Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

Families

Parents

• Family: Married
  • Birth Father: Percival Dumbledore
  • Birth Mother: Kendra Dumbledore

Ancestors

Analysis

timeline Speculation

• Dumbledore became Headmaster after Lupin was bitten.¹ Since Lupin was a classmate of James and Lily, he was born in either late 1959 or early 1960.² Since he was bitten at age four, that puts us in approximately 1964.³
• However, Dumbledore’s memory of Riddle’s timeline says that Riddle’s job interview was ten years after he murdered Hepzibah Smith.⁴ That would mean that Riddle was with Borgin and Burke for something like 20 years.⁵ This seems improbable, as he is still described as “young” when he left the shop.⁶
• It does, however fit with the emergence of Riddle and the Death Eaters as a terrorist force, which the timeline places around 1970.
• Thus my guess is that Dumbledore collected the memory from the house elf ten years prior to the interview, not that the the house elf formed the memory ten years prior. Note, this actually puts Dumbledore in a really poor light.

Character Analysis

Some authors assume that Dumbledore is completely evil, and is in fact the Dark Lord of the prophecy.⁷ The problem with this is the “neither shall live” part, but then that is nearly as much of a problem if you look too closely at the cannon events. For myself, I do not think Dumbledore intentionally shaped Riddle into Voldemort,⁸ nor that he is secretly the most dastardly person imaginable. Dumbledore is not a saintly figure either mind you, but rather a complex one who requires more careful analysis to understand his flaws in the right context.

Musings of Apathy, in writing the original version of Family Inseparable, envisions Dumbledore as (my words) misguided, and perhaps ruthless, but not evil.⁹ There is some truth to this. Personally, I am convinced that Dumbledore believes some form of Utilitarianism. Whether he absorbed this from Gellert Grindelwald,¹⁰ or learned it from his own parents is more than I am perpared to say. It even is possible that Grindelwald got the idea from Dumbledore. Moreover, for all that “the Greater Good” would become Grindelwald’s slogan,¹¹ I do not believe that Dumbledore ever, if at all, fully abandoned his internal commitment to Utilitarian philosophy. Dumbledore may have had to learn to live with the “price of [his] shame,”¹² but I cannot find anywhere that says he actually came to believe his moral reasoning had been flawed.

Dumbledore’s father went to prison for unilaterally using magic to punish some non-magical boys who so tramatized Ariana Dumbledore that she lost control of her mental facualties, and with that, her control over her magic.¹³ This belief that he had the right to vengance speaks to a belief in superiority that seems common to the wizarding world, we see it in the Weasleys as well for example.¹⁴ Dumbledore no doubt grew up seeing the world this way, instinctively believing those without magic to be lesser than him. I believe he took it a step further. I believe he saw those with lesser magical ability as lesser than him as well. He is a kind of ivory tower intelectual who views those who lack his achievements as perpetual children, irregardless of their actual age relative to himself. As he grows older, this is exacerbated Many of the adult decision makers he now works with were once his students, not his peers, far less ever adults over him.

One of the things that really struck me as I started to really think about the Harry Potter books (as opposed to just enjoying them as stories), is just how valid some of the common fan fiction criticisms of Dumbledore are. In no particular order:

• Dumbledore does not seem to know about the horcruxes until he is presented with the diary. He knew Riddle had survived the Halloween encounter with Harry, and that Slughorn knew something about this,¹⁵, but apparently did nothing to investigate this beyond just enough questions to drive Slughorn away from Hogwarts.¹⁶
• Harry’s scar as a horcrux:
  • Saving the Saviour talks about how Dumbledore didn’t have Harry examined at all by a Healer after that fateful Halloween night. Could the soul fragment Riddle left have been detected? Could something have been done about it?
  • See the discussion on Harry’s scar in Horcruxes
• More or less a follow up to the previous point, but further consider. Dumbledore states that he did not know that Harry would survive. Dumbledore hoped that Harry would. Dumbledore, by his own admission, knows that Harry will be willing to sacrifice himself. The reason implied is that Dumbledore is well aware of Harry’s heroic virtue. But when you consider how much Dumbledore hid from Harry, how calculated the final revelation is, I think there is more to it. Dumbledore is not leaving anything to chance - I agree with fan fiction authors who think that Dumbledore has, in the choices he has made regarding Harry’s upbringing, purposefully worked to shape Harry into someone who will make that choice. This does not negate Harry’s virtue; Dumbledore is building on Harry’s nature, not creating it out of whole cloth. Honestly, if Dumbledore were as calculating about subjecting Harry to abuse as some authors would have him, then he took an incredibly reckless chance. Dumbledore knows how similar Harry’s situation is to Riddle’s childhood. I think that this plan is something that Dumbledore came to over time, not something he intended from the beginning.
• Dumbledore placed Mrs. Figg to watch Harry. She knows she has to be unpleasant to him to retain access to him and thus fulfil her mission. Surely this was reported to Dumbledore over the years. He presumably did not believe her, possibly because she is a squib, and he has some of the pure-blood’s unconscious prejudices against them. Alternately, while he does believe her, he risks both Harry turning evil and Harry’s health, because he views the odds that Harry will be killed by a Death Eater and/or a returned Riddle that probable. There must have been some middle ground. Between Dumbledore’s civil authority on the Wizengamot, and his experience with and control over magic, he could have done something to intervene in Harry’s treatment.
• The above and much more concerning Harry.
• And even more about how he dealt with Riddle.

