Snapedom

So it was natural to assume that Dumbledore might similarly have tried to befriend a troubled young Slytherin when Snape was a student at Hogwarts, further supported by the fact that Snape left the Death Eaters to turn spy for Dumbledore. I assumed that surely Snape must hold Dumbledore in high regard, in order to take on such a dangerous mission for him, almost literally placing his life in Dumbledore's hands, knowing that he will be killed if word leaks out to Voldemort of his true allegiance.

Therefore, I reasoned, Dumbledore must have befriended Snape when he was a student, although it was probably not a perfect friendship. As early as Book 1, I could see Dumbledore's bias for Gryffindor when Slytherin was awarded the House Cup, and then at the last minute, Dumbledore gives Gryffindor the additional points and strips the Cup away from Slytherin in a very public and humiliating manner. I don't disagree with his decision to award Gryffindor the Cup, but he could have awarded the points earlier, so that the Cup would go straight to Gryffindor instead of giving it to Slytherin and then taking it back.

This did trouble me, but I assumed it was probably mostly a literary device to make Harry's triumph more exciting. In terms of characterization, I thought that perhaps Dumbledore, in his eagerness to reward Harry's bravery, and perhaps blinded by House loyalty, didn't stop to think that the Slytherins might be hurt and offended by his actions. Which doesn't make it right, but I assumed that he acted out of carelessness rather than malice.

And then in Book 3, I did sense some House bias in the way that he seemed to make light of Sirius's "prank". We don't know what punishment Sirius received, but we know that he was not expelled, and quite frankly, I can't imagine any other punishment appropriate for a student who sent someone to a werewolf's lair during the full moon, even giving Sirius the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he was just being stupid and didn't intend to kill Snape, only scare him. And Snape--although he obviously has his own biases--clearly feels that Dumbledore never took the matter seriously.

This is supported by the scene in The Prince's Tale in Book 7, where the pantsing incident by the lake is shown to have taken place after the "prank". Sirius and James are still arrogant and unrepentant, so it seems that whatever punishment Sirius was given, it could not have been very severe (although I didn't know this when I first read Book 3, obviously). Perhaps Dumbledore did not want to out Lupin as a werewolf by drawing too much attention to the incident by expelling Sirius, but at the very least, I would have assumed that Sirius should be given detention for the rest of the year. However, he is shown wandering around leisurely after exams instead of serving detention or being confined to the dorm.

And I do have to wonder, if it had been a Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw or Slytherin who had sent an unknowing Gryffindor to the Shrieking Shack, would Dumbledore still have been so lenient? I rather think not, although that's a perception that's been colored by Book 7, and for now, I want to stick to my initial impressions of Dumbledore.

So I pictured Dumbledore as genuinely caring about young Snape, but inadvertently turning Snape against him when he favored the Marauders after the "prank". Maybe that was even partially the reason why Snape turned to the Death Eaters, because his respect for Dumbledore was no longer holding him back against the lure of power and Dark Magic. However, when Snape realized that he had gotten in over his head with the Death Eaters, I imagined that he remembered the way Dumbledore had tried to befriend him in the past, and still held enough regard for the Headmaster to go to him in penance when he wanted to leave Voldemort.

 My original essay regarding Snape and Love said:

I had thought that perhaps Dumbledore loved Snape in a fatherly way, but that theory was ruined for me in Book 7. He seems to treat Snape (and Harry as well) as a tool to be used to defeat Voldemort, and I don't see much affection in his actions. I was probably assuming that he had a closer relationship with young Snape than actually existed in canon, but I had imagined that he was disappointed and troubled when Snape joined the Death Eaters, and so welcomed him back with warmth and relief.

And for the record, I would like to state that I don't mean that Dumbledore should just excuse any crimes that Snape committed as a Death Eater. I felt that he would treat them seriously, but still be glad that Snape was now trying to do the right thing, and rather than spend a lot of time on censure and recriminations, he would focus more on what Snape could do to atone for his wrongs.

