deathtocapslock | Draco's Allegiance

Well, I don't think Ollivander and Luna were bound, all the months they spent in the dungeon, were they? So Draco would expect at least the two of them to be able to move about.

Ollivander's in a state of collapse, and Luna can't "line up against the wall" by herself, if Draco thought her the only person in that room able to move freely.

But Draco didn't have to unbind Griphook from the other recently-captureds, and he wasn't surprised by that fact. And he didn't tell the others.

Draco didn't cast a Lumos, so he could argue afterwards that he didn't SEE the others were loose in the dim light filtering in from the hallway, but he knew that he didn't have to untie the goblin. But who could prove that, afterwards?

Luna and Ollivander being left untied/unshackled--Ollivander was severely ill by that time, apparently unable even to stand, and Luna gets herself persistently underestimated due to her eccentricity. That's quite different from leaving three vigorous and desperate young men completely unsecured. in a large room behind one locked door.

I mean, obviously the next person through that door is going to get jumped. And if alone and unsuspecting, almost certainly overpowered. And Draco lets Lucius send Peter alone and unwarned into that trap.

Draco might even have entered that room expecting the prisoners to jump HIM.

(The only reason they did not is that Jo had a Dobby ex machina she wanted to use.)

I don't think Draco planned for Peter to be jumped - not consciously at least. He was definitely disillusioned with Voldemort, but I don't think he had much hope that Harry was really going to send ol' snake-hips shuffling off this mortal coil for a second time. He just withdrew co-operation - and that included thinking about things.

To be honest, I always thought that Regulus and Draco were mirrors of each other. It is interesting to look at the similarities, and differences, between Draco and Snape. Both found they didn't have the stomach for murder (albeit indirect murder in Snape's case) and both had realised that Voldemort wasn't what they thought he would be.

The difference being that Snape had a designated good guy to appeal to in the shape of Dumbledore, whereas the only adult I could see Draco approaching would be Snape - who was now openly a Death-eater. The Order of Phoenix would probably be more likely to hex first than hear him out. Harry?

Maybe that was one reason that Dumbledore brought Slughorn just before the end. He might have made an appropriate conduit for Slytherins with doubts to approach. Although whether on the other side would take him seriously?

What makes you think Dumbles cared about Draco or any of the Slytherins (or anyone besides Harry)? Their moral development didn't matter to him. All that mattered was the plan for Harry to walk to his death under the right circumstances. The only thing that mattered was destroying the Horcruxes, the Harry vs Tom encounter. Everything else was less than set dressing. What does it matter to the plan if random Slytherin becomes a DE or not? What does it matter if Riddle has 30 supporters or 100? What does it matter if 30 defenders die or 200?

I think that Dumbledore would have been delighted if all the Slytherin students turned against Tom and came back to the side of light. As far as the war went, Dumbledore thought the Tom/Harry confrontation was the only one that matter. He also saw it as a moral fight though, and besides he did care about his students. (Well, he would have viewed himself as caring about his students.)

He'd just have been surprised, since I think the minute the hat said Slytherin he considered them a lost cause. Not because of their house, but because they had ambition or wanted something.

So I don't know if he would cared whether the Slytherin students had someone to turn to, but I think his view of himself would have made it necessary. After all, he was a good man. Hadn't he spent his life proving that? And a good man would give those children one last chance.

I think that Dumbledore would have been delighted if all the Slytherin students turned against Tom and came back to the side of light.

What in his actions makes you think so? What does he do to give Slytherins of the last 2 generations the impression that they had a future outside of Voldemort's camp?

Like I said, Dumbledore considered the Slytherins a lost cause because they were ambitious. If he had been proven wrong and they all came over to his side I think he would have been very pleased. I don't think he had any great desire to see children he educated turn to the Death-eaters.

And also, it would have proved he was right all along and they had acknowledged it.