Against this collection of problems is Dumbledore’s friendship with Fawkes. How intelligent are phoenixes? Does the phoenix bond with its partner (popular in fan fiction), or is it more of a friendship thing? A phoenix in the HP world is a highly loyal creature.¹⁷ Would this loyalty persist if Dumbledore started to believe his own legend and allow power to corrupt him? We do not, to my knowledge, have good answers to any of these questions.

Fawkes slept soundly on his perch. Being willing to sacrifice one boy’s life and happiness was a horrible decision to make, but not an outright evil one. Plus, the stories everyone believed about phoenixes had been started by Dumbledore anyway. At the end of the day, though highly magical, unicorns were just horses and phoenixes were just birds.¹⁸

For my purposes, Fawkes recognises this good intent, but is not intelligent enough (a phoenix is an animal, not a being) to understand the flaws in Dumbledore’s execution. In any case, I am not about to allow an animal, particularly not a fictional representation of an even more fictional animal, to decide for me whether or not someone is acting morally or not. If you do convince me that the phoenix should be a moral indicator, then I would be forced to conclude that either Fawkes is held in bondage in some way¹⁹, or that Mrs. Rowling has misrepresented phoenix-kind.

Ms. Richa Venkatraman wrote a defence of Dumbledore on MuggleNet²⁰ in which she seems to express well the view that Harry himself has in the book, that Dumbledore is ultimately a good, if flawed, person. I suspect that Ms. Venkatraman is right, that Dumbledore suffers in his conscience from the pain he causes, and he does intend good. I differ from her in that I do not think that his intent sufficient such that he is in fact good (or at least, not wholely so). Dumbledore’s unstated philosophy seems way too close to “the ends justify the means,” and I am far from convinced that it differs in any important detail. Keep Holding On summarized this well:

The man sitting across from him, looking old and weary, had been involved in so many battles, so many wars, and had seen an infinite amount of casualties. He had defeated Grindelwald and had led the fight against Voldemort during the First War, and was gearing up for a second one. And it was because of all of this, Sirius realized, it was because of all the bloodshed, carnage, and violence he’d witnessed, that he was now numb to it. He could deliver platitudes, speak words of supposed wisdom to those who were grieving, but could not truly feel the losses anymore. His thoughts were always about the bigger picture, about who could be sacrificed to achieve the goal of defeating Voldemort. At that instant Sirius knew Albus still had a heart, still had a conscience, but it had been ravaged and spoiled by all it had seen.²¹

The ends (the greater good) do not justify the means (cooperating with (in a moral sense) the abuse Harry suffers). Similarly, Dumbledore is right, children do need to learn to deal with all sorts of people, even difficult authority figures.²² However, his responsibility, as headmaster, is to foster a healthy, safe, and effective learning environment. Students might learn a valuable lesson about dealing with difficult people from their interactions with Snape, but only at great cost to their education. Potions class is not a safe, healthy or effective learning environment.

Dumbledore’s “greater good” philosophy thus falls on the wrong side of the “Wrong Answers” objection to utilitarianism.²³ While I did not discuss that objection in my own attack, I did link to one. Dumbledore would, I believe, deny that he is guilty of this because he himself does not directly act to cause harm. For me, as a Catholic, this is an insufficient defence. Dumbledore is, effectively, relying on either the double effect defence (which can be valid), or is on the fact that he did not commit evil, others did that. He would be wise enough to use the two defences in different circumstances across the books.

