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Canon question (DH)...

The World of Severus Snape

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Canon question (DH)...

[info]ensnarryed
8/5/11 06:35 pm
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When Voldy had just killed Harry's parents, leaving Harry orphaned, and Dumbledore is speaking with Snape about needing to protect Harry...

Snape is refusing, telling Dumbledore that the Dark Lord is gone for good and that Harry does not need protection.

Dumbledore tells Snape, instead, that Voldy will be back.

Question:How does Dumbledore know that Voldy is not defeated for good?

It can't be the prophecy that Dumbledore heard, b/c Snape eaves-dropped on it and he is not convinced that Voldy is coming back.
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  • Re: Happy to disagree :)

    [info]sionna_raven
    8/7/11 07:35 am (UTC)
    All right, now I see where our disagreement lies. I think Dumbledore knew of at least one regular (intentionally made) Horcrux from the day Voldemort applied for the DADA job. He saw the effect this Darkest Magic had on him. These effects seem to be normal and probably described in the books he keeps in his office. Symptoms which have occurred and been observed over centuries. To base his conviction that Voldemort hasn't truly died on that seems much more reasonable. I agree with you that the prophecy alone is not conclusive.

    ...given Dumbledore's distrust of the field of Divination...


    I tend to think that Dumbledore isn't exactly truthful in his expressed distrust of the field of Divination. He very rarely acts immediately on one piece of information, but he hires Trelawney on the spot after the prophecy. He doesn't even care that this gives more credibility to the otherwise dodgy incident. Many around here believe that Severus didn't take the prophecy too serious and only reported it to have something to report. All Dumbledore does from that day suggests that he firmly believes in the prophecy, no matter what he later says to Harry.

    • Re: Happy to disagree :)

      (Anonymous)
      8/7/11 11:12 am (UTC)
      Hmm... yeah, Dumbledore might have known Voldemort had a horcrux based on his appearance at the interview. However, there are at least some potential problems:

      1) I don't think we know that creating a single horcrux changes your appearance. If it doesn't, then Dumbledore wouldn't have identified the change with the creation of horcruxes at all.

      2) There could easily be other Dark Magic that causes the practitioner's appearance to change like that.

      3) Not a problem on the same level, but if Dumbledore knew about Voldemort having a horcrux that early, we've *really* got to ask why Dumbledore didn't start looking for horcruxes earlier than he did. This was loooong before the prophecy suggested how things would play out. I'd excuse him for not going after horcruxes right after Voldemort's interview, because he apparently hadn't done much yet, but Idon't think Dumbledore would have had *any* excuse for not looking at least as soon as the war started.

      Knowing about the Harrycrux from the start makes Dumbledore look bad in some ways, but at least he seems less incompetent.


      Re: Dumbledore's views of Divination: I *think* there's speculation that the whole thing, including his decision to hire Trelawney, was a ploy of some kind. At least until the prophecy started to come true. The fact that he let Severus leave with part of the prophecy, rather than Obliviating him, has been used as one reason to believe this. I'm not especially familiar with the theories surrounding that part of the books, though, so here I'll defer to people who are.

      Lynn

      • Re: Happy to disagree :)

        [info]oryx_leucoryx
        8/7/11 04:38 pm (UTC)
        Personally I think Albus believed in the prophecy but wanted to downplay Divination to others because he didn't want anyone else to ask too many questions about Trelawney's prophecy. But since he never studied the subject he didn't realize how tricky it was to interpret a prophecy correctly *before* it came to pass.

        Still, hard to know how he interpreted the prophecy before he had any additional facts, so hard to use that alone as an explanation of his decisions.

    • Re: Happy to disagree :)

      [info]oryx_leucoryx
      8/7/11 11:21 pm (UTC)
      We saw what Tom looked like after he made only 1-3 Horcruxes - the wasted look with eyes that only flashed red when he got angry. If there is any description of people with a Horcrux in wizarding literature that's it - not very abnormal. Tom was the first wizard to undergo the transformation we see when he came to interview - I can see Albus interpreting it as the result of Dark magic but he wouldn't connect it directly to a Horcrux because the symptoms were completely novel.
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