The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore Read online

  That should be read as:

  “Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore’s death was planned between them!” (true)

  “Dumbledore intended to die undefeated, the wand’s last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand’s power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!” (true. . . until Dumbledore realized he would be dying in the middle of the war against Voldemort)

  This is Harry getting snappish with Voldemort and not explaining himself properly. Then again, he is not a villain, and therefore not as experienced at monologuing for an audience. What he is attempting to communicate is that Dumbledore originally intended to die undefeated “if all had gone as planned.” But when it turned out that Dumbledore would be dying before the war ended, that plan changed.

  Choosing a Lieutenant

  Anyway, Dumbledore finds out he has a year to live. And this changes everything. Someone else will have to take up the mantle and defeat Voldemort, and Dumbledore will have to split his energies between preparing his replacement and doing all he can now in order to leave less for them to do. So, who should he groom to take over?

  Harry seems like the obvious choice in retrospect, but why couldn’t someone else have tackled the Horcruxes while Harry concerned himself only with dealing with Voldemort? “McGonagall is a very worthy second in command,” Jo once said in an interview. Snape is certainly both capable and cunning, though surely a tad busy playing double duty for two bosses. There’s Kingsley, Lupin, Moody, any number of wizards and witches who would take up the mission. As Molly Weasley says, “if Dumbledore needed work doing, he had the whole Order at his command!” (DH88)

  In the end, Dumbledore chooses Harry for several reasons, despite his youth and magical inexperience. Harry has experience dealing directly with Voldemort, both from a standpoint of understanding him, and of working through his magical traps. This is, of course, largely by Dumbledore’s own design. Recall that in Sorcerer’s Stone, Dumbledore orchestrated a very elaborate scheme purely to give Harry this valuable experience for the first time. Now, Harry is old hat at fighting Voldemort. When Dumbledore dies, Voldemort is going to have a lot of legroom, and Harry will likely have to be on the run—why not have him doing something useful?

  Dumbledore’s first order of business is to get to Slughorn, so Slughorn can provide the last crucial piece of information: how many Horcruxes Voldemort has made. And there is no more time to waste, so he deploys Harry, first to get Slughorn to come to Hogwarts, then by setting Harry the task of retrieving the memory. Dumbledore kills two birds with one stone by making Harry get the memory from Slughorn. Not only does it get Dumbledore the memory at long last, it also provides Harry with experience wheedling information about Voldemort from reluctant people. We see how this comes in handy with the Grey Lady, much later.

  A brief aside: Dumbledore finally gives Snape the D.A.D.A. position that Snape has so coveted, for two reasons. First and foremost, Dumbledore is just really desperate to get Slughorn to Hogwarts, so it’s necessary to have both Snape and Slughorn teaching. But Dumbledore also knows that if Snape kills him within the year, he won’t return to the job afterwards, so he isn’t worried about the jinx on the job taking Snape out of the picture prematurely.32

  Dumbledore knows from Snape that Voldemort “believes the school will soon be in his grasp, yes.” (DH682) At this point, Dumbledore had just gotten Hogwarts back from Umbridge’s regime, and has seen the damage she wrought: Hagrid attacked and exiled, McGonagall hospitalized, etc. Voldemort would want someone sympathetic running Hogwarts—if one of Voldemort’s minions takes over Hogwarts, things would be even worse than they were under Umbridge.

  So Dumbledore creates a contingency plan to protect the students of Hogwarts: have Snape convince Voldemort to appoint him headmaster, so Snape can influence goings-on at Hogwarts. It’s not like a lot of his Death Eaters would make particularly good school administrators—Snape seems the obvious choice. Dumbledore asks Snape for “your word that you will do all in your power to protect the students at Hogwarts?” (DH682)

  And if Voldemort does not gain control of Hogwarts before the next term starts, it’s hard to see Headmistress McGonagall welcoming Snape back to his teaching post after Snape killed Dumbledore. So however it works out, Snape need not worry about getting around the jinx to teach D.A.D.A. a second year.

  Dumbledore prepares Harry to be his successor in a number of ways. The most obvious is by giving Harry much of the invaluable knowledge Dumbledore has acquired about Tom Riddle, through the use of the memories in the Pensieve. But also significant is that Dumbledore creates a support network for Harry. He allows Harry to bring Ron and Hermione in on the secrets—a most un-Dumbledore-like move, but a necessary one because Harry will need allies. Dumbledore has been grooming the Trio for this since Sorcerer’s Stone; in particular, he places a lot of faith in Hermione to be the brains of the operation since she acquitted herself so admirably saving Sirius and Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban.

  Dumbledore picks up a lesson from Voldemort, Fudge, and Scrimgeour: he invests in making Harry a symbol. He needs to make sure all of his allies will rally to Harry’s side when need be. (He also needs a new torch-bearer for the cause, since that was his own role, and who better than the Boy Who Lived and the Chosen One?) We even get a glimpse of how Dumbledore was helping this along—witness this exchange between Kingsley and Lupin: “The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us!” / “Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.” (DH72)

  However, Dumbledore unwittingly handicapped Harry by maintaining his penchant for secrets and lies. It served Dumbledore well in Order of the Phoenix to keep everyone in the dark, because Dumbledore is capable of masterminding against Voldemort single-handedly. Harry, on the other hand, could certainly have used the help of powerful adult wizards during his quest. The decision to keep secrets from their followers is something Dumbledore and Voldemort have in common, and Harry follows suit to his detriment.