(Although I do doubt that he would have dealt well any who had defected on Slytherin grounds rather than because they had seen the error of their ways. 'I would rather die than serve that foul beast, thank god I remembered your teachings' would be much palatable than 'He's a nutcase. Even if he won, I don't want to spend the rest of my life waiting to be tortured cos some freaky snake-guy thinks I gave his snake-girlfriend a funny look.'

I think the only way he would have felt pleased about it was in the "I told you so/I was right." I don't get the sense that any Slytherin is actually a real person to him, any more than Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs are (they are simply seen as more benign non-persons and thus not worthy of actual malice, but of being supported publicly now and then to make himself look good).

And I don't buy that a genuine change of heart would have moved him; he's quite cruel to young Severus during their meetings before and after Godric's Hollow and uses precisely the genuineness of that change of heart (the vulnerability that it opens in Severus due to his real distress) to mock him and to manipulate him. He never shows an ounce of actual empathy for him, or genuine happiness that he's turned around. Also see his reaction to Severus' concern for his soul later. He also instructs Harry repeatedly to ignore his compassionate urges when directed at non-approved people, i.e. Slytherins, and tells him that a desire for revenge is evidence of his supposedly astonishingly loving nature. And although he knows for months the situation Draco is in and that Draco is behind the events that nearly kill Katie and Ron, he never steps in to either lessen the risk to the other students, or to make an offer to Draco like the one he makes on the tower *when he could actually fulfill it.* Draco refuses the offer on the tower because it clearly isn't real - at that point Dumbles is in no position to help him. If Dumbles genuinely cared he would have made the offer at a time when it could have been realized. (His comment to Severus about the boy's soul acts merely as part of his manipulation of Severus; he wants Severus to do it for his own reasons and wants to make sure that Severus is firmly in his power now while he can still influence him.)

I do think that he does *perceive* himself as good, wise, moral, all-knowing in these matters, kindly helping out the dregs of society, and that that self-perception is incredibly important to him, yes. I just think it doesn't square with how he is in reality. Because he's ignoring his own real flaws (lack of empathy, seeing people in the abstract and not as individuals who he needs to truly listen/pay attention to even when they disagree with him, narcissism, willingness to manipulate people, need for control, assuming he always knows better) in favor of a vision of himself in which his only real temptation was power and which he has successfully resisted by refusing *outward* signs of power (he still in fact clings to his power, but it tends to be more covert in form). As swythyv pointed out in one of her fantastic essays, when Dumbledore shows up in the midnight-blue robes of Merlin at the Wizengamot, he's parading around in the robes symbolic of a spiritual state which he has not actually attained. But he fails to recognize this, due to his narcissism.

I think saying that the other students aren't 'real people' to Dumbledore is over-stating the case. I would say that each child hurt or injured during Harry's term at Hogwarts genuinely pained Dumbledore, but that he considered the losses acceptable to triumph over Tom.

Dumbledore's main flaw, to me, isn't that he saw other people as chess pieces, but that he saw them as real people and sacrificed them anyhow. He was convinced he knew best and while making, as you say, a conscience-sopping show of rejecting power he continued to try and run things behind the scenes.

Unfortunately, of course, he was kind of bad at being a manipulative mastermind.

And like I said before, I do think that Dumbledore considers the Slytherin a lost cause the minute they are sorted. Any ambition, in his mind, is a fatal flaw. (I don't think he likes the Ravenclaw ethos much either.) So he's not going to waste much of his time (barring a possible Slughorn shaped sop to his idea of himself as good) trying to redeem them.

(Although I do have a half-formed theory that Dumbledore long game (con?) was restructuring the Wizarding World to become a nation of content shopkeepers. So I might have a hobby horse there.)

But Dumbledore endangers students completely needlessly, like when he sends half the school in the path of a troll with no adult accompaniment in PS or when he knows the monster in the castle is one that kills with its sight (and he was certain about that since the moment he saw the burnt film in Colin's camera) and instills no measures nor gives any warnings that would have helped. This goes well beyond making regrettable but unavoidable sacrifices to stop the ultimate enemy.

