Luke's HP Site

Dumbledore's Treatment of Harry

In explaining his decisions to Harry, Dumbledore says:

Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle’s doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years.1

You arrived at Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy. You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well.2

He justifies this saying:

My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but myself realised. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters and many of them are almost as terrible as he were still at large, angry, desperate, and violent. And I had to make my decision too with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was gone forever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty, or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not rest until he killed you.3

There are two problems with this, and they are connected.

First is the prophecy. From her website FAQ,

The prophecy Harry hears in Dumbledore’s office suggests to me that both he and Voldemort will have to die, is that true?

Both Madam Trelawney and I worded the prophecy extremely carefully and that is all I have to say on the subject!4

I am speculating here, but everything I’ve read and heard about Mrs. Rowling suggests that for all the flaws that I and others have pointed out, she tried really really hard in planning the novels out. I think her comment about wording the prophecy very carefully applies to more than just Harry’s encounter with Riddle at the end. She says that in her opinion this prophecy is like that in Macbeth, it is a catalyst a series of events, but that the characters retain free will.5 I think that Harry’s suffering, not just his death experience in the forest in book seven, are one of the things it triggered. For all the prophesy does not name Dumbledore, it shapes his actions much as the one that Macbeth hears shapes his actions.

In the fan fiction work The Sound of Silence Dumbledore states:

I couldn’t stand what I did to that poor, poor child. But I knew it was necessary. Our society needed time to heal, to recover from the first blood war. Voldemort will come back if Harry lives, but no one can kill Harry except Voldemort. The Dursleys certainly did their level best to kill him. They couldn’t.

The stronger Harry is, the stronger Voldemort is. He will return. It is only through the actions that I have already taken that he hasn’t already returned. As you judge me, remember the war. Remember what it was like.6

Mrs. Rowling does not allow her version of Dumbledore to admit any such thing, but I think there is some element of truth to this take on his character. If, however, I am off base, it makes the next point even stronger. That being said, consider the following quote, this one from nonjon’s Whatever Happened to the Likely Lad?:

Harry nodded. “Now if he’d taken me to proper healers, they would have recognized the taint and worked out a way to get it out of me. So naturally, his plan calls for ensuring no one from the wizarding world can contact me or ever find out just what’s so special about the legendary curse scar. Because he knows, left untreated it’ll just become more ingrained as a part of me.”7

Here nonjon has Harry succinctly put forward the theory that the soul fragment that sought to attach itself to Harry is only irrevocably attached to him because Dumbledore delayed treatment. Had medical help been sought promptly, Harry need not have faced that soul crushing walk into the forest at the end of book seven, there would already have been one fewer soul fragments to handle. Is the very limited protection that Harry’s attempt at sacrifice provides worth that suffering? Even if it is, is it morally permissible to inflict that on a child?

In the fan fiction work After Destiny, cambangst presents a view of Harry, Ginny, and the other student fighters that is overly influenced by modern secular morality, but shows them struggling with the traumas they have faced in a way that I do find very realistic. The following is part of an exchange between Harry and Ginny.

“Training, Harry.” She really wanted to smack him again, but settled for doing her best Hermione, instead. “Do you know how long Charlie had to train before they would even let him near a dragon?” He shook his head. “Four months. Four months, five days a week, eight hours a day. And that was after getting the highest N.E.W.T. score in Care of Magical Creatures since Grindelwald’s War.” Ginny leaned closer, until they were almost nose to nose. “Remind me, Harry, how much training did you get for this job?”

Harry blinked a few times and then looked down. “A few evenings with Dumbledore.”8

As I stated on the main Dumbledore page, I believe that Dumbledore, at heart, embraces some version of utilitarianism. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that the horcrux in Harry required that Harry be destroyed, or in other words, he would have to die.9 Under utilitarian theory, while Harry’s death might be tragic, it is outweighed by the salvation it would bring to the rest of society when Riddle is vanquished. Thus Harry must be programmed towards self-sacrifice.

