A question or two RE Greater Love and Severus' sacrifice
I've been doing a bit of a re-read-though of some meta here lately, and I find myself going back repeatedly to terri's excellent (but heartbreaking) piece "Greater Love." I've pretty much worked her theory there about doubled sacrifice and Dumbles' insistence on both Severus killing him and Severus being the one to break the news of the Harrycrux into my personal headcanon.
But I'm still left with one big nagging question - I posted it on the original piece the other day but thought I'd repost it here to open up some discussion. (Blame a nagging plotbunny for my entirely selfish motivation here.)
Why not tell Severus the reason for giving him both of these otherwise insanely-conflicting and emotionally devastating orders?
I mean, I know the specific possibility of Harry's survival needs to be hidden from Severus in order to make his sacrifice, in terri's words, "perfect." But I don't see any good reason for keeping from him the knowledge that what Dumbles is trying to do is use his doubling of the sacrifice to protect the remaining war efforts. Why the secrecy and manipulation about it all? Why not tell Severus that the point is that he is being asked to make a sacrifice here for the sake of the protective magic it invokes? And let him thereby be fully willing in it and understanding of why he's being asked to do it, instead of the cruelty of being kept in the dark and manipulated about it?
We know that Dumbles already believes Severus, not only willing to die for he and Harry, but willing to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to end the war and protect others. And he's ultimately willing to do the deed anyway - it's Dumbles' refusal to be honest with him about it that keeps him balking, really. So it can't be that he thinks Severus wouldn't be willing to make the sacrifice if he understood. Indeed, he might be more willing if he knew what the point was! So why not tell him?
I mean, all right, yes, this is Albus Dumbledore we are talking about, and neither sharing information nor consideration for Severus' feelings are on his list of priorities. But he seems to be making it more difficult to achieve his own intended result purely for the sake of the cruelty of manipulating Severus, from what I can see.
And also risking the fullness of the magic he hopes to invoke, I might add. A true sacrifice needs to be voluntary, right? For the fullness of the protection to inhere. But manipulating someone into making even an otherwise-voluntary sacrifice under false pretenses risks reducing the fullness of their consent to it, and manipulating them for no foreseeable good reason when being honest about the task would be possible surely increases that risk. And thus increases the risk of the magic either backfiring or simply failing to be effected.
So IS there any explicable reason anyone can imagine Dumbles seeing for pulling Severus around like this? Or is this just a case of his 'does not share well with others' tendency combining with his lack of regard for Severus, and his other like flaws, into a potential misfire of his plan, one that he is either ignoring/discounting or simply blind to?
Not to mention malic-ba's excellent points in hir comment on the original essay:
"I'm used to thinking of Dumbledore as a conscienceless, grandiose, Machiavellian plotter who quite possibly liked to twist those under his power for his own satisfaction as well as for the cause [...] But the idea that he quite deliberately tortured Severus worse than death, not once but three times, instead of taking any actual direct action against Voldemort (who he beat easily the one time they faced each other, although Voldemort's strength wasn't fully restored), or making any sensible non-hail-mary plan, takes it to a new level.
I mean, FFS, why not re-vaporise him and hunt down the Horcruxes at leisure? If it means you wouldn't be sure when you had them all, why not work on solving that problem?
[...] How close was Severus to breaking, and working, for example, to keep Harry alive whatever that meant for the war?"
Indeed, why the insistence on absurd hail-mary plans at all? If he didn't seem to be putting so much effort into setting up and pulling off all these hail-marys - without actually informing people of what they need to know to actually carry out his plans effectively except scraps at the last minute - and if he weren't at the very last willing to give up his own remaining bit of life for the sake of the cause, I'd suspect him of actually just throwing the whole thing, of deliberately setting up the Order side to lose for some (to me as yet) impenetrable reason of his own. Even the notion of Fool Albus, hampered by his inability to see his own flaws and too confident in his own powers, seems...not quite foolish and ineptly blind enough for me to buy the absolute mind-boggling lack of any sensible approach to the problem of Tommy Riddle and his Horcruxes whatsoever, whenever he twigged to its true scope.
And even Knave Albus or Narcissist Albus toying with Severus simply for the fun of it doesn't account for his seeming willingness to risk seeing all his own plans go off the rails, should Severus get too fed up and refuse to play doormat any longer. We don't see him trying to talk Severus back on track after the revelation of the Harrycrux; Severus just mysteriously decides, offscreen, to accept his assessment of the situation and the need to tell Harry to suicide. And even still, he's at that point blowing Dumbles off and following his own plans RE the Sword and other details.
So, why does Severus get back in line on just that one (enormous) issue of Lily's son needing to die? And why does Dumbles set off and then not tamp down altogether that little rebellion of Severus' in the first place with his handling of who gets to play messenger? (He could have done better even without revealing the secret about Harry's chance at life, I'm saying.) He's shooting himself in both feet over all this.