  Dumbledore also keeps up the Horcrux hunt as all this is going on. He knows Voldemort is likely to have made at least one more conventional Horcrux, because there’s the perfect candidate: Slytherin’s locket. It checks all the boxes—historical Hogwarts artifact, trumpets Voldemort’s Slytherin ancestry, is connected to snakes, and is known to have disappeared around Tom Riddle. So Dumbledore begins looking for the next Horcrux,33 and it takes him all of his last remaining year to find its hiding spot.

  But at the end of April, Harry finally has a Felix-Felicis-assisted breakthrough, and gets Dumbledore the memory from Slughorn. Dumbledore finally has the answer to the question that’s plagued him for almost two years: Voldemort wanted to make six Horcruxes.

  From here on out, it’s fairly straightforward for Dumbledore. The diary and ring are gone. Nagini makes three, though she must be the last one destroyed so as not to arouse Voldemort’s suspicions. Harry’s scar was the unwitting seventh Horcrux, which has a whole separate plan percolating around it. Slytherin’s locket and Hufflepuff’s cup make five. The only unknown is the sixth Horcrux, but some psychoanalysis of Voldemort reveals that it’s likely a relic of Ravenclaw’s.34 All that’s left to do is to hunt down as many of them as possible while still alive, and to show Harry the ropes.

  The Last Horcrux Lesson

  With so much going on—preparing Harry for the Horcrux hunt, looking for the locket, dealing with new Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour’s interference and Slughorn’s reticence, and plotting out the rest of the war—Dumbledore makes a mistake, and underestimates a teenage boy to his own peril (sound familiar?). Draco Malfoy is spending the entire year trying to kill Dumbledore and grows increasingly sloppy with his attempts. Dumbledore delegates the Draco problem to Snape and assumes Draco won’t actually achieve anything.35

  Perhaps if Dumbledore had realized the obvious parallels here, he would not have been so blasé about Draco. Consider: a teenage boy is recruited and groomed by the leader of a given side, charged with a
suicide mission, the seemingly impossible task of destroying the opposing side’s general.36 Both teenage boys would receive a crucial bit of assistance from Severus Snape. Yet while Dumbledore had complete faith in Harry succeeding, he did not have as high an opinion of Draco Malfoy.

  This results in Dumbledore being extremely cavalier about his ticking clock. He still has not told Harry half of what Harry needs to know about Horcruxes—for example, how to destroy them, which seems a rather crucial point. We can only assume that Dumbledore was planning on showing Harry how to destroy a Horcrux right after they got the locket, preferring to show rather than tell. However, at this point Dumbledore only had a month left to live, which is cutting it rather close.

  Dumbledore seemingly staked all his chips on this final Horcrux lesson with Harry, since presumably that’s when he would have told Harry about Gryffindor’s sword being an ideal tool for destroying Horcruxes. However, since he doesn’t get to, it’s only sheer dumb luck that saves Dumbledore’s plans from going up in flames. Harry gets the sword because Phineas Nigellus overhears where the Trio is camping through his portrait, allowing Snape to go and deliver the sword. It all worked out in the end, but it would have been much more sensible to tell Harry during one of their Horcrux lessons, “By the way, if I should kick the bucket, grab Gryffindor’s sword from my office right away!” I suppose no one’s planning is perfect.

  Much of the blame for how ill-equipped Harry is to hunt Horcruxes can be put at Draco’s feet. Draco managed to get Death Eaters into Hogwarts after all, leading to Dumbledore dying before he’d gotten all his ducks in a row. Of course, Draco interfered in Dumbledore’s plans in an even more significant way. . . stick a pin in that.

  We now come to the crux of this entire exercise and must determine what exactly Dumbledore dreamed up during Half-Blood Prince to end the war. I must warn you, from this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of Dumbledore’s mind into thickets of wildest guesswork. Figuring out Dumbledore’s plans thus far was challenging, because he is brilliant and works off-screen for the most part. But the gist of them can be gleaned with some amount of certainty. Figuring out his ultimate plans for Deathly Hallows is a Herculean task that required pages of notes taken from the last three books, the reconciling of myriad contradictions, and the extraction of copious coincidences. From here on in, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron (HBP197).

  Plan A: The Horcruxes

  We begin with the most straightforward plans: getting rid of the Horcruxes (including a sacrifice on Harry’s part) and defeating Voldemort. Note that these plans are probably all formed during the beginning of Half-Blood Prince, as soon as Dumbledore is aware he will not live to see the end of the war play out. After evaluating all of his options, Dumbledore comes up with a plan and a backup plan, both of which rely exclusively on two individuals: Harry and Snape.

  However the end will play out, both plans start with the same few steps.

  Snape becomes master of the Elder Wand upon killing Dumbledore.