...instead of the fatherly compassion I had imagined, canon-Dumbledore's response is, "You disgust me," even though Snape has risked his life to come to ask for his help in protecting Lily. Of course it's wrong for Snape not to care if an innocent baby is murdered, and yes, James too, even though I still think he's a git. But I think that Snape should get some credit for acting out of love, to protect another person, and not just out of self-interest. His definition of love at this point is rather narrow, centered solely on one person, but it's a step in the right direction, something that could be nurtured into a broader and less selfish kind of love. Up until Book 7, I had been thinking that Dumbledore would sincerely want to help a repentant Death Eater find redemption, but now I'm not so sure. It seems more like he's just interested in guilt-tripping Snape into working for him. The only way I can still reconcile this with a loving Dumbledore is if his reaction was a form of tough love, or a way to test Snape to see if he is sincere in his desire to turn against Voldemort. Personally, I think that's rather stretching it, but I'm trying to be fair and examine all the possibilities, even if I think it's far-fetched.

I was going to say that the only concrete evidence I can find that Dumbledore might feel love for Snape is that he refers to him as a friend when he asks Snape to be the one to kill  him. However, when I went to the text to verify the quote, I saw that I misremembered. He doesn't actually say the word "friend"; what he says is: "You alone will know whether it will harm you to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation." He does seem to think, though, that Snape cares enough about him to grant him the mercy of a painless death, so perhaps at this point, their relationship has developed to include an element of friendship as well as expediency. Or maybe it's still all about his grand master plan, and he is just trying to assuage Snape's conscience because it's important that Snape be the one to kill him so that Snape will gain Voldemort's favor.

Upon further reflection, there is some evidence in Book 5 that Dumbledore might care about Snape enough to feel a little guilt over how he's treated him, when he tells Harry, "But I forgot--another old man's mistake--that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father--I was wrong."

Still, that's pretty meager evidence, especially in comparison to how I had imagined their relationship to be--although I must admit, I have a pretty vivid imagination, which is why I write a great deal of fanfiction! However, many other Snape fans have had similar impressions, so I don't think that it's solely my delusion.

So what are my impressions of Dumbledore now that I have read the entire series? Well, here is an excerpt from the review I wrote the day after finishing DH:

Oh, and getting back to people not being wholly good or evil--Dumbledore! All that stuff about his family and Grindelwald! In hindsight, not so shocking. We had hints from the scene in the cave where he drank the potion that he'd done something he felt ashamed of. And his determination to stick to the Light makes sense in view of his past temptations. I find that I can forgive his past mistakes more easily--it was wrong, but he was a young and self-centered boy at the time--but what's harder to forgive is his manipulation of Harry. As Snape puts it, he's essentially raised and trained a teenage boy to kill himself, and when Snape is criticizing your morals, something has to be wrong! Maybe he knew or at least hoped that Harry would survive if he offered himself as a willing sacrifice, but that is still a horrible thing to ask of a seventeen year old boy, one you claim to love as a son. And yes, Voldemort would probably have taken over the world if Harry didn't sacrifice himself, but still, it's easier to talk about sacrificing an individual for the greater good when you're not that individual. Harry obviously forgives Dumbledore, but I'm not sure that I do.

However, now that I've had several months to digest the story and mull things over, I have come to believe that he was far more arrogant, manipulative, and coldly calculating than I first realized. I now see him not so much as a fatherly mentor, but more as the ruthless general who is willing to sacrifice his soldiers to win the war. Maybe this type of ruthlessness is necessary during times of war; I'm sure that could write a whole other essay debating the morality of that. However, even if we concede that Dumbledore is the man you want running the army, a man who considers people expendable, and who is willing to sacrifice the life of a seventeen year old boy he claims to love, is most definitely not the kind of man I would want to install as Headmaster and entrust with the lives of all the children at Hogwarts.