The principle of the double effect can be a valid defence.²⁴ It only actually applies to morally good and morally neutral acts done for good ends that have incidental evil by-products. Thus Dumbledore might justify placing Harry with the Dursleys if he truly only intended to save his life, and did not also intend the “dark” and “difficult years”²⁵ to temper a perceived Potter tendency towards over-egoism. If Harry’s suffering was an aim of the placement, then the act was not morally good nor even morally neutral, and thus not protected by this principle even if saving his life was also intended. We naturally cannot definitively know which of these alternatives is the case. That being said, the one thing I keep coming back to is echoed in at least one fan fiction I have read:

No, he could not admit he knew anything about the abuse. He could not admit that he had actually planned for it, to keep young Harry humble and meek; that he was now trying to duplicate it through Serverus’ good offices.

The world did not need another Voldemort: a powerful magical user working at the top of his skill level, with curiosity and drive and ambition. And with enough hatred to doom the entire world.

The world also did not need a Harry Potter raised by Sirius Black amid privilege and wealth and freedom. That wouldn’t do.

No, the world needed this Harry, shy, polite, an indifferent student, and utterly incurious, save for what he could learn about his parents.²⁶

While that fan fiction’s depiction of Harry is somewhat out of character, it is close enough that the depiction of Dumbledore’s thoughts, here quoted, is disturbingly believable. Dumbledore had some power in the Wizengamot, though we do not know how much we do know that on his word alone Snape is kept out of Azkaban.²⁷ Despite this, Dumbledore claims to be totally unable to assist Sirius in exonerating himself. Is this just a convenient excuse to prevent Sirius from being able to adopt Harry?

Other acts Dumbledore would have to defend by saying it was not his actions in any sense. Dumbledore directed Snape to teach Occlumency, and claims he trusted that it would be done professionally.²⁸ He would say he is morally blameless for the lack of oversight not only for these lessons, but for all of Snape’s behaviour across the series. Again, this argument falls short. Dumbledore has assigned Snape this role, and has ignored complaints about the way the role has been executed, not just once, but repeatedly. Thus Dumbledore is, in Catholic terms, guilty of (in this case) Immediate Material Cooperation with evil²⁹ (Dubmledore’s protection of Snape is necessary for the act). Once Snape is accused, Dumbledore’s failure to investigate forces this determination (or at least Proximate Mediate Material Cooperation, which is still a guilt condition). This is just one example, others are possible.

Notice that even with Remote Mediate Material Cooperation, Catholic theology would require that Dumbledore exercise caution. Should he truly be unknowing, then he is naturally blameless, but I suspect he’s more often being wilfully ignorant if not aware and actually negligent. He is, to the extent that he does know of the evil results, or could and should know if he exercised a normal level of prudence, required to assess if his actions have a proportionately serious reason. I suspect that Dumbledore always does this, so he is not guilty where his cooperation is Remote Mediate Material Cooperation.

There comes a point at which the way he (Dumbledore) has been blind to the situation with Snape ceases to be an act of omission, of merely neglecting to do (or even notice) something, and makes one an active accomplice. Dumbledore allowed both the marauders and the Weasley twins what appears to have been fairly free reign. The marauders certainly and the Weasleys likely crossed the line between humour and cruelty in their so called pranks. Given that Snape and Filch are our primary source for this opinion and that neither is reliable, take any impression of the two sets of pranksters with a grain of salt. For a discussion on Dumbledore it does not really matter. As Headmaster, he was responsible to keep all students safe. If the marauder’s pranks were justified by the injustice they fought, so much the worse for Dumbledore. If the pranks were truly unjustified, the difference hardly helps his (Dumbledore’s) case. Either way the students had to defend themselves with no intervention from authority.

Now sure, it isn’t entirely fair to hold Dumbledore fully accountable to Catholic theology when he isn’t Catholic. That isn’t to say that Catholic teachings aren’t universally true and applicable, they are. Rather, I am allowing that Dumbledore may be granted some leniency because he may honestly think that his judgements are both cogent and true. To the extent that he is wrong about either the cogency or the ultimate validity of his values and judgements, he can be judged to be sinful, but not mortally sinful, and thus not evil. It is only where he is self deceptive, that is he knows his arguments are either not cogent or not based on true value propositions, that he can be held mortally accountable, and thus potentially evil. In this Dumbledore contrasts positively with Riddle, who quite frankly doesn’t care about either the cogency or the validity of his decisions. Dumbledore is certainly less evil though possibly more morally dangerous (in that he is more insidious) than Riddle.

Dumbledore might (almost certainly is) wrong about what the Greater Good looks like. He is certainly wrong about what he can and cannot do to achieve it. I do, however, think that it is actually some version of good for the greatest number of people, and not merely for himself, that guides his actions. The reader can decide if this is damning him with faint praise, or giving him what little credit is due.