  Harry destroys all the remaining Horcruxes somehow: the locket, cup, Nagini, and an unknown Horcrux of Ravenclaw’s.

  Harry is alerted to the fact that his scar is a Horcrux.

  Harry sacrifices himself to destroy the Scarcrux.

  Harry’s willing sacrifice imbues the wizarding world with the same protection that Harry got from Lily’s sacrifice, ensuring that Voldemort cannot hurt them anymore.

  However, from here events may play out in two different directions. There is one direction that Dumbledore anticipates it going in, and what he hopes for—let’s call this Plan A:

  Because Harry is tethered to life by Voldemort, he should theoretically not die when Voldemort tries to kill him.

  Harry comes back to life and proceeds to defeat Voldemort.

  Dumbledore can be reasonably assured that these first five steps will go according to plan. Let’s put the Elder Wand aside for a minute, since that has no bearing on the rest of Plan A. Assuming Harry manages to not get himself killed, he should be able to get rid of the Horcruxes eventually. This destruction of Horcruxes is the top priority, and Dumbledore does not mess with this part of the plan (except for the aforementioned glaring oversight of not getting Gryffindor’s sword to Harry in an efficient manner). Then, once Harry is informed of the Scarcrux, he will doubtless go to sacrifice himself, because that is who Harry is. And the protection spell should work out fine as well.

  The complications arise in the last two steps—namely, whether Voldemort tethering Harry to life would be enough to keep Harry actually alive. Recall that Voldemort used Harry’s blood to regenerate, and therefore Voldemort’s body is helping keep the enchantment of Lily’s sacrifice alive. Dumbledore thinks this will keep Harry alive. However, “[Harry] and Lord Voldemort have journeyed together into realms of magic hitherto unknown and untested.” (DH710) So Dumbledore cannot be sure whether Harry will live or not.

  In fact, Jo stresses that there was no way for Dumbledore to know that Harry would survive being killed by Voldemort. On her old website, she wrote, “It is important to state that I always saw these kinds of magic (the very deepest life and death issues) as essentially un-scientific; in other words, there is no “Elder Wand + Lily’s Blood = Assured Survival” formula.”

  If Harry does survive (the supposed and preferred outcome), he then goes about defeating the newly mortal Voldemort. This would still require prodigious skill, since Lord Voldemort’s powers are formidable. But Dumbledore believes it can be done, especially since Harry will have good allies and his trusty phoenix-feather wand with its complex relationship to Voldemort. But defeating Voldemort is of paramount importance, so a contingency plan is needed.

  It Is Our Choices

  Let us revisit Step 5: Harry’s willing sacrifice imbuing the wizarding world with magical protection from Voldemort. Dumbledore is hoping to invoke the same magic that gave Harry magical protection through Lily’s sacrifice, but on a grand scale. The crucial factor for that to work is choice: there must be a choice presented and a choice made for the sacrifice to result in magical protection.

  Knowing the power of such magic, Dumbledore has been emphasizing the importance of choices for years. It first comes up in the books’ most enduring quote, in Chamber of Secrets: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” (CS333)

  Dumbledore revisits the idea in Goblet of Fire after Cedric’s death: “Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort.” (GF724)

  It’s worth noting that every time Dumbledore explicitly brings up the importance of choices, it is always right after he receives a crucial piece of information about Voldemort’s Horcruxes. That information serves as a reminder to Dumbledore that he will have to invoke magic based on good choices in order to eliminate the Horcruxes. Or perhaps it’s because making Horcruxes is among the worst choices someone can make, and it just brings choices to Dumbledore’s mind. Either way, Horcruxes and choices are inextricably linked in the text.

  Finishing up the motif, Dumbledore and Harry’s final word on choices comes at the end of the final Horcrux lesson, in the chapter titled “Horcruxes,” where Dumbledore finally gets the crucial piece of information regarding multiple Horcruxes: that Tom Riddle intended to make seven.

  “It is essential that you understand this!” said Dumbledore, standing up and striding about the room, his glittering robes swooshing in his wake; Harry had never seen him so agitated.

  [. . .]

  “In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you . . . which makes it certain, really, that—”

 
“That one of us is going to end up killing the other,” said Harry. “Yes.”

  But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew—and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents—that there was all the difference in the world. (HBP510-512)

  There is not just a moral difference here, there is a magical difference. Intent matters in self-sacrificial magic just as much as it matters in casting Unforgivables: there is powerful magic whose efficacy depends entirely on choice. If Dumbledore intends to utilize this arcane branch of magic, it is imperative that Harry believes he has free will—otherwise, the magic won’t work. This is why Dumbledore is so agitated: all his plans rely on Harry’s buying in to this concept.

  But Dumbledore has done a good job over the years: Harry gets it in the end. As long as Harry is making a conscious choice to “walk into the arena with his head held high,” there will be all the magical difference in the world. And that will form the centerpiece of Dumbledore’s contingency plan.

  Plan B: Snape’s Redemption

  This plan is concerned with the eventuality of Harry dying by Voldemort’s hand. Let us assume the first five steps in Plan A occurred exactly as they would otherwise. Starting after Step 5, this plan diverges from Plan A: