Draco's Allegiance

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

God, I feel an idiot. When I was writing "Protean Charm" I looked very carefully at evidence for Draco's having started working against the Dark Lord. But I totally missed the biggest clue of all.



When the Trio, Dean, and Griphook were thrown into the basement of Malfoy Manor, Luna used a nail to untie the new prisoners.

And Draco fully expected her to.

When Draco was sent to fetch the goblin, he ordered the captives, "Stand back. Line up against the back wall. Don't try anything or I'll kill you!"

He expected them to be free, not tied together in a clump. And sure enough, they were; he was able to seize "the little goblin by the arm and back[] out again, dragging Griphook with him" without untying him first.

And he didn't warn his fellow Death Eaters that the prisoners were unbound, or cast Incarcereous on them to remedy the matter.

For that matter, how did Luna get hold of that conveniently large nail, anyhow? It's a weapon as well as a tool.

Comments

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

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.

[corycides.livejournal.com]

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.)

[oryx_leucoryx]

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.

[corycides.livejournal.com]

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.

[oryx_leucoryx]

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

[corycides.livejournal.com]

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.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

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.

[oryx_leucoryx]

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.

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

>> 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.

[oryx_leucoryx]

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.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Very good point.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

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.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

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.