One could argue that there is a certain nobility in Dumbledore's single-minded efforts to defeat Voldemort: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one, to quote Mr. Spock from Star Trek. However, is this really nobility, or is it arrogance? 

I believe that Dumbledore has not truly learned from his past mistakes. For one thing, he is still obsessed with the Deathly Hallows, although he knows that obsession led to Ariana's death. And he couldn't resist using the Resurrection Stone, which led to his own death, and moreover, he didn't simply commit suicide, but forced Snape to murder him--which temporarily led to Snape being in Voldemort's good graces, but ignored the possible risk to his soul, made Snape a pariah with his former Order colleagues, and ultimately resulted in him getting killed because Voldemort believed him to be the master of the Elder Wand. And despite what the Hallows have cost him, twice, Dumbledore still sends Harry on a quest for them.

But did Harry really need the Hallows? The Invisible Cloak came in handy, to be sure, but there are other Invisible Cloaks, though not as powerful as the Hallows cloak. He didn't really need the Resurrection Stone, although it gave him comfort by allowing him to speak with his parents, Sirius, and Lupin. His mastery of the Elder Wand, I will admit, was essential in defeating Voldemort, but he already possessed that mastery, and anyway, Dumbledore had apparently intended that Snape would be the one to own it. Things did work out in the end--in terms of Voldemort being defeated, although not for poor Snape--but that was in spite of Dumbledore's machinations, not because of them.

As for Dumbledore's other past mistakes, he no longer wants to rule over the Muggles, and he has tried to remove himself from the temptation of power by turning down the position of Minister of Magic. However, he has accepted a position of authority at Hogwarts, which may not be as prestigious a job, but he does have the power to influence and shape the lives of the students in his care, who will grow up to become the next generation of Ministry officials--not to mention future Death Eaters. Could Dumbledore have prevented or at least slowed Voldemort's rise to power if he had spent more time giving guidance to the Slytherins and countering Voldemort's influence on them? It appears that Snape became a Death Eater while he was very young, probably immediately after leaving Hogwarts, since he is already a known Death Eater by the time he comes to Dumbledore for help in protecting Lily. Which means that Voldemort must have begun recruiting among the Slytherins while they were still in school, possibly through the children of his older followers. If Dumbledore was aware of this recruitment of impressionable young students and did nothing to counter it, then I feel that he shares a measure of blame for them becoming Death Eaters.

And in the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore has set himself up as the ultimate authority. No one is entrusted with the entirety of his plans to defeat Voldemort--not even Harry and Snape, who are the two people must crucial to and most involved with this plan. Instead, he twinkles and evades and keeps secrets, and this ultimately costs Snape his life. Ironically, he shares this same trait with Voldemort, who also keeps secrets from his followers. It seems that even the other Death Eaters didn't know that Peter Pettigrew was one of them until the ending of Book 4, or Snape would surely have warned Dumbledore of Wormtail's treachery before the Potters were killed, and of course Voldemort did not tell his Death Eaters about the Horcruxes.

However, I don't think that Dumbledore's mistrust is motivated so much by fear of betrayal, as Voldemort's probably is, but by the attitude that only he knows best, that only he is wise enough to be entrusted with all the information and to do what is necessary. And that indicates to me that he has not truly gotten over the superiority complex that he shared with Grindelwald when they were young.

Dumbledore keeps telling Harry how important love is, but he seems curiously distant from the emotion himself. In the King's Cross chapter in Book 7, he expresses regret that he neglected Ariana and unintentionally caused her death, but strangely, he does not mention any attempts to reconcile with his sole remaining family member, his brother Aberforth. Perhaps he tried and Aberforth refused to forgive him, but even then, I would have expected Dumbledore to express regret to Harry that he was unable to reconcile with his brother before he died. Did he not love Aberforth? Did he perhaps resent his brother for not forgiving him, or was he ashamed, and therefore avoided contact with his brother because it reminded him of his past failures?

