insincere
(Anonymous)
"... in the end of DH he at least seemed to regret the pain he caused."
Or he manages to fake it for a few seconds, when reminded of the appropriateness of doing so.
At any rate, that's how it seems to me; I can't reconcile true remorse with his huge confident smile and assumption of welcome at the beginning of that scene: "sprightly and upright ... smiling still more broadly ... still beaming ... Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light, like fire: Harry had never seen the man so utterly, so palbably content, etc"
Still less with the smugness of '"I guessed. But my guesses have, usually, been good," said Dumbledore happily.'
Until Harry mentions the Deathly Hallows, I see in King's Cross Dumbledore no consciousness of wrongdoing, no self-doubt, no apology; not even attempts at self-justification, which would at least show an inner doubt of his own rightness. And after Harry brings up the Hallows, the only doubts Dumbledore does express are in relation to
1) Harry's trust - ie whether he should have told him things sooner (immediately followed by self-justifying excuses of why he didn't)
2) his own obsession with the Hallows - whether his search for the Halows made him the same as Voldemort. (And how easily he accepts Harry's reassurances.)
Nothing else in his conduct of the war or the school seems to trouble him: no specific acts of omission or commission or misdirection or manipulation. In that whole scene, the most fault Dumbledore admits is in relation to his youthful flirting with GG and world domination, his subsequent reluctance to confront him, plus his continued desire for the Stone Hallow. But where is there *any* remorse for letting a whole house be taken over by one psychopathic former student? For enabling student bullies and murderers, whether Slytherin or Gryffindor? For using and discarding lives with reckless abandon?
He sounds "unbearably bitter" when he describes his reaction to the Potters' death, "and then your father died, and I had two of the Hallows at last, all to myself!" but it's *Harry* who links that to whether Dumbledore's actions endangered Harry's parents, and since Harry is eager to exonerate, no apology for that is ever asked for. Or given.
And yet an apology is definitely called for. He couldn't know beforehand that the Cloak wouldn't give Harry's parents enough of an advantage to escape an attack, so how could he justify taking it even for "a few days" let alone the three months that Lily's letter implies?
(Was Dumbledore lying or misremembering when he fudged that timeline? Lily's letter, which mentions his possession of the Cloak, seems to have been written immediately after Harry's July 31 birthday, and the Potters didn't die till October 31.)
I would say an apology for bringing up Harry as a pig to the slaughter was also called for - or at least a reference to having looked at alternate strategies. Harry might blithely assume that there were no other options, but he's a youth of seventeen, who's known the truth for not even an hour. Dumbledore, with almost a century's more life experience and knowledge than Harry and *years* of information on this point (not to mention a much better brain), might have found other strategies that Harry can't even imagine.
If he'd tried.
...
I can. Whether it would have been possible to locate Vapourmort and take him out with Dementors, or capture and contain him (as was done with GG), or even ask the House elves for advice on where a Horcrux could be hidden in Hogwarts (to name but three) we'll never know...
duj
Or he manages to fake it for a few seconds, when reminded of the appropriateness of doing so.
At any rate, that's how it seems to me; I can't reconcile true remorse with his huge confident smile and assumption of welcome at the beginning of that scene: "sprightly and upright ... smiling still more broadly ... still beaming ... Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light, like fire: Harry had never seen the man so utterly, so palbably content, etc"
Still less with the smugness of '"I guessed. But my guesses have, usually, been good," said Dumbledore happily.'
Until Harry mentions the Deathly Hallows, I see in King's Cross Dumbledore no consciousness of wrongdoing, no self-doubt, no apology; not even attempts at self-justification, which would at least show an inner doubt of his own rightness. And after Harry brings up the Hallows, the only doubts Dumbledore does express are in relation to
1) Harry's trust - ie whether he should have told him things sooner (immediately followed by self-justifying excuses of why he didn't)
2) his own obsession with the Hallows - whether his search for the Halows made him the same as Voldemort. (And how easily he accepts Harry's reassurances.)
Nothing else in his conduct of the war or the school seems to trouble him: no specific acts of omission or commission or misdirection or manipulation. In that whole scene, the most fault Dumbledore admits is in relation to his youthful flirting with GG and world domination, his subsequent reluctance to confront him, plus his continued desire for the Stone Hallow. But where is there *any* remorse for letting a whole house be taken over by one psychopathic former student? For enabling student bullies and murderers, whether Slytherin or Gryffindor? For using and discarding lives with reckless abandon?
He sounds "unbearably bitter" when he describes his reaction to the Potters' death, "and then your father died, and I had two of the Hallows at last, all to myself!" but it's *Harry* who links that to whether Dumbledore's actions endangered Harry's parents, and since Harry is eager to exonerate, no apology for that is ever asked for. Or given.
And yet an apology is definitely called for. He couldn't know beforehand that the Cloak wouldn't give Harry's parents enough of an advantage to escape an attack, so how could he justify taking it even for "a few days" let alone the three months that Lily's letter implies?
(Was Dumbledore lying or misremembering when he fudged that timeline? Lily's letter, which mentions his possession of the Cloak, seems to have been written immediately after Harry's July 31 birthday, and the Potters didn't die till October 31.)
I would say an apology for bringing up Harry as a pig to the slaughter was also called for - or at least a reference to having looked at alternate strategies. Harry might blithely assume that there were no other options, but he's a youth of seventeen, who's known the truth for not even an hour. Dumbledore, with almost a century's more life experience and knowledge than Harry and *years* of information on this point (not to mention a much better brain), might have found other strategies that Harry can't even imagine.
If he'd tried.
...
I can. Whether it would have been possible to locate Vapourmort and take him out with Dementors, or capture and contain him (as was done with GG), or even ask the House elves for advice on where a Horcrux could be hidden in Hogwarts (to name but three) we'll never know...
duj