But they are necessary as far as Dumbledore is concerned. If they serve his plans, then they are necessary losses. The troll and the basilisk were there for Harry to cut his hero teeth on. All part of Dumbledore's plan to turn Harry into a tool appropriate to Dumbledore's needs.

I don't like Dumbledore (I don't know if JKR meant him to be a twinkly mentor or if he was always meant to be a disturbing twinkly manipulator), but I think he does what he believes is right. It's just that what he thinks is right has spent a long time locked up in his brain and has never been peer reviewed.

Voldemort also did what he thought was right. Very few people do what they think is wrong and unjustifiable.

Voldemort did what he thought was right for him, which is the only thing that mattered to him. Dumbledore, with the best of intentions, does what he thinks is right for everyone.

I don't think Dumbledore is evil, although I think he does very harmful things. I do think he is vain, arrogant man who is not as good as manipulation and subterfuge as he thinks he is.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that Dumbledore is evil or isn't trying to do what he thinks is right; I'm certainly not. The argument is that among Dumbledore's numerous flaws are a near-total lack of empathy for other people, a willingness to sacrifice them to his own inability to deal with his flaws, and a rampant narcissism that leads him to needlessly endanger multiple people under his care. And perhaps that what Dumbledore things is right and needed is at times severely out of sync with what any reasonable person capable of empathy and self-criticism would recognize as the reality of the situation and of the people around him.

If Voldemort had stopped at making Horcruxes I'd agree with you. That after he already made himself immortal he went on to recruit supporters and sought to overthrow the Minsitry suggests to me he wanted something more than being immortal. It is not impossible that he wanted the good of 'everyone' - everyone that counted. Just like Dumbles wanted the good of those that counted to him.

>> I don't think Dumbledore is evil, although I think he does very harmful things. I do think he is vain, arrogant man who is not as good as manipulation and subterfuge as he thinks he is. <<

That does constitute being somewhat evil - the only question left unanswered about Dumbledore is - "Was he a bit evil or very evil?" Either could be inferred from the text.

Why would Dumbles think Harry would do anything with the troll? If Hermione hadn't been crying in the bathroom Harry would have been up in Gryffindor tower while the troll menaced the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins.

Very good point.

Certainly he thinks he is doing the right thing, or at least a justifiable thing, much of the time. That doesn't mean that the people he is endangering actually are *real* to him. Quite the contrary. Even if he thinks that all of these examples are justifiable sacrifices for the sake of training Harry (I disagree somewhat, but am granting it for argument's sake), the point of that training is ostensibly for the Greater Good - i.e. that Harry needs this in order to be able to save the people of the wizarding world. What he ignores is the fact that he is directly harming or even potentially sacrificing a significant fraction of that very population in these decisions!

The actual people he meets face-to-face are not as important to him as the abstract "everyone" he thinks he is working to save; they do not even register to him as part of that "everyone" in any meaningful way. If they did, he would not repeatedly act in ways that harm them *and thus his own goal in protecting them!* He would instead do his best to act in ways that *minimized* the harm to as many people as possible while still helping Harry, etc. We never see him consciously try to minimize harm to those actually around him (vs the abstract Greater Good) in any significant way, express regret for having made decisions that made avoidable harm likely to them, or have such decisions pointed out to him by a sympathetic character, or anything similar. We never even see him mull over the fact that it's really terrible that he (so he thinks) has to endanger several hundred children and adults with a Basilisk in order to let Harry try his strength - rather, the fact that all of these people are genuinely in danger never seems to fully register for him at all. His focus is entirely on Harry and how he imagines the future fight with Voldie to be.

Except that at this point the 'try his strength' line is also bullshit, because he knows about the Harrycrux and expects Harry will have to die, and the blood-ritual hasn't happened yet so there is nothing to make him think Harry might have a chance of surviving. (At this point he seems to be expecting that someone else - probably he himself with the Elder wand - will have to be behind Harry to take down the now-vulnerable Voldie once the Harrycrux is gone.) So it isn't even a justifiable sacrifice to risk several hundred children in order to let Harry try his strength against a Basilisk, because he doesn't expect Harry to need those skills. It's simply about his narcissism and need to be liked by Harry combined with his inability to admit to anyone "I don't know," "you're right," or "I'm not in control of this situation" and an utter lack of regard for the lives of the other people in his care. It's all about CYA and looking like he's on top of things.* But his conscious self-monologue about it all will be different, of course. It will spin it all in a way that convinces him - as well as others - that he's doing the right thing.