Certainly, the brothers had little in common. In The Missing Mirror chapter in Book 7, Aberforth states that unlike his intellectually brilliant brother, he cared little about school and would gladly have dropped out of Hogwarts to look after Ariana. He also makes his contempt for Dumbledore clear when he tells Hermione, "Funny thing, how many of the people my brother cared about ended up in a worse state than if he'd left 'em well alone," and later tells Harry, "How can you be sure, Potter, that my brother wasn't more interested in the greater good than in you? How can you be sure that you aren't dispensable, just like my little sister?"

And on his part, Dumbledore seems to show contempt in his remarks about Aberforth, although they come across as teasing and humorous before we learn about their family history. (sistermagpie and I were discussing this in the comments of the_bitter_word's Dumbledore essay, also here on snapedom.) In the chapter Rita Skeeter's Scoop in Book 4, Dumbledore tells the trio and Hagrid, "My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No, he did not! He held his head high and went about his business as usual! Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery..."

At the time, this seems like an affectionately teasing anecdote of an eccentric relative, but when we meet Aberforth in Book 7, he seems intelligent and rational. If he was attending Hogwarts at least through age 14 (the year their mother died), he could not have been illiterate; presumably he was able to read his textbooks, or he would haves flunked out of school before then. And there's certainly nothing to confirm that he may be into bestiality, although perhaps a misunderstanding about his goat Patronus led to accusations of those "inappropriate charms". So why would Dumbledore say such cruel things about his own brother? Why would he imply that Aberforth was too stupid to know how to read? Was he simply making a joke at Aberforth's expense to try to make Hagrid feel better about himself? Was it spite towards a brother who refused to acknowledge his intellect and moral superiority? Was he already subtly trying to sway Harry against Aberforth, so that Harry would not believe Aberforth's stories about Dumbledore in case they happened to meet? I honestly don't know what the motivation was behind that little anecdote, but in view of what we know from Book 7, I see nothing loving about it.

The one person whom Dumbledore does explicitly express love for is Harry. In The Lost Prophecy chapter in Book 5, Dumbledore says:

"Do you see Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."

"I don't--"

"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act."

On the surface, it sounds very moving, and I accepted it at face value the first time I read it. But take a closer look at the phrasing: love is the "flaw" in his "brilliant plan"; it is a "trap" to be avoided; he acted like a "fool" by letting himself be ruled by love. Again, this sounds more like it should be coming from Voldemort than one of the supposed good guys. I think it's quite telling that Dumbledore considers his love for Harry to be a weakness, and notice that he's already beginning to indoctrinate Harry with the notion that he might have to sacrifice himself for the greater good. He emphasizes that further when he says, "What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy?"

The trio has apparently learned that lesson well by the time they encounter Aberforth in Book 7. When he asks, "Why didn't he [Dumbledore] tell him [Harry] to hide, then?...Why didn't he say to him, 'Take care of yourself, here's how to survive'?" And Hermione replies, "Because...sometimes you've got to think about more than your own safety! Sometimes you've got to think about the greater good!" And Harry firmly agrees that "I'm of age, and I'm going to keep fighting even if you've given up!" He also adds later that he knows he might die: "Don't think I don't know how this might end. I've known it for years."

In a sense, Dumbledore might have been right. Aside from the argument that the sacrifice of one life is justified if it saves many others, it would most likely have been futile for Harry to run away. Voldemort believed that Harry was a threat to him, and even if he fled England and went abroad, I'm sure that Voldemort would still have kept looking for him until he found him and forced a final confrontation. However, it still takes an incredible amount of ruthlessness to raise a child to commit suicide for the greater good, and even if Dumbledore believed this was necessary, he still should have given both Harry and Snape the whole truth, and allowed them to make their own informed decisions.

Harry probably would still have agreed to follow Dumbledore's plan. He may act recklessly at times, but he's proven that he's willing to risk his life for the people he cares about. And of course there is his deep love and respect for Dumbledore. Which now makes me feel uneasy, because I'm beginning to wonder just how far back Dumbledore's scheming went, and to what extent he would go to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled.