I just don't get it.
Thoughts?
But I'm still left with one big nagging question - I posted it on the original piece the other day but thought I'd repost it here to open up some discussion. (Blame a nagging plotbunny for my entirely selfish motivation here.)
Why not tell Severus the reason for giving him both of these otherwise insanely-conflicting and emotionally devastating orders?
I mean, I know the specific possibility of Harry's survival needs to be hidden from Severus in order to make his sacrifice, in terri's words, "perfect." But I don't see any good reason for keeping from him the knowledge that what Dumbles is trying to do is use his doubling of the sacrifice to protect the remaining war efforts. Why the secrecy and manipulation about it all? Why not tell Severus that the point is that he is being asked to make a sacrifice here for the sake of the protective magic it invokes? And let him thereby be fully willing in it and understanding of why he's being asked to do it, instead of the cruelty of being kept in the dark and manipulated about it?
We know that Dumbles already believes Severus, not only willing to die for he and Harry, but willing to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to end the war and protect others. And he's ultimately willing to do the deed anyway - it's Dumbles' refusal to be honest with him about it that keeps him balking, really. So it can't be that he thinks Severus wouldn't be willing to make the sacrifice if he understood. Indeed, he might be more willing if he knew what the point was! So why not tell him?
I mean, all right, yes, this is Albus Dumbledore we are talking about, and neither sharing information nor consideration for Severus' feelings are on his list of priorities. But he seems to be making it more difficult to achieve his own intended result purely for the sake of the cruelty of manipulating Severus, from what I can see.
And also risking the fullness of the magic he hopes to invoke, I might add. A true sacrifice needs to be voluntary, right? For the fullness of the protection to inhere. But manipulating someone into making even an otherwise-voluntary sacrifice under false pretenses risks reducing the fullness of their consent to it, and manipulating them for no foreseeable good reason when being honest about the task would be possible surely increases that risk. And thus increases the risk of the magic either backfiring or simply failing to be effected.
So IS there any explicable reason anyone can imagine Dumbles seeing for pulling Severus around like this? Or is this just a case of his 'does not share well with others' tendency combining with his lack of regard for Severus, and his other like flaws, into a potential misfire of his plan, one that he is either ignoring/discounting or simply blind to?
Not to mention malic-ba's excellent points in hir comment on the original essay:
"I'm used to thinking of Dumbledore as a conscienceless, grandiose, Machiavellian plotter who quite possibly liked to twist those under his power for his own satisfaction as well as for the cause [...] But the idea that he quite deliberately tortured Severus worse than death, not once but three times, instead of taking any actual direct action against Voldemort (who he beat easily the one time they faced each other, although Voldemort's strength wasn't fully restored), or making any sensible non-hail-mary plan, takes it to a new level.
I mean, FFS, why not re-vaporise him and hunt down the Horcruxes at leisure? If it means you wouldn't be sure when you had them all, why not work on solving that problem?
[...] How close was Severus to breaking, and working, for example, to keep Harry alive whatever that meant for the war?"
Indeed, why the insistence on absurd hail-mary plans at all? If he didn't seem to be putting so much effort into setting up and pulling off all these hail-marys - without actually informing people of what they need to know to actually carry out his plans effectively except scraps at the last minute - and if he weren't at the very last willing to give up his own remaining bit of life for the sake of the cause, I'd suspect him of actually just throwing the whole thing, of deliberately setting up the Order side to lose for some (to me as yet) impenetrable reason of his own. Even the notion of Fool Albus, hampered by his inability to see his own flaws and too confident in his own powers, seems...not quite foolish and ineptly blind enough for me to buy the absolute mind-boggling lack of any sensible approach to the problem of Tommy Riddle and his Horcruxes whatsoever, whenever he twigged to its true scope.
And even Knave Albus or Narcissist Albus toying with Severus simply for the fun of it doesn't account for his seeming willingness to risk seeing all his own plans go off the rails, should Severus get too fed up and refuse to play doormat any longer. We don't see him trying to talk Severus back on track after the revelation of the Harrycrux; Severus just mysteriously decides, offscreen, to accept his assessment of the situation and the need to tell Harry to suicide. And even still, he's at that point blowing Dumbles off and following his own plans RE the Sword and other details.
So, why does Severus get back in line on just that one (enormous) issue of Lily's son needing to die? And why does Dumbles set off and then not tamp down altogether that little rebellion of Severus' in the first place with his handling of who gets to play messenger? (He could have done better even without revealing the secret about Harry's chance at life, I'm saying.) He's shooting himself in both feet over all this.
I just don't get it.
Thoughts?