That being said, was Dumbledore a master of manipulation, or was he just as much reacting to an out of control situating that he abhorred as Harry is? In other words, just how much of the world situation is he in fact responsible for? While we cannot ultimately know, I return to Dumbledore’s inaction. The end of Chapter 4 is too long to block quote and expect my point to come across, but it does convey what I am thinking fairly well. Consider:

• Dumbledore knows that Riddle will return: this is his justification for leaving Harry with the Dursleys.
• Dumbledore seemingly does nothing about this for eleven years.
• Dumbledore not only does nothing about Riddle, he allows Malfoy and others to be a continued influence on society.
• Dumbledore conveniently sets up a situation where Riddle will be at Hogwarts the same year Harry starts.³⁰
• Dumbledore learns of the Horcruxes no later than the end of the second book, yet it is not until the summer between the fifth and sixth that he has found even one.

This train of thought leads this version of Sirius to the following:

“No one will be hurting Harry even if I couldn’t get rid of the Horcrux- Oh I know Albus, one of the perks of coming from a family such as mine,” he finished leaning back again and continued studying his hand instead of looking at Albus, as if he was remembering something far away. “I never believed in that prophecy and will do everything to make sure that adults take care of the problem, not a child,” he turned to look Albus in the eye, “You can work with me or against me. But think on this, right now Voldemort is a disembodied spirit, have you thought of what might happen if we get rid of all the Horcrux he has made? Because I’m sure there wasn’t just that one. But tell me, what are you waiting for? You’ve had eleven years more than I did to figure all this out and act, what have you been doing? Waiting for Harry to grow up and do your job for you?”³¹

Dumbledore was approximately 100 years old when Riddle disappeared that Halloween in 1981. If he was too tired to deal with things, he should have retired. If he was not going to retire, then he should have acted. The whole Riddle situation reeks.

On titles

The quotes attributed to the Oracle of Delphi in The Greater Will put it well:³²

“Power is always useless when it is just possessed, merely collected like a bauble. The honors were meant for a protector. One must wonder how you ended up with them.”³³

“Mimicry may be the highest form of flattery,” she replied pointedly, “but mockery is just an insult. Goodness is not served by denying innocents their rightful protections in order to advance your own agenda. Goodness is not served by denying justice to those who have been wronged in order to purchase personal favors to be named at a later date. Goodness is not served when knowledge is hidden and innovation stifled in order to preserve the oppression which allows you to keep ahold of all your worthless titles and stolen honors. You are not a good man, Albus, warlock of Britannia.”³⁴

“Warlock fits you better than you know,” she stated in echoing tones. “The wizards of Britannia claimed it as a martial title for honoring feats of battle, but it has a far older meaning to Mother Magic, as a title for those who had forsaken their oaths of fidelity and protection, just as you have done.” She sliced her hands through the air as he opened his mouth to refute that accusation. “You will not attempt to spin your inaction as anything but a betrayal. A false show of humility is not a valid excuse for not using the authority granted to you in order to serve the needs of the people who trusted you to act in their best interests over your personal desires. If you truly did not believe you could be trusted with the power imbued in the roles, you should have passed them to another who could.”³⁵

Interestingly, Wikipedia confirms that “Warlock” does in fact imply both male magic user and betrayer.³⁶ This contrasts interestingly with “witch,”³⁷ “wizard”³⁸ and “sorcerer”³⁹ that apparently have an etymology of simply being a magic user. Any work trying to work in the Harry Potter universe has to go fictional at some point, since in true history magic is always associated with the pagan, the satanic, or both. So it is noteworthy that the common titles they use, “witch” and “wizard,” have no negative connotation outside of theology and theologically influenced culture, but that “warlock” would be used as a title when it does. My guess is that Mrs. Rowling though did not do this on purpose. It is merely an interesting coincidence that the Wizengamot would choose “warlock” as one of its leadership positions.

Vision for Society

So far I have primarily focused on what did Dumbledore know when, what should he have known when, and his use of power. I have only touched on his actual goals. If we agree with his goals, then his ineffectual leadership is a problem. If we disagree with his goals then his ability to persuade and delude people is a problem. There are few circumstances in which both are ever simultaneously a problem. Arguably the two wars precipitated by Riddle are, unfortunately, just such an event.

We know very little about the actual authority of the Chief Warlock, the Supreme Mugwump, or the Hogwarts Headmaster. What is the relationship, in modern times, between the Wizengamot and the Ministry of Magic? Is the Chief Warlock like the Speaker in the Muggle House of Commons? If so the power is real, minimal, and subtle.⁴⁰ i In a similar vein, what is the relationship between the Headmaster (or mistress) and the Hogwarts Board of Governors? What powers does each have? What discretion does each have? Does each have distinct areas of authority, or is it more like the relationship between the president of a company and the board of directors? I think even in the corporate world that different companies have different answers to this question based on the way they are chartered, so I cannot begin to guess how a school founded in the tenth century might operate. The ICW is even more mind boggling.

