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

Dumbledore. Whether he is benign or cold and calculating, Dumbledore has never before left things up to chance. Why does he not appear to have his bases covered?

The Flaw in the Plan

Dumbledore bares his soul to Harry the most in the climax of Order of the Phoenix, when he is talking about the prophecy and his plan to take care of Harry. This very illuminating quote emerges from that conversation:

“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 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.” (OP838)

It seems to me as if this entire quote can be applied to two plans. The first—the one Dumbledore speaks of in context—is to tell Harry about the prophecy and about his destiny to defeat Voldemort. However, taken out of context this quote can apply almost exactly to Dumbledore’s other grand plan: that of Harry sacrificing himself so the Scarcrux is destroyed.

Once Dumbledore began suspecting that Harry has a bit of Voldemort’s soul in him (at the end of Goblet of Fire), Dumbledore must have realized that Harry would have to die in order for Voldemort to be killed. When Harry relates how Voldemort used his blood to regenerate, Dumbledore has an infamous “gleam of triumph” in his eyes (GF696). This meant that Voldemort had tethered Harry’s life to his own. By using Harry’s blood to regenerate, which included Lily’s protective charm, he ensured that Harry would not be killed by Voldemort should it come to that. In other words, Dumbledore now had hope that Harry might survive the destruction of the Scarcrux.

However, there was no guarantee. All of this magic was completely unprecedented, and Dumbledore confesses that he only “guessed” at all of this (DH710). So Dumbledore still believed that, when the time came, there was a very real possibility that Harry would die.

But when the time came for Dumbledore’s scheming and plotting, when he set up a course for Harry to follow after learning that he (Dumbledore) only had a year to live, he fell into the exact same trap. He cared too much about Harry and wanted to delay the moment when Harry might have to die.

This quote also gives the reason why he did not tell Harry of his upcoming sacrifice. Surely by the end of HBP, Harry had proven himself to be exceptionally selfless, and he would have embraced his mortality. Dumbledore argues that “Harry must not know, not until the last moment, not until it is necessary, otherwise how could he have the strength to do what must be done?” (DH685) This is very feeble reasoning indeed, coming from someone who has watched Harry as closely as Dumbledore did. His high opinion of Harry must have made it clear that Harry would, in fact, do what was needed. Dumbledore was nearly thwarted once before by underestimating Harry way back in Sorcerer’s Stone, when Harry managed to get the Stone out of the Mirror. It’s unlikely he’d repeat that mistake.

But Dumbledore “cared more for [his] happiness than [his] knowing the truth, more for [his] peace of mind than [the] plan.” Otherwise, Dumbledore would have informed Harry of the sacrifice that was needed, and Harry would have proceeded as necessary.

Dumbledore cared “more for [Harry’s] life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed.” This statement is touching in the context of Order of the Phoenix, because the only life that has been lost thus far is Sirius’s—which is tragic in its own right but is only one person. But when that statement is applied to the grander plan, it takes on a quite sinister tone. Dumbledore was gambling hundreds of lives, he was gambling the entire future of the wizarding world, in order to keep Harry alive and happy a little longer.

And it really was an “all in” gamble, because Dumbledore was gambling both Plan A and Plan B. Plan A (Harry’s self-sacrifice doesn’t actually kill him, allowing him to beat Voldemort) is defunct if Harry tries to kill Voldemort while the Scarcrux still tethers Voldemort to life. Plan B (Harry’s self-sacrifice imbues everyone with magical protection, so someone else beats Voldemort) is defunct if Harry never intends to sacrifice himself, because then no one will have the magical protection against Voldemort. Voldemort’s would-be vanquisher would be up against all of his formidable skill with no extraordinary protection as a defense. Dumbledore risked this all on a dangerous gamble for Harry’s sake.

Perhaps Dumbledore was Machiavellian, but when it came to Harry, he was very reluctantly so. Or to put it another way, Harry’s happiness was an end for Dumbledore that justified almost any means. . . superseded only by the need to defeat Voldemort once and for all.

So Dumbledore’s emotions got in the way. In late February, he has a heated exchange with Snape and tells Snape to come to his office. By this point, Dumbledore has had three private lessons with Harry, and has grown ever fonder of the boy. During that third lesson, Harry relates without a trace of irony how he told the Minister of Magic he was “Dumbledore’s man through and through”—a statement that nearly reduced Dumbledore to tears (HBP357). So it is with an exceedingly heavy heart that Dumbledore amends his plans one final time and comes up with two new plans to supplement Plan A and Plan B.

Plan C: Procrastinating Harry’s Pain

If you’ll recall Plan A, it seems to be well thought out and sensible in its execution, with the glaring exception of Step 3: alerting Harry to the need for his death. As we’ve discussed, the only reason for Dumbledore not telling Harry this