Dumbledore and the Marauders
Over the years, we've speculated that Dumbledore tacitly approved of and possibly encouraged the Marauders' bullying for various reasons--indifference (whether clueless or callous), a liking for charming bad boys, a liking for chaos generally, as part of a plan to earn their loyalty and prepare them as fighters for the Order of the Phoenix, a secret desire to set up the next Dark Lord for him to nobly oppose should the current one fail, and probably a few other possibilities I've forgotten. Liking chaos or bad boys or good fighters would all point to James and Sirius as the Marauders who caught Dumbledore's attention, with Remus as a great potential-spy bonus and Peter along for the ride.
But now I think this is off the mark. Harry is the one focused on James and Sirius. What was Dumbledore thinking in the seventies?
The charming bad boys Dumbledore aided, Gellert and Tom, were brilliant and ambitious. James and Sirius were "very bright," according to McGonagall, but their most brilliant accomplishments--like the Map and becoming Animagi--were unknown to Dumbledore at the time. They probably didn't seem exceptional. And their highest ambition during school seems to have been having a good time, which rules them out as future Dark Lords. At their age, Tom was already forming a cult and seeking immortality, and (as far as Dumbledore knows) the Marauders are just hexing fellow students and sneaking down to the kitchens for midnight snacks! I'm not confident that he would have felt any more partiality for James and Sirius than he does for Fred and George Weasley, who barely seem to register on his radar.
Fighters for the Order? Well, Sirius risked getting his friend Remus killed or sent to Azkaban for a half-baked "prank." Any hope for James after James saved everyone's bacon under the Willow was cast into doubt by that stunt by the lake. (Peter doesn't seem to have registered with anyone as a good enough fighter to be worth recruiting for his own sake.) Would Dumbledore consider them useful recruits--future Dumbledore's Men--or potential liabilities? Would he really expect them to obey his orders consistently?
There's one person I left out of that last paragraph, though, and I think he's the key: Remus. Dumbledore has no other child-werewolves with reasons to feel grateful to him on hand, and getting a truly loyal spy in the werewolves' camp has got to be a challenge. Remus is irreplaceable.
At first, his friendship with the other Gryffindor boys probably seemed like a good thing. It binds Remus to the pro-Dumbledore, anti-Voldemort crowd, and having a support network makes him less susceptible to suggestions that he would be better off truly joining the werewolves.
Too bad his friends are such loose canons. By their fifth year, they're so out of control that they nearly destroy their own friend, whom Dumbledore is counting on to be one of his key agents. Is Dumbledore happy about this? Is he breathlessly anticipating the day when James and Sirius can be full-time Order members and devote even more energy to mucking up his carefully-laid plans? I'm doubtful.
But Remus doesn't blame his friends for the incident. Or at least, not enough to dream of turning against them. Even if Dumbledore can devise a way to stomp down hard on the others while keeping all the secrets secret, that risks alienating the one Marauder he does have a use for. Or of turning them against Remus and outing him in revenge, for that matter. If Dumbledore wants to keep Remus, he has to find a way to manage his troublesome friends.
So okay, fine. Praise the Potter boy excessively for rescuing his enemy and don't ask whether he might have been involved in the setup. Try to make playing Dumbledore's game look in Potter's best interests. Oh, now the Evans girl's explained that she finds all that strutting and wanton hexing unattractive, and Potter's motivated to clean up his public image? Even better! Let him know he's on the short list for Head Boy if he keeps it up! Maybe this won't be so bad...
Not that he wasn't thrilled when they left school and suddenly weren't together all day, every day. James and Sirius never were as close with the other two. They'll probably go days at a time without seeing Remus just because of the difference in living conditions all on their own. It should be easy to encourage that distance. Separate missions, you know. Impress upon Remus that he shouldn't tell his friends he's trying to infiltrate the werewolves for his friends' safety, that he can best be loyal to them by keeping them out of the loop. The revelation that one of the Marauders is Voldemort's spy must have done wonders. By the time the Order class photo was taken, Remus isn't standing with his school friends. Excellent! The less time they spend together, the less likely they are to ruin the years-long plan to finally get a loyal follower who can spy on Fenrir Greyback. James becoming relevant as the potential father of a prophesied Chosen One was a late and unexpected development, and even then, making him stay home--and away from his friends aside from visits every few weeks--folds neatly into the strategy of separating Remus from the other Marauders.
And it works. They don't endanger Remus's cover. We don't know whether Dumbledore puts that mission on hold while Voldemort is out of commission or whether Remus spends most of those years diligently (albeit slowly) trying to get closer to the pack, but either way, he's still in a position to accomplish it by 1996. (Now with the added boost to his cover story that the mean headmaster does more to protect and shelter greasy Snivellus than Remus, and even let Snivellus get away with ruining his last chance of gainful employment in the wizarding world. Maybe this is what finally convinces them that Remus has genuinely turned on his old crowd.)
For Dumbledore, protecting the Marauders at school was never about James and Sirius. They were complications. Lemons he worked hard to turn into lemonade. Remus was his focus. (And if he drove Severus into a position where Dumbledore could get a spy in the DE camp someday in the process, so much the better.)
