Random HP Philosopher's Stone Thoughts

[kerravonsen]

* The protections on the Stone were laughably easy to overcome if three First Years could do so. No matter how brilliant Hermione was, if the protections had required spells which were, say, Seventh Year spells, the Trio could not have bested them.
* That the only real protection was the last one, the Mirror.

Fans have produced a number of hypotheses to explain this:

1. That Dumbledore deliberately set it up that way because he wanted Harry to go after the Stone, because he wanted to train Harry to be a Hero without actually training him to be a Hero.
2. As above, but Dumbledore wanted to train Harry to be a martyr, not a Hero, because of the Prophecy.

The problem with these two is, I doubt very much that Dumbledore would have taken his staff into his confidence about why he wanted the protections to be so flimsy.
"Oh, Pomona, I think you should use plants that you've taught to your first years..."
"Why, Headmaster?"
"Oh, no reason, really."

Um, yeah.
Though if Dumbledore had taken Minerva into his confidence, that would explain why Minerva ignored Harry; he was supposed to go after it himself. But, really, it makes more sense that Minerva's reaction to Harry's "help, you've got to get the Headmaster!" was genuine, because she doesn't seem to be that good an actor, and she'd already got it into her head -- from the dragon incident -- that Harry was a liar and/or a prankster like his father.

3. That Dumbledore was incompetent/senile.
4. The Doylist explanation: this is kids fantasy, therefore the adults all have to be incompetent and the kids have to save the day. (I loathe Doylist explanations.)

It occurred to me today that perhaps there's another explanation when one considers this: there were really two impassable protections: the Mirror, and Fluffy. Well, Fluffy wasn't really impassable, but very close to it, because it required specific knowledge that Hagrid knew, rather than general knowledge that any First Year might know. Though one could argue that Fluffy wasn't really meant to be impassable either, considering how bad Hagrid is at keeping secrets.

Still...

5. It was always intended to be a trap for Voldemort's minion. The protections in the middle were never meant to be protections, just delays, so that the Headmaster would have time to come back and catch the culprit.

Comments

[dreamflower]

Number 4 is, of course the story external explanation, but is unsatisfactory because of that.

I always thought the fifth explanation was pretty clearly foreshadowed.

I thoroughly dislike the tropes that blame Dumbledore. It seems rather lazy to lay all the blame at his feet. (Though I've read a very few that can make me suspend my disbelief.)

[kerravonsen]

Number 4 is, of course the story external explanation, but is unsatisfactory because of that.

Exactly. Doylist rather than Watsonian.

I always thought the fifth explanation was pretty clearly foreshadowed.

Just shows I can't see for looking...

I thoroughly dislike the tropes that blame Dumbledore. It seems rather lazy to lay all the blame at his feet.

I kind of sit on the fence about that; because there are a number of anomalies which make me go "What was Dumbledore thinking?!" when one considers the consequences of his actions in the context of information we found out later. I find it impossible, any longer, to believe that Dumbledore was the all-wise, kind, loving, grandfatherly person he seemed to be at the start.

These are the options I can see:

1. He was kind, loving, well-intentioned, and ignorant, making decisions without sufficient information. (i.e. he didn't know that Harry was being verbally abused and neglected by the Dursleys, and he never bothered to check because he assumed that blood was thicker than water.)

2. He was kind etc. and incompetent or senile or in some other way not really with it.

3. He wanted to be kind and loving, he cared about Harry in his own way, but the Greater Good had a higher priority. Therefore Dumbledore had two conflicting agendas: to give Harry a "normal" childhood, and to prepare him for the conflict to come. Thus he kept Harry ignorant, while still trying to make him a hero.

4. The Greater Good always had a higher priority, but he still cared about Harry, though he felt he cared more than he should. Everyone else was just pawns in his game of chess with Voldemort; Snape especially. This one is predicated on the disgust which Dumbledore treated Snape when Snape first defected; it assumes that that disgust never abated and/or that Dumbledore had a huge pro-Gryffindor, anti-Slytherin bias. Iffy, but still based on canon.

5. The Greater Good always had a higher priority, and his caring was just one more method of getting what he wanted; he was a competent manipulative bastard in the name of the Greater Good. This I don't buy, though some well-written stories have made me suspend my disbelief.

The ones that I totally can't get on board for are the ones that paint Dumbledore as an out-and-out villain out for himself. Nope. Absolutely not. Nada. Not.

At the very worst, Dumbledore is someone who will do evil in the name of the Greater Good, always meaning well, thinking that the end justifies the means, and also thinking that he knows better than everyone else, that nobody else can be trusted with the Big Picture, and never discussing his plans with anyone else or getting any feedback about them. It really doesn't help that the Order of the Phoenix was suffering from Group Think.

[dreamflower]

I tend to waffle between 3 and 4.

Perhaps it's because I come at HP from a different perspective fic-wise. I tend to compare him to Gandalf, who also was somewhat manipulative " for the Greater Good". But Gandalf would never agree that doing evil that good may come, or even doing "slightly bad" for that reason was acceptable.

Almost all of those heroes in Lord of the Rings are absolutists. The exceptions among the Good Guys were Boromir and Denethor, both of whom came to a sad end, although because he repented, Boromir's end was a noble.one. But the others are not willing to give up principal for a shady victory. Gandalf says that to break a thing to see how it works is to leave the path of wisdom; Aragorn tells us good and evil don't change, nor do they mean one thing among Men and something different among Elves or Dwarves; and Faramir would not touch the Enemy's weapon if he found it on the side of the road. And they have a firm belief in the value of the individual, even over the mission.

