Just like Slughorn, Albus Dumbledore collects people. Only, instead of focusing on those with influence, he looks to the outcasts.
The expelled half-giant. The young werewolf. The repentant Death Eater.
He protects them and gives them a second chance. All he asks in return is their loyalty.
And, if on occasion he requests that they undertake a certain task, invoking their debt of gratitude - well, that is no more than he is owed.
He once thought to add a certain disowned Black to his collection, but quickly realised his mistake.
Sirius is not an outcast, but a rebel. He knowingly chose his path, and chooses what price he is willing to pay for it. He refuses to be used.
So Albus Dumbledore abandons him.
Who gave you the RIGHT?
Dumbledore knows Siriusâs loyalty lies with Harry instead of him, and he has no use for someone who is not willing to follow his orders without question.Â
Ooooohoo if thereâs ever a post that fits my aestheticâŠ
okay but then where does Harry himself fit into this collection? Is he an outcast because he is âthe Boy Who Livedâ?
Nooonono, my friend, thatâs what makes this post so beautiful. Because it fits the meta Iâve been trying to get people to accept for years.Â
Harry was an outcast due to a childhood filled with abuse and neglect.Â
Vernon made him an outcast by dismissing his claims of magic, berating him, locking him in a CLOSET and putting bars on his window, and letâs face it, even though her editor made her cut it out, Jo intended for there to be physical abuse.Â
Petunia made him an outcast by enabling and contributing to this abuse, as well as making Harry do dozens of chores while doting on Dudley.Â
Dudley made him an outcast by bullying him and threatening any students at school who wanted to be his friends.Â
And the rest of the wizarding world made him an outcast when they bullied him for being an outsider.
Harry James Potter became an outcast the moment he was placed with The Dursleys.
And who put him there in the first place?
Iâm here for this Anti-Dumbledore discussion.
This makes even more sense when you consider why Dumbledore deliberately made Harry an outcast.
Think about it What would Harry have been like if he had grown up in the wizarding world? Or, to put it another way, what would Harry have been like if he had grown up in a world where magic was the norm?
He would have taken magic for granted. He would have been less likely (especially as he got older) to view Dumbledore as a wise mentor and more likely to see him as flawed and capable of bad decisions. He would have seen both the world and Dumbledore as ordinary, with their good points and bad points.
But Dumbledore didnât need a well-adjusted boy who took magic and the magical world for granted. He needed a child who would love the magical world unstintingly, even irrationally, because it was a haven from neglect and abuse. Even more, he needed a child who feared this world becoming evil and who therefore would not question someone that he saw as the ultimate authority, especially if he believed that obeying that authority would keep the world safe.
Even if obedience meant his own death.
Dumbledore wanted a martyr who would die for the wizarding world, because he believed that Voldemort could not die until Harry did. Which was why he left Harry with the Dursleys and let them neglect and emotionally abuse him for the next ten years.
To get a martyr, he first had to create a victim.
Some part of me also wonders if Dumbledore wasnât deliberately trying to recreate Tom Riddle, to hedge his bets.
This one is more far-fetched, but bear with me here. People tend to focus a lot on the prophecy, the idea that Harry is required to defeat Voldemort. But Dumbledore himself tends to be fairly dismissive of it, except as a potential tool to manipulate Voldemort or anticipate his actions. In other words, he acts like someone who knows that prophecies are too subjective to really be useful, but also someone who anticipates that Voldemort wonât think so.Â
Dumbledoreâs own big preoccupation is with the horcruxes.Â
The horcruxes are the nuts and bolts of Voldemortâs immortality. They are his life support, and must be destroyed before Voldemort himself can be. So, Harry has to die. The prophecy can still be fulfilled by Neville, who also fits the bill and has also been marked (indirectly) by Voldemortâs actions. For example, if Harry had died at the end of Deathly Hallows, itâs highly likely that Neville and the rest of his friends, Ron and Hermione and everyone else, would have struck down Voldemort after the fact. With no more horcruxes left, Voldemort would perish, and everyone would look back and go âoh I guess the prophecy meant Neville after allâ.
Looking at it this way, Dumbledore either needs Harry to be a martyr, or another villain.
Because the upbringing Harry had could have just easily produced another Tom Riddle. Another Snape. If things had gone slightly differently, if Harry had been given to different predilections, if the Dursleysâ abuses had a different nature or nuance to them, the parallels between Harry and Tom could have led to another bitter and entitled dark wizard
But for the purposes of killing Harry, that still might have worked. It just would have changed the narrative completely. Instead of raising a heroic martyr, Dumbledore would have groomed Neville for the role of champion, and Harry would have been his starter villain. His school rival, his foe. Thatâs why Dumbledoreâs so damn pleased when Neville stands up to Harry at the end of the first book - even though heâs about 99% sure that Harryâs going to be his martyr, things could still change course, so having that precedent is good.Â
It isnât until Chamber of Secrets, when Harry displays irrefutable loyalty to Dumbledore, that the dudeâs mind is made up.
The complexity of Dumbledore, though, is that he at least has enough humanity to feel absolutely goddamn wretched about the whole thing. The ultimate villainy, on the other hand, is that it doesnât stop him. Not until itâs too late. I think he really did care about Harry, quite a lot. But by the time his conscience caught up to him, the wheels were already firmly set into motion. And thatâs why Order of the Phoenix is such chaos. Because by then, Dumbledoreâs trying to disengage Harry from things, when he would ordinarily be bringing him more firmly into the thick of it. Heâs trying to back out, but itâs too late. So slamming the breaks just causes everything to crash.
It would be kind of fascinating to read one of those time travel fics where Dumbledore himself gets to live his life and do it all over again. I canât help but think that the dude still died with enough conceits that heâd mess it up anyway, but itâd be fascinating to watch.
