Dumbledore a potion that might cause him unendurable pain? [Yep, boy, you’ve got it. He brought you there to turn you into a torturer. Look on the bright side-after you’ve tortured someone you love, it’ll be much, much easier to do it to someone you hate.]
“You remember,” said Dumbledore, “the condition on which I brought you with me?”
“But what if-”
“You swore, did you not, to follow any command I gave you?”
“Yes, but-”
“I warned you, did I not, that there might be danger?”
“Yes,” said Harry, ‘but-”
“Well, then, you have my orders.”
“Why can’t I drink the potion instead?” asked Harry desperately.
“Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less valuable. Once and for all, Harry, do I have your word that you will do all in your power to make me keep drinking?”
“Couldn’t-?”
“Do I have it?”
“But-“
“Your word, Harry.”
“I-all right, but-”
Before Harry could make any further protest, Dumbledore lowered the crystal goblet into the potion.
It’s the same bait-and-switch on an open-ended promise that Albus had used earlier to get Severus to agree to kill him. Con your loyal followers into promising “anything” and then zap them with an order they would have refused, and argue they’d already agreed to obey it. Albus even uses the same wording: “I have your word that you will do all in your power to protect the students of Hogwarts?” which somehow turned a little later into “You must kill me.”
It’s the same thing all over again. Further, it’s the exact same pattern Swythyv observed before in Albus’s approach to ancient sacrificial magic: someone else, in this case a CHILD, was to do the heavy lifting, and clever Albus expected to make use of THE CHILD’S capacity for devotion, courage, and sacrifice to reap the benefits of completing the ordeal!
As Albus had previously used Lily’s; as Albus continued to use Snape’s.
But, see, although Harry passed the test of resolution, although his trust in his mentor and his resolve were in fact equal to the horrific task Albus had foisted off on him, Albus himself still failed. Whatever determination Dumbles had to do good, whatever ability he retained to repent, whatever willingness he could dredge up to face his flaws and errors, was grossly insufficient when put to the test of that potion.
As Albus had expected, which is why he tried to do an end run around the problem by placing the burden for ensuring he completed the ordeal on Harry.
But you cannot callously exploit someone else’s courage and sense of duty and love for you to compensate for your own lack of honor and courage and love. It doesn’t work that way. Not for a trial whose essence is owning and transcending your flaws.
This time, for once, Albus had to do his own heavy lifting.
And Albus, naturally, failed.
So, Albus’s clever little plan to game the trial-by-potion also failed.
No purification for him, no access to Merlin’s exalted spiritual state or power….
It’s fitting that he didn’t even succeed in the lesser quest of retrieving a Horcrux.
Everything Albus did in that cave was absolutely for naught, as it should have been.
Because Albus had had the utter hubris to try to cheat his way through a spiritual trial.
*
One last thing.
Surely no one here supposes that Albus had just located the cave that very afternoon, and decided that it would make a nice evening jaunt-and oh, by the way, Albus had promised Harry to take him along on the very next hunt…. let the boy get his feet wet Horcrux-hunting, as it were? And if it just happens to be Tom’s best-guarded Horcrux, and the one that Albus absolutely cannot get to without assistance (and Snape would never have allowed Albus to be the drinker), what an astounding and fortunate coincidence!
You know, when you think about it, a very, very last-minute gamble by a dying man to undergo Merlin’s initiatory ordeal might have many motivations. As indeed might Tom’s usurpation of that cave.
Some of the legends about Merlin, after all, state that he vanished from the world of men because he was imprisoned through a woman’s wiles. Imprisoned, not killed.
Some legends say, further, that Merlin’s protégé was immortal. "Rex quondum, rexque futurum,"
The legends hint that there may be a fourth route to immortality. Not the Philosopher’s Stone, not the Hallows, not a Horcrux. A mystery known only to Merlin… and perhaps to be revealed to a successor proven worthy by passing the ordeal of the cave.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all. If it doesn’t work, Albus can always fall back on the plan of turning his most loyal servant into a murderer.
But Jodel (Red Hen, “Living Waters”) speculated that indeed the real reason for the trip to the cave on the night scheduled for Albus’s death was that Albus, being smarter than Tom, and acknowledging in principle the importance of a whole soul, wanted to repair his own before his imminent death. With potion-induced remorse, if need be, as he wisely doubted his ability to produce enough of the real thing.
If so, that plan didn’t work either.
For Albus, in the end, was granted precisely what he begged for under the potion’s clarifying influence: to die almost at once, as spiritually blind as he had lived, and still inflicting damage on better men’s souls.