*A similar example holds RE Remus at school. Even after he discovers that at least one other student has broken past the shitty security system he'd set up for the full moons, his response is not to update the security system or consider any alternative arrangement, or do anything that might suggest even to himself that he'd set things up badly. It was to silence the students who knew about it - magical or merely verbal coercion in the case of the one who complained, and paying off via lack of punishment the others - and not change a damned thing or bother to warn anyone. Had he changed the system in any significant way the Marauders couldn't have gotten in to see Remus afterward, and all those close calls with Hogsmeade residents would have been avoided. Conclusion? He covered his own ass (with the best justifications for himself, of course), nothing more.

I didn't start out thinking about Dumbles this way. For a long time I bought the kindly mentor image. But every time I look at what he actually does in the books, I find it less and less possible to read him as anything but, at best, extremely flawed and self-centered and unconscious of that fact.

I think he does what he believes is right. It's just that what he thinks is right has spent a long time locked up in his brain and has never been peer reviewed..

Great summation!

Of course, how could Dumble's plans be peer reviewed when he has no peers? No one (save Gellert and Tom) comes close enough to Albus in intelligence to merit his considering even for a moment actually sharing information and inviting their feedback....

But you're missing a part of the point. Even if Dumbles thought it necessary to let HARRY "try his strength" by playing with trolls and Basilisks and homicidal Voldemort-following teachers, the same doesn't hold for other students. If he cared, truly cared, about the safety of his Hufflepuff and Slytherin students he would not have sent them into what he'd been told was the path of a troll without adult protection.

So if he considered them a lost cause then hiring Horace had nothing to do with providing support for defectors among them. It was all about getting that memory from him. Nothing else mattered.

Like I said, a sop to his conscience. A good person would give them a chance, even if he believed they wouldn't take it, so he gave it to them. Or might have been.

No, I don't think he cared about the Slytherins at all. He is never shown doing a single thing to protect any Slytherin, as far as I can remember. Basically, he really does seem to think they are all damned at 11, on the basis of what is said to them by a hat! (quoting Sydpad!)

If we had seen him showing compassion and understanding to young Severus, I might have felt differently. But he was nothing but cruel, manipulative, and controlling in that conversation. I don't remember him ever showing the least regard for Severus as a human being. He certainly didn't trust him, and he manipulated him unto death.

I also agree with Condwiramurs, btw, that Dumbledore seems more interested in people in the abstract than in the children actually in front of him.

I'm going to agree with Corycides here. No, Dumbledore probably didn't care about the Slytherins; but he did care about himself, or more specifically with himself as this good, kindly father-figure. I think he'd have quite liked the idea of being the sort of person who'd give the Slytherins a second chance. IOW he's like the wizarding equivalent of somebody who votes Labour and gives to charity because they like the idea of themselves as a kind, ethical person, but who doesn't actually care about the people they're supposedly trying to help. (Come to think of it, that would seem a rather good description of one J. K. Rowling...)

Couldn't agree with you more. In fact, the idea of Dumbledore as someone who cares very much for the abstract greater good but can't be bothered to care for those under his care is very much like the clichéd type who wil do a lot of fundraising and public speeching etc. for the suppressed masses/ the poor in other countries/ you name it - but can't be bothered to behave fairly towards their cleaner/ shopgirls etc.