Dumbledore is a much more powerful wizard than Snape; why didn't he try to Obliviate Snape when he overheard the prophecy? But the prophecy can only be fulfilled if the Dark Lord marks the chosen one as his equal--which means that Voldemort has to know about the prophecy in order for it to work. So perhaps Dumbledore deliberately let Snape take the prophecy back to Voldemort--and deliberately placed the Potter and Longbottom families in danger.

Or perhaps Dumbledore did Obliviate Snape--partially. When Trelawney gives a true prophecy, she remains in trance and does not remember what she said. However, she clearly remembers her job interview with Dumbledore being interrupted by Snape, and Dumbledore told Harry that Snape heard only the first half of the prophecy. If Dumbledore is telling the truth, Snape's interruption would have startled Trelawney out of her trance and interrupted the prophecy. I suppose it's possible that she might have gone back into trance and continued prophesizing after he left, but it doesn't seem very likely. Is this just a plot inconsistency that JKR overlooked? Or did Snape hear the entire prophecy, and Dumbledore altered his memories so that he remembered only the first half--the half that would let Voldemort know that the child in the prophecy was a danger to him, but not the half that would warn him that he would be risking transferring his power to the child by marking that child as his equal?

Which then leads me to the question, did Dumbledore help Voldemort choose Harry as his target? Both the Potter and Longbottom families fit the description in the prophecy, but as far as I recall, only the Potters went into hiding. Did Dumbledore send them into hiding because, as he told Harry, Voldemort automatically assumed that the half-blood baby was his potential rival, or did Voldemort assume that Harry was the child in the prophecy because the Potters went into hiding? Maybe I'm speculating a little too much here, but it's a question that occurs to me, given Dumbledore's Machiavellian nature.

Regardless of how Voldemort decided that Harry was the child who was prophesized, did Dumbledore then want him to attack Harry and mark him as an "equal," even if that resulted in the death of his parents? This seems especially cold-blooded, even for Dumbledore. On the other hand, it is for the greater good, right? Perhaps two lives aren't too much of a price to pay, weighed against hundreds, or thousands, or perhaps even millions.

Whether Dumbledore intended it or not, Harry became an orphan. So giving him the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that the attack on the Potters was not part of his master plan, why did he give Harry to the Dursleys? He must have had some knowledge of Petunia and how much she resented the wizarding world. Did James have no relatives, not even second or third cousins, who might be willing to take Harry in and give him a good home? Even if there were no Potter relatives left, why not give Harry to a foster home where he would be loved, like the Weasleys?

Perhaps he feared that all the fame and adulation in the wizarding world would go to Harry's head. Of course, if Sirius had not been imprisoned, he would have become Harry's guardian, and Harry would have been raised in the wizarding world. I've always wondered why Dumbledore apparently raised no objections to Sirius's imprisonment without trial, why he didn't seem to have doubts about the guilt of a man who had been James's best friend, or try to see Sirius to ask what why he had gone over to Voldemort and betrayed the Potters. But maybe it was convenient for Dumbledore to have Sirius out of the way. Arrogant, reckless, immature Sirius would not be a very responsible guardian, and he was not likely to raise the kind of self-sacrificing child that Dumbledore needed. And in spite of his faults, Sirius did love Harry, and he wasn't likely to allow Dumbledore to sacrifice him.

The question of Sirius aside, was there not a safe way to place Harry with a loving adoptive Muggle family? I know that Dumbledore said he wanted to give Harry the blood protection that only Petunia could offer, but were there no other spells or wards that could hide him, at least temporarily? The risk was lessened at the time, since Voldemort was currently disembodied. Even if it was absolutely necessary that Harry had to live with the Dursleys, why didn't Dumbledore make sure that they didn't abuse him, even if they didn't treat him with kindness? Remember, Mrs. Figg was watching over Harry, and presumably she made regular reports to Dumbledore. While she didn't see all the abuse that went on inside the house, surely she must have noticed that they mistreated him.