All this means that the pages I’ve devoted to trying to guess what Dumbledore could or could not have accomplished is largely guessing.

We know that Dumbledore was friends with Gellert Grindelwald.⁴¹ He broke with Grindelwald, and the precise nature of and grounds for their break are unknown and unclear. However, it seems clear to me that it was his sister that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, not a philosophical difference. Dumbledore could not accompany Grindelwald, and never would be able to.⁴² Ariana died sometime around 1898, based on Albus being born in 1881 and being 17 when she died.⁴³ Assuming Grindelwald’s defeat roughly coincides with the end of World War II in Europe, then Dumbledore finally confronts him in May of 1945, some 47 years later. That is a phenomenal amount of time for Dumbledore to have allowed Grindelwald to go unchecked if they actually disagreed. I have not seen them, but apparently part of the reason for the Fantastic Beasts prequel movies is to explain this inaction.⁴⁴ I will not give credence to this late addition to the time line.

More interesting is the question that is implicitly raised in the Deathly Hallows itself. If Grindelwald has the “unbeatable” Elder Wand, how does Dumbledore defeat him in a duel? He is famous for the duel, so one would think it would be well established as part of the historical record. If so, then the power of the Hallows is already broken, and he need not have the elaborate plot with Snape to ensure that he (Dumbledore) dies undefeated. The wand has already been defeated. This makes me think that there is something to Rita’s claims that there was in fact no duel.⁴⁵

Why lie about having duelled Grindelwald? To paraphrase Dumbledore himself, I am now leaving the few facts I have for the murky grounds of speculation. Grindelwald had become notorious, the outcry against him was such that their joint ideas for society were never going to gain ground under his leadership. Even if Grindelwald won the war, his government had no popular support, and would not stand. Dumbledore could see that even if Grindelwald either could not or would not. That is a far cry from actually disagreeing.

On the other hand Dumbledore himself was a half blood.⁴⁶ I think his blood status was too well known for him to get significant power in the pure blood dominated society of the early 1900s.⁴⁷ He wouldi not become Headmaster until the 1960s or early 1970s, I suspect he had been passed over at least once. It was his defeat of Grindelwald that gave him the stature to overcome his background and gain ground in the Wizengamot, to have become Headmaster at all, to have become Supreme Mugwump.

So if Dumbledore was going to advance the future that he and Grindelwald had mapped out in their youth, or at least the version of it that Dumbledore wanted (since they disagreed to some extent), the power of the old guard had to be broken.

But what would replace it? Democracy is a poor choice from Dumbledore’s perspective. He has never trusted people, but has grown up in an atmosphere of secrets and lies.⁴⁸ He alone is intelligent enough to see what must be done for the good of all. Sacrifices must be made, and the muggle born cannot be trusted to realise that their families must be subjugated. Dumbledore has done home visits. Sure he has seen situations like that of Riddle, but he has also seen situations like the Grangers or the Creeveys. Muggle born cannot be trusted to understand the dangers muggles pose. Future girls like Ariana must be safe. Magical blood, those of magical ability, are much more valuable to society then some mere muggles. Who knows what the muggle born would vote for! Why, they might want to give muggles rights!

So if not democracy, what do we replace it with? This is where fan fiction goes all over the place. Has Dumbledore been removing classes from the Hogwarts curriculum? Has he used the ICW to ensure other schools do the same, or perhaps other longstanding agreements among European schools? Has he manipulated the student population more directly? Set up one student for failure, another for success? A love potion here, a compulsion spell there? Has he embezzled funds? Blocked attempts at teaching muggleborns about the wizarding world, or the wizarding world about muggle society? I think that is what I like most about Air Elemental, Dumbledore is subtle, McGonagall, Sprout and Flitwick realise only after decades that Dumbledore is prejudiced and does not in fact want muggleborns to fit in.⁴⁹ He does not subvert the Goblins, he simply trusts their nature not to tell a wizard about something he or she does not ask about (other vaults). Harry is missing critical information about the society around him, but its effects are such that you can see the connection to the way the books turned out (with a few exceptions like Ron). There is a hidden (non-Gringotts) vault full of stuff that book Harry might well never have found, but which you can picture actually existing. Subtle, understated manipulations that let people fool themselves. That I think is a very very canonical representation of Dumbledore.

What about the Wizengamot? Has he really done nothing with his seat? Or has he played off one faction against another, manipulated people behind the scenes? Is his public face at all related to his private goals?