Yes. This is why it seems to me that people aren't *real* to him - they exist only as what he needs them to be in the moment, and what they actually think and feel isn't important to him when it conflicts with his own views. They don't exist as individuals for him, and the individuals around him don't fully link up in his mind with that abstract mass of "the greater good." It's precisely the same issue as was at the root of his desire to conquer the Muggle world: do it for their own good, because he obviously knows what that is better than they do, of course, and the harm to them isn't real to him in a way that would make him question his position. Which is to say, he didn't really grasp the real problem with that whole enterprise, he just found a different angle on it to soothe his stunted conscience.

Considering that Snape's first words to Dumbles on that hillside were, "Don't kill me!" I think we can infer that Severus didn't consider DD a safe go-to guy for repentent Slytherin Death Eaters.

Only one whom he assumed (incorrectly, as it transpired) would care about the safety of Snape's hostage to Tom.

I think when we compare those who turned from supporting Riddle to working against his interests, the difference is the situation of their various hostages.

Narcissa (who may never have been a firm supporter; she might have just gone along with her hustand's politics) overtly disobeys Tom's orders--but not in front of him-- to try to win Snape's help to save Draco's life, and later lies in Tom's face to keep Harry alive when he'd survived another AK, in order to get to Draco. In both cases, Draco was presumably otherwise doomed anyhow. (Remember that Tom claimed Draco's absence from the DE's side that night indicated that Draco was disloyal.) So Narcissa's disobedience endangered herself, but did not further endanger her son. (And note that she trusted Snape both not to turn her in to Tom, and to care more about Draco's life than Tom's pleasure.)

Regulus committed suicide-by-cave in a failed attempt to take out a ("the," he probably thought) Horcrux, And I've speculated he might have thought his death necessary to save his mother and Kreacher from Tom's retribution, that he might have thought his Dark Mark a chink in the armor protecting 12 Grimmauld from.Death Eater incursions.

Snape turned to DD because Lily was doomed if he did not, and he hoped DD would save her, at whatever cost to Snape himself.

Draco worked covertly against Tom's interests (refusing to ID the Trio, not telling the Carrows how the DA was communicating, not bringing the Carrows into DA headquarters), but his parents were Tom's prisoners. Anything he did overtly would result in punishment to them as well as to himself.

If you consider more carefully, the only one of the four who had someone on any of the other sides to whom s/he might safely turn (besides, to a very limited extent, Severus for Narcissa) was Regulus. His parents were opposed to Lord Thingy, and would surely have done whatever they could to extricate Reg from Tom's clutches. But they were the ones he himself wanted to protect, so he refused to involve them.

Whether Severus was wary or not though, he was willing to approach Dumbledore and had some level of trust that he would be heard out. Dumbledore was the face of the Order of the Phoenix, the one who dealt with politics and diplomacy. It isn't about whether or not he'd be kind - they were enemies. He was just there. Any Death-eater who got the collywobbles and needed someone to appeal to could run to Dumbledore.

Yes, there would probably be a price. Why shouldn't there be? (I always felt that Regulus could have gone to Dumbledore, he was still a kid after all and Sirius brother, but that he weighed the price to his family and decided against it.)

Once Dumbledore dies there's really no such figurehead. Harry is hardly a diplomatic sort, Arthur's viewed as a bit of a fool generally and Moody is definitely not the diplomatic sort.

So when Draco started to doubt that Riddle was a good bet and looked around - where could he go that would give him even a fighting chance of surviving and protecting the people important to him? Of course, it was a different sort of fight this time since Dumbledore was beating it all on a face-off between Harry and Tom.

I don't think it was so much 'trust that he would be heard out' as pure desperation - turning to literally the only powerful person he could be certain wasn't secretly on Tom's side for help because his other clear alternative was to do nothing. He may have held little or no hope or trust of actually being heard out, and done it anyway because when someone you love is at risk, trying and failing, or trying even when you're certain you'll fail, is better than not trying at all. The fact that he went to Dumbledore doesn't necessarily indicate *trust* on his part, not at all. Desperation and courage, yes.