Again, Mrs. Rowling never allows her version of Dumbledore to admit that he has intentionally worked towards this end. Her version of Dumbledore claims that the whole thing was, from beginning to end, entirely Harry’s free choice, and in a sense that is true. It is true in the sense that no one held a gun to his head and forced his action. Dumbledore was much more subtle than that. He allowed Harry to spend ten years in an abusive environment. He allowed Snape to belittle and torment Harry. He did nothing as the school as a whole turned on Harry in first year,10 second year,11 fourth year,12 and fifth year.13

Even the lack of training fits into this. Dumbledore tells Harry that love is the “power” leaving Harry confused at first, but knowing that when the final bits of the puzzle are revealed, it will all make sense - an untrained Harry has no other weapon in his arsenal except the power of his self-sacrifice with which to protect his friends. He even tells Harry that he depended on Hermione to slow Harry down14 and while they were specifically talking about the Hallows, when you consider that Hermione also slowed down the hunt for the horcruxes (see her page for details), I feel safe including this in my indictment.

When you consider the potential cost if Riddle had not been stopped, and further consider the fact that it worked, it is very hard to argue with Dumbledore. The fact that Harry not only does not blame him, but feels great affection for him makes it even harder. There is just one problem. Utilitarianism is wrong.

The second problem is closely related to the first. Suppose for a moment that Dumbledore was truly concerned with keeping Harry alive, not because he needed him to die at the right time or in the right way, but because it was the right thing to do. This supposes a few things:

Given the above implications, Harry was in fact at risk of death from the Dursleys. Despite my use of it above, the fan fiction work The Sound of Silence is at least partly wrong, Riddle is not the only person who can kill Harry. Thus when they denied him food, he was in danger of starving. When Petunia aims a frying pan at his head, the head injury could have been quite serious.17 This in turn means that Dumbledore’s actions, or inactions, in leaving Harry with the Dursleys despite at least some knowledge of the “dark and difficult”18 nature of this time, is moral complicity in the emotional neglect and physical abuse. Again (because it bares repeating), Utilitarianism is wrong.

Dumbledore is frequently portrayed as tricky, and interestingly, the first problem would be largely avoidable if the second were not true, and the second would be largely negated if the justification presented in The Sound of Silence were true. So Dumbledore will insist any time someone objects that Harry must go to the Dursleys because he will be safest there. Safest from what/who? Dumbledore can now start to use the complicated nature of the thorny problem to confuse the listener.

  1. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Kindle Location 12222-12223. Pottermore Limited © 2005. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  2. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Kindle Location 12249-12251. Pottermore Limited © 2005. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  3. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Kindle Location 12226-12230. Pottermore Limited © 2005. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  4. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “F.A.Q.: About the Books” Publication date: 2004-05-15 to 2007-12-21.↩︎

  5. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Three” 2005-07-05. Accio Quote↩︎

  6. birdwoman95. The Sound Of Silence 2016-10-03.↩︎

  7. nonjon. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lad?. Published 2011-09-19.↩︎

  8. cambangst. After Destiny Published: 2017-03-13. Updated: 2021-07-17.↩︎

  9. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “PotterCast Interviews J.K. Rowling, part one.” 2007-12-17. Accio Quote. I have chosen to quote Mrs. Rowling to substantiate this rather than something she’s had Dumbledore say because I feel this puts it even more beyond doubt than anything else I could do. I am essentially saying that Dumbledore’s deductions, intuitions, whatever you chose to attribute it to, would end up agreeing with the author’s own opinion on the subject.↩︎

  10. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Pages 244-245. © 1998 Pottermore Limited. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  11. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Kindle Location 2509. © 1999 Pottermore Limited. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  12. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Locations 4792-4793. © 2003 Pottermore Limited. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  13. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Locations 3683-3685. © 2005 Pottermore Limited. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  14. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Page 298. © 2007 Pottermore Publishing. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  15. Several fan fiction works have used this, but I cannot recall them right now.↩︎

  16. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “The Potter Family” The J.K. Rowling Index. 2015-09-22.↩︎

  17. a cursory search:

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  18. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Kindle Location 12222-12223. Pottermore Limited © 2005. American Kindle Edition.↩︎