The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore by Irvin Khaytman (ereader with dictionary txt) 📕

So there, in one fell swoop, Dumbledore confirms his suspicions about two Horcruxes: Nagini and the unintentional Horcrux in Harry’s scar. Upon confirming the exact nature of Harry’s connection to Voldemort and realizing that Voldemort is now aware of the mental aspect of the connection, Dumbledore wastes no time in setting up Harry’s Occlumency lessons.

Dumbledore cannot do anything about Nagini the Horcrux just yet, and certainly nothing about Harry. And he still does not know how many Horcruxes were created. However, he knows it would be sensible of Voldemort to have at least one traditional Horcrux designed only to keep the piece of soul safe, and neither the diary nor Nagini qualify because they are both intended for offensive use.

Nagini is frequently sent forth to do Voldemort’s bidding, like sneaking into the Ministry of Magic or biting Hogwarts faculty. As for the diary, “Riddle really wanted that diary read, wanted the piece of his soul to inhabit or possess somebody else, so that Slytherin’s monster would be unleashed again.” (HBP501) With both of these, Voldemort used the bits of his soul as weapons in his arsenal, but that lessened their effectiveness as safeguards of his immortality. As Dumbledore tells Harry, “The point of a Horcrux is [. . .] to keep part of the self hidden and safe, not to fling it into somebody else’s path and run the risk that they might destroy it—as indeed happened.” (HBP501) So there is at least one other Horcrux out there that Voldemort is using defensively, as it was intended.

Of the other potential candidates, Dumbledore is fairly confident that the Peverell ring is one, since he has Morfin’s memory and likely saw Tom Riddle wearing it. Something should be done about that, but Dumbledore’s moves are limited for the next four months. . . until a certain sneak helps him out without realizing it.

Hunting Horcruxes

At first glance, the Horcrux hunt only began in Half-Blood Prince, which should strike the attentive reader as rather odd. After all, why wait to start hunting them down? Well, actually, the hunt began when Umbridge kicked Dumbledore out of Hogwarts. We know that it takes Dumbledore the better part of a year in HBP to track down the locket Horcrux’s original location. Yet in July 1996 (summer between Books 5 and 6), Dumbledore found and destroyed the ring Horcrux. This was not simply good luck—Dumbledore spent his time since leaving Hogwarts in OotP hunting down the ring Horcrux. After all, before Dumbledore leaves we get this little gem: “‘Oh no,’ said Dumbledore, with a grim smile, ‘I am not leaving to go into hiding.’” (OP622) No indeed, Dumbledore is going off to do some Horcrux hunting!

This was the crux of Dumbledore’s plan to use the prophecy as a decoy. Dumbledore probably realizes that one of Voldemort’s top priorities is killing him. Dumbledore wants to hunt down Horcruxes unmolested (for if Voldemort finds out, that’d defeat the whole purpose). So he had better make extra-sure Voldemort’s attention is focused exclusively on something else. The plan works swimmingly—Dumbledore gets several uninterrupted months of Horcrux hunting without anyone being the wiser.

In fact, he was actually planning for something like this. Certainly, he seems prepared when Umbridge discovers the DA and goes on the warpath. Considering how concerned he is about the students of Hogwarts, it seems rather unlike Dumbledore to leave them at Umbridge’s mercy just to cover up for Harry and the DA, unless he had something rather important to be doing. And in his little speech to Fudge, Dumbledore indicates that he does have important plans: “I could break out [of Azkaban], of course—but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing.” (OP620)

Of course, this is partially Dumbledore being snarky for the heck of it. He has lost all patience with the Ministry, and he no longer politely acquiesces to them the way he did in CoS and PoA. But everything Jo writes is there for a reason, and this statement was her signal that Dumbledore had something important to be doing at the time.

Dumbledore was waiting for an opportunity to be “kicked out” of Hogwarts. He could have stayed if he so wished, but at first opportunity, he invites Fudge and Umbridge to “force” him to go on the run. This makes sense—Dumbledore cannot go Horcrux hunting if it would make Umbridge and Fudge suspicious, but once he saw an opening to leave for a few months, he took it. It just illustrates how crafty Dumbledore is.

And this was the ultimate payoff from the prophecy decoy. Dumbledore has kept Voldemort chasing after the prophecy (with increasing effort) for ten months at this point, from late June 1995 to late April 1996.29 He was doing research while Voldemort was occupied, and that was very nice, but now he has two months to hunt a Horcrux while Voldemort remains obsessed with the prophecy. All in all, the decoy was a resounding success.

The Occlumency Gamble

Dumbledore may have succeeded in distracting Voldemort with the prophecy for a good long while, but eventually the time ran out because another plan of Dumbledore’s had failed: having Harry learn Occlumency. I’ve said before that Dumbledore likes controlled situations, but in Order of the Phoenix, he sends his two most valuable and volatile assets—Harry and Snape—into an emotionally charged situation with more variables than he can hope to control.

Dumbledore genuinely believes that teaching Harry Occlumency himself is the equivalent of hanging a “Welcome Voldemort!” sign in Harry’s mind, and Snape is the only other one qualified to teach Harry Occlumency. So Dumbledore does his best to impress upon both parties—as well as upon those adults to whom Harry would listen—the importance of this exercise. But even if by some miracle the personality clash does not completely derail the exercise, there is another danger: Harry breaking into Snape’s mind and seeing an awful lot of things he shouldn’t.

At this