And as to other Death Eaters getting cold feet: Regulus felt dying in the cave and thus giving up the chance of directly doing anything further to help his family himself - in a situation in which he knew they were dealing with a monster worse than they knew, and who deliberately targeted family members as punishment - was better than whatever price Dumbledore might exact from them (not Regulus himself, his family, according to your own words? And Dumbledore is still supposed to be a figure who inspires trust and at least has the reputation of treating the genuinely repentant with some measure of consideration? See, those two things seem to me to be contradictory. That Regulus felt better about dying and leaving his parents, unknowing, to chance and the possibility of Voldie's wrath with only Kreacher to help them, than he did about asking help from Dumbledore says everything right there about how far Dumbledore's compassion extended, at least as far as those best placed to know it knew. So no, not every DE who got uncertain could run to Dumbles. Only a DE who was willing to risk everything *for someone else* might run to him - and notice the key fact here that that other person was a Gryffindor and already one of Dumbledore's own, and thus probably less likely to face demands for 'payment' herself than any Slytherin would.

Also, Severus wasn't running to Dumbledore in order to get out himself; he volunteers no such request. He was going to Dumbledore because one of Dumbledore's people was in danger in way that Dumbles (Severus assumed) didn't know about. And he was surprised (as was I) to discover that Dumbledore expected payment for protecting one of his own fighters - but paid anyway.

gah hmtl fail. Sorry.

When you say, Yes, there would probably be a price. Why shouldn't there be? , you pinpoint, wittingly or not, a major weakness both in Dumbledore's character and in the books.

These books are loaded with Christian symbols. In my brand of the faith, there is no cost to redemption except the cost of a broken, repentant heart - a price Snape pays. Dumbledore has no right to ask for anything more.

Quite aside from that, in the story world, young Severus has just told an enemy leader to protect one of that leader's soldiers. Why wouldn't the leader simply do so? why bargain with this boy or exact further costs from him? He has already risked his life - twice.

My two cents!

On the other hand, why not?

Dumbledore cares not at all about what happens to this enemy. The warning has been passed on, but why not see what else can be squeezed from this windfall? Severus has already put his life in Dumbledore's hands by this meeting, but DD can easily see that Lily's life is a more effective lever.

I suspect that DD has deliberately pretended to be indifferent to protecting his own people here in order to keep Severus spying for him (until he is caught and tortured to death, which I'm sure DD is sanguine about), and that if SS had not fallen for it, he would have threatened to expose him instead.

Any other *war leader* - not headmaster or human being, perhaps - would probably have done the same.

Harry might be supposedly a Christ figure (choke!) but I don't think Dumbledore was ever supposed to be interested in redemption of anyone at all. He might sigh to himself about how the realities of war stop him from being the kindly grandfather he really wants to be, perhaps, but those are crocodile tears. I agree wiht the posts above, he showed no interest in helping Draco when it was possible to do so.

No, if you're a Slytherin you're S.O.L.

Really, why couldn't he have kept his pet spy just as Potions Master? Was it necessary to have him as Head of House? If Slughorn had stayed on, or if just about anyone else was in that position, the Slytherins might have had someone to talk to. Some of them might have been kept out of the DE trap.

I don't think Dumbledore was ever supposed to be interested in redemption of anyone at all
That may be, but he certainly was meant to be a God figure (choke even more) - you know: the all knowing epitome of goodness... who for some unfathomable reason doesn't do anything to further good or protect the weak.

Would keeping Slughorn on have kept anyone out of the DE trap, though? Do we know of anyone in the 1970s who didn't join thanks to Slughorn? We know one of his Slug Club stars, Regulus, was gung-ho to join - and moreover didn't seem to think going to Slughorn (who iirc hadn't retired yet and was at least theoretically safe at Hogwarts) for help was a viable option once he wanted out. (Unless he only stayed away because Slughorn had been Imperiused or otherwise co-opted and Regulus knew about it.) And anyone who doesn't catch his attention doesn't seem to get any kind of guidance, though I'll grant that Harry wouldn't see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes in Slytherin, so maybe there's at least some basic... something, anyway. Having Snape around as an ostensible example of how being a Dark wizard makes you an ugly mean bastard might have been more effective, I don't know.

I think the more important factor is that keeping Slughorn around would have given Snape someone else to talk to (since Slughorn would have more reason to pay attention to Junior Colleague Snape than to Outcast Student Snape). And we wouldn't want anyone lessening Snape's dependence on Dumbledore. Or any possibility of Slughorn finding out any history about Dumbledore's Men and their adolescent "prank" and Dumbledore's cover-up giving young Sev extra motive to join a bigger, meaner gang. Or any chance for Slughorn to have an attack of conscience and possibly tell Snape anything he knows about the adventures of Young Tom, because that trail might lead Snape back to another example of Dumbledore not protecting people from Voldemort, and that couldn't go anywhere good for Dumbledore.

Or any chance for Slughorn to have an attack of conscience and possibly tell Snape anything he knows about the adventures of Young Tom, because that trail might lead Snape back to another example of Dumbledore not protecting people from Voldemort, and that couldn't go anywhere good for Dumbledore.

Now this makes me want to write fanfic where exactly that happens. Heh. Which is to say, I think you're quite right about the Snape/Slughorn angle.

While I totally agree that Dumbles would want Severus cut off from any other source of support and information, and therefore want Sluggy away from him, I feel constrained to point out that there is also a practical consideration.

We all laud Sev for being a polymath near-genius, of course, but even he has his limits. He was evidently brilliant at both Potions and the Dark Arts/Defense, mastering the work taught and innovating in both fields. But at age 21, was even he established as good enough in yet a third field--Runes, Arithmancy, Transfiguration..?---to be seriously considered as a plausible replacement for a seasoned teacher?

Moreover, look at it from the other side: how many of Dumbledore's staff (most of whom were inherited from Dippet or whomever), could Albus expect to lean upon to retire at Twinkle's convenience? Slughorn, if he had started to suspect that Lord Thingy was really lost Tom Riddle, or spotted a disproportionate number of Slytherins supporting that upstart, was vulnerable. Who else would have been?

Tom sent Severus to apply for the perennially-vacant DADA post. Presumably he expected Severus to fulfill his REAL mission (the assassination of Albus, I imagine) and fall to the curse within a year. (Thus neatly ridding Tom of the following generation's most talented half-blood [potential rival] in the course of taking out the previous generation's ....)

But if Albus hoped to make the game play out longer, he'd hardly want to lose his shiny new double agent to Tom's curse, so the DADA position would be flat out.

Potions was Snape's other known area of expertise, and Slughorn was the professor whom we KNOW Albus had dirt on. (When DID Albus obtain that altered memory about Horcruxes, after all?)

So, there were pragmatic reasons to install Severus as Potions master.

Well, going by Hogwarts Logic of 1 teacher per class, yes, that does make Potions pretty much the only slot. In the real world, he would just have two Potions professors, with Slughorn as department head. (My high school was smaller than Hogwarts, even the lowest-estimate Hogwarts, and even we had more than one teacher per department.)

Which makes you wonder... maybe the Hogwarts population was small enough in centuries past for that to be a practical faculty arrangement, but nowadays? Maybe having more than one teacher per department would lead to too much cooperation in general. If you only have one Potions professor, no one's going to question his lesson plans too much, because it isn't their area of expertise and they're too busy anyway. And the Potions professor is too busy to do much more than copy-paste old lesson plans, and probably doesn't have the time or energy to protest too many of the headmaster's requests about what to include or omit. If you had two Potions professors, they might start trying to innovate in the curriculum or have time to ask why (insert topic) is or isn't being taught.

From a Doylist perspective, JKR doesn't really "get" Christianity, hence why a lot of the book's messages are incompatible with mainstream Christian theology.

From a Watsonian perspective, Dumbledore's reaction actually makes sound strategic sense. Learning about the danger to two of your followers is good, but learning about the danger to two of your followers and winning one of your enemy's followers over to your side is even better. So from the perspective of a war leader, I think Dumbledore was probably right to try and get Snape to defect.

There are multiple possible ways of doing that, and not all of them involve being an uncaring, manipulative arse who coerces and uses other people without remorse.

ETA: In fact, given someone with a slightly stronger sense of self-esteem and slightly less willingness to be abused, behaving like an uncaring and openly manipulative arse is likely to backfire and send the potential defector away with even less reason to help you. So it doesn't even make strategic sense; it's just Dumbledore's lack of empathy and end-justifies-the-means thinking being put on display, and he ends up with Severus in his pocket only due to contingent aspects of Severus' personality.

Also, your reading fails to take into account that what Dumbledore may think is good strategy might be very far from that in reality, given that he never allows for genuine criticism or review of his ideas by anyone else.

Edited 2012-02-26 16:35 (UTC)

Fair point. In this case, though, DD is dealing with someone who already knows that he is uncaring and manipulative. SS knows after the Prank that his own life means nothing to this man. The idea that Lily's - let alone James' - might not either would be a shock, but would he dare dismiss it? OTOH, would compassion or welcome have any chance of being believed?

I'm not sure how much SS would look like a potential defector anyway. He hasn't come in saying that he wants out, that he disagrees with the group's goals or methods (although we gather later that he does). He just wants to protect a specific person who is a target for his side. If DD had just taken the warning, would SS have gone back to being a loyal DE?

Your point about DD thinking his strategies are great because he doesn't discuss them with anyone is a good one, and we see that effect plenty of times in the books I think :) . But in this case, I think the strategy of squeezing everything possible out of the contact is pragmatically right. The tactic of being an open tyrant might have been risky (though I think SS was already dead if VM found out about that meeting and was therefore in no position to refuse, self-esteem or not), but in this case it did work.

(Wonder if there were other cases where it didn't? What if Regulus did contact DD but was put off? :) )

Say, do you suppose DD knows he has much less empathy than most people? Perhaps he knows he is better at sticks than carrots. (Maybe that's why he was so OTT in setting up Harry's environment!)

Except that Dumbledore isn't a religious leader, he's fighting a terrorist organization with a dangerous, charismatic leader. As the leader of the opposing force he would have been remiss not to have taken full advantage of having a hold over a in-good-standing member of the Death-Eaters.

Why would he forfeit a chance to lessen the danger to his own people by letting a young man who had been a-ok with killing people until it turned out to be people he knew?*

*I don't think Severus was gleefully homicidal, simply that once the theoretical victim was given a face he realised he couldn't do it.

(deleted comment)

My point?

That having a tout gave Dumbledore's side an immeasurable advantage in the fight against the Death-eaters. He would have been a criminally negligent fool not to take full advantage of that situation. More people on his side would be saved by squeezing all the use of Snape he could.

That's what you do with informers.

Harsh? Yes, but necessary. And Snape had made his bed when he joined the Death-eaters - no matter whether the decision was informed or something he only came to when he realised what the cost was - so he was just going to have to lie it at that point.

Not entirely sure what your point is with the Nazis is though? Are you comparing Snape to Schindler? Because a: indulging in a bit of hyperbole there and b: I didn't condemn Snape for not realising exactly what he'd signed on for, just said that as far as moral high ground went at that point he was on shaky ground.

The point is that normal people treat those who repent with admiration, not scorn. In Judaism at least, a repentant person is considered to be on a higher moral ground than a completely righteous one.

There was a debate among rabbis why in Genesis it says "Noah was in his generations a man righteous and whole-hearted" - why 'in his generations'? The common view was that Noah would have been considered righteous in his generation but not in other times, when people were less sinful. But Resh Lakish, who himself spent some time as a gladiator (and some say a bandit) before returning to scholarship, said that if Noah was righteous in his very sinful generation then he'd have found it easier to be righteous in other times.

If Dumbles were shown to actually have made good use of Severus' information your argument might have stood. All we have is that a handful of DEs were arrested, but Dumbles didn't even share with the Ministry (or even the Order) the fact that DEs could be identified by their Dark Marks. So it looks more like he was playing games with Severus for the heck of it.

Draco's Allegiance

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