Not that we hear of Remus actually accomplishing anything once he's finally in place as a spy, mind. So Dumbledore shouldn't pat himself on the back too hard. But I suppose he couldn't have predicted just how pointless the whole exercise would be.
But now I think this is off the mark. Harry is the one focused on James and Sirius. What was Dumbledore thinking in the seventies?
The charming bad boys Dumbledore aided, Gellert and Tom, were brilliant and ambitious. James and Sirius were "very bright," according to McGonagall, but their most brilliant accomplishments--like the Map and becoming Animagi--were unknown to Dumbledore at the time. They probably didn't seem exceptional. And their highest ambition during school seems to have been having a good time, which rules them out as future Dark Lords. At their age, Tom was already forming a cult and seeking immortality, and (as far as Dumbledore knows) the Marauders are just hexing fellow students and sneaking down to the kitchens for midnight snacks! I'm not confident that he would have felt any more partiality for James and Sirius than he does for Fred and George Weasley, who barely seem to register on his radar.
Fighters for the Order? Well, Sirius risked getting his friend Remus killed or sent to Azkaban for a half-baked "prank." Any hope for James after James saved everyone's bacon under the Willow was cast into doubt by that stunt by the lake. (Peter doesn't seem to have registered with anyone as a good enough fighter to be worth recruiting for his own sake.) Would Dumbledore consider them useful recruits--future Dumbledore's Men--or potential liabilities? Would he really expect them to obey his orders consistently?
There's one person I left out of that last paragraph, though, and I think he's the key: Remus. Dumbledore has no other child-werewolves with reasons to feel grateful to him on hand, and getting a truly loyal spy in the werewolves' camp has got to be a challenge. Remus is irreplaceable.
At first, his friendship with the other Gryffindor boys probably seemed like a good thing. It binds Remus to the pro-Dumbledore, anti-Voldemort crowd, and having a support network makes him less susceptible to suggestions that he would be better off truly joining the werewolves.
Too bad his friends are such loose canons. By their fifth year, they're so out of control that they nearly destroy their own friend, whom Dumbledore is counting on to be one of his key agents. Is Dumbledore happy about this? Is he breathlessly anticipating the day when James and Sirius can be full-time Order members and devote even more energy to mucking up his carefully-laid plans? I'm doubtful.
But Remus doesn't blame his friends for the incident. Or at least, not enough to dream of turning against them. Even if Dumbledore can devise a way to stomp down hard on the others while keeping all the secrets secret, that risks alienating the one Marauder he does have a use for. Or of turning them against Remus and outing him in revenge, for that matter. If Dumbledore wants to keep Remus, he has to find a way to manage his troublesome friends.
So okay, fine. Praise the Potter boy excessively for rescuing his enemy and don't ask whether he might have been involved in the setup. Try to make playing Dumbledore's game look in Potter's best interests. Oh, now the Evans girl's explained that she finds all that strutting and wanton hexing unattractive, and Potter's motivated to clean up his public image? Even better! Let him know he's on the short list for Head Boy if he keeps it up! Maybe this won't be so bad...
Not that he wasn't thrilled when they left school and suddenly weren't together all day, every day. James and Sirius never were as close with the other two. They'll probably go days at a time without seeing Remus just because of the difference in living conditions all on their own. It should be easy to encourage that distance. Separate missions, you know. Impress upon Remus that he shouldn't tell his friends he's trying to infiltrate the werewolves for his friends' safety, that he can best be loyal to them by keeping them out of the loop. The revelation that one of the Marauders is Voldemort's spy must have done wonders. By the time the Order class photo was taken, Remus isn't standing with his school friends. Excellent! The less time they spend together, the less likely they are to ruin the years-long plan to finally get a loyal follower who can spy on Fenrir Greyback. James becoming relevant as the potential father of a prophesied Chosen One was a late and unexpected development, and even then, making him stay home--and away from his friends aside from visits every few weeks--folds neatly into the strategy of separating Remus from the other Marauders.
And it works. They don't endanger Remus's cover. We don't know whether Dumbledore puts that mission on hold while Voldemort is out of commission or whether Remus spends most of those years diligently (albeit slowly) trying to get closer to the pack, but either way, he's still in a position to accomplish it by 1996. (Now with the added boost to his cover story that the mean headmaster does more to protect and shelter greasy Snivellus than Remus, and even let Snivellus get away with ruining his last chance of gainful employment in the wizarding world. Maybe this is what finally convinces them that Remus has genuinely turned on his old crowd.)
For Dumbledore, protecting the Marauders at school was never about James and Sirius. They were complications. Lemons he worked hard to turn into lemonade. Remus was his focus. (And if he drove Severus into a position where Dumbledore could get a spy in the DE camp someday in the process, so much the better.)
Not that we hear of Remus actually accomplishing anything once he's finally in place as a spy, mind. So Dumbledore shouldn't pat himself on the back too hard. But I suppose he couldn't have predicted just how pointless the whole exercise would be.