Maybe this was part of Dumbledore's plan. Maybe he wanted Harry to be treated like an unwanted stepchild, so that he would bond all the more deeply to Dumbledore when they met in the wizarding world. After being neglected and unloved by the Dursleys, a kindly mentor like Dumbledore, who treats him with affection and tells him that he's someone special, is sure to seem like a savior to Harry. And this would help to ensure that Harry loyally and unquestioningly follows his plans. That Dumbledore came to love Harry was an unexpected glitch in his plans, but he appears to have overcome that flaw in the end. Notice, though, that much like with his planned death, Dumbledore leaves the actual dirty work up to Snape, because it is actually from Snape's memories that Harry learns he must sacrifice himself to defeat Voldemort.

After writing all this, another question just occurred to me. Why did Dumbledore not use this carrot-and-stick approach with Snape as well? Like Harry, Snape was a lonely and neglected child; Dumbledore probably could have won Snape's undying loyalty if he had shown him kindness and affection when he first came to Hogwarts. Even later, when he was a more jaded but desperate young adult, Dumbledore might still have been able to win his loyalty by showing him some understanding and compassion.

But as a child, Snape probably did not seem that important to Dumbledore. He was only a poor half-blood child, not the Boy Who Lived. Moreover, he was a Slytherin, Sorted into a House that prizes ambition as its chief attribute, and Dumbledore came to despise his own ambition after Ariana's death. So when he tells Snape, "You disgust me," I think that he sees a reflection of himself in Snape, and it is really himself that he is disgusted by. Snape repulses him, I think, because Dumbledore wants to forget about his past mistakes rather than face up to them--which might account for his estrangement from Aberforth. If he were more willing to face the painful memories of his past, he might have been able to relate better to Snape and use his own experiences to help Snape avoid making the same mistakes. But that would mean admitting to his mistakes and proving to one of his underlings that he is fallible--which would undermine his authority, which seems to be very important to him. He cannot bring himself to surrender his authority even when he makes a drastic mistake, such as the one that results in Sirius's death, by keeping Sirius confined and by not confiding in Harry. And even knowing that failing to keep Harry informed was a mistake, he still did not tell Harry--or Snape--the whole truth, but instead continued to parcel out information piece by piece. Dumbledore may have felt remorse for his actions, but I would argue that his core character never really changed.

Now, I should add at this point that I don't necessarily object to JKR portraying Dumbledore as a "manipulative rat bastard," as I've heard him referred to on this community before ;). It doesn't make me like him, and as I said earlier, I'd never want to entrust a child to his care, but it does potentially make for an interesting and complex theme in the books, to show a morally ambiguous hero who sometimes uses methods that seem better suited to the villain of the story. The problem is, as was pointed out in the_bitter_word's essay on Dumbledore, JKR has said in an interview that Dumbledore was "an innately good man". So I have the impression that she expects the readers to ultimately view his actions as noble and forgive him as Harry does. But does an innately good man treat people like pawns on a chessboard, or plot to have a child commit suicide, even if it's to save all of Britain? I would be less troubled if she had said something like, "He was a basically good man, but had several deep moral flaws," although I think that some people would still question whether he is actually good. Perhaps it would be most accurate to say that he had good intentions, but his overconfidence in his own wisdom blinded him to his own flaws.

I can't really say what I would have done in Dumbledore's place. If Harry had fled as Aberforth suggested, the Death Eaters would still be in charge of the wizarding world, and although the Order and their allies would still have kept fighting, many people would have died. On the other hand, I don't feel that I have the right to sacrifice another human being for the greater good. There are no easy answers here, and Dumbledore makes for a fascinating character study. I just wish that JKR hadn't dismissed his dark side and complexities so easily with that "innately good" comment.