The Wizarding World is different. None of the heroes have clean hands. Compromise is the way of life. The ministry of magic is riddled with corruption. All of the Good Guys are deeply flawed, from Dumbledore to Harry himself. And yet, they are ultimately on the side of good. They are all willing to sacrifice to bring about a better and less dangerous world in the future-- but most of them, though decent people, do believe that the ends do justify most means. They don't use "Unforgiveables", for example, but pretty much everything else is on the table. That includes using their own people as pawns.

Both the Wizarding World and Middle-earth have their dangers, but in the Wizarding World seems to have a strangely careless attitude about it. Just look at Quidditch, an insane sport if there ever was one. Students work with dangerous spells, volatile potions, and carry around a dangerous weapon (wand). They think nothing of flying hundreds of feet in the air on a stick. They casually travel in a manner that could cause them to lose a part of their body.

To Dumbledore, it seems to me, danger to Harry can come only from one source: Voldemort. He doesn't appear to count danger from any other source as significant.

Also, another perspective I have from the Tolkien fandom is what's often called "unreliable narrator". It doesn't mean the POV character is lying, but that he/she doesn't know everything and we aren't given all the information because it comes through all these sources and "translations" handed down through the millennia.

In HP, we have only Harry's POV to go by. We know he doesn't know everything, and that he often comes to wildly incorrect conclusions, yet his is the only source we have to go by.

My personal opinion is that Dumbledore did mean well, and that given his experiences and the peculiar world view of his society he did the best he could. He was never as wise as his reputation indicated, and I don't believe he truly bought into that reputation. But he did make use of it.

And also he could really have used some advice from Gandalf.

[kerravonsen]

I tend to waffle between 3 and 4.

I tend to go between 1 and 3 and 4, because sometimes I think that Dumbledore was really too naive and optimistic to believe that such things as child abuse could really happen to "good people", that he actually didn't know what the Dursleys were doing, and that he would have been shocked and horrified if he had found out. And other days I think that he still didn't know, but would have considered it a necessary sacrifice for the greater good if he had known.

Both the Wizarding World and Middle-earth have their dangers, but in the Wizarding World seems to have a strangely careless attitude about it. Just look at Quidditch, an insane sport if there ever was one. Students work with dangerous spells, volatile potions, and carry around a dangerous weapon (wand). They think nothing of flying hundreds of feet in the air on a stick. They casually travel in a manner that could cause them to lose a part of their body.

To Dumbledore, it seems to me, danger to Harry can come only from one source: Voldemort. He doesn't appear to count danger from any other source as significant.

You have a very good point there: the whole Wizarding World seems to be hideously careless about very dangerous things! Perhaps it is because, unless you're immediately killed outright, most things that would be life-threatening to a Muggle are easily fixed by a spell or a potion. It's kind of like

"But you could break your neck!"
"So what? Pomphrey'll fix it."

And it isn't just Dumbledore and Quidditch; you have Neville's uncle who dropped him from a window to bring his magic out.
Hmmm, I wonder if one reason why Snape is so uptight about teaching Potions is that he was muggle-raised, and therefore doesn't have the Wizarding laid-back attitude to physical harm: Snape wants to prevent Potions accidents, not fix them afterwards. I mean, of course Snape has zillions of reasons to be an angry git, but that still could be a contributing factor.

It could be that Avada Kedavra is super-scary to Wizards because it kills you instantly, while nothing else in the Wizarding world will do that. Whereas in the Muggle world, you have things like a bullet to the head, or a bomb, or a car accident, which can kill you like that, snap - so sudden death isn't quite so inconceivable.

Almost all of those heroes in Lord of the Rings are absolutists. The exceptions among the Good Guys were Boromir and Denethor, both of whom came to a sad end, although because he repented, Boromir's end was a noble.one. But the others are not willing to give up principal for a shady victory. Gandalf says that to break a thing to see how it works is to leave the path of wisdom; Aragorn tells us good and evil don't change, nor do they mean one thing among Men and something different among Elves or Dwarves; and Faramir would not touch the Enemy's weapon if he found it on the side of the road. And they have a firm belief in the value of the individual, even over the mission.

Yes. Which is one of the reasons I love Faramir so much.

I'm not so sure I would use the word "absolutist", but I do get what you mean. They don't believe the end justifies the means, while Boromir, Denethor and Saruman did. While one could argue that the One Ring was "special" in its power to corrupt, and other things wouldn't corrupt you if you used them, I think it was the symbolic extreme of the spectrum; the epitome of the principle that corrupt means lead to corrupt ends; that the means you use determine the end that you reach.

Some HP fanfic has made the point that Unforgivables corrupt your soul because you have to mean them; that the more you use them, the easier it becomes to use them, the more you want to use them; that they corrupt you because your mind and heart and soul are focused - as part of focusing your magic - on causing pain or controlling others or killing them. Because it is magic, and needs your focus and your intent, you are not distanced from the act in the way you might be distanced from the act if you used a weapon. You put your whole self into it, and it corrupts your self.

[dreamflower]

"But you could break your neck!"
"So what? Pomphrey'll fix it."

*nods* Danger just does not seem to have the same meaning to Wizards in the Potter-verse. And I do think it colors Dumbledore's attitude towards what Harry deals with at the Dursleys.

I do not believe he realized the extent of the abuse. While fanon certainly has Harry constantly being beaten within an inch of his life by Vernon, but we don't actually see anything of the sort in canon. He is beaten up by Dudley and his friends, but it never seems to be life-threatening. The Dursleys are cruel to Harry, and keeping him in a cupboard and locking him up there, punishing him by withholding food and so forth is certainly physical abuse in our world, I am not certain that a backwards society like the Wizarding World would count it so.

Which is not to say that Dumbledore would overlook that if he knew about it. I get the impression he was mainly relying on Mrs. Figg, who didn't really see or know all that much.

[kerravonsen]

And the icon made me think of another thing, a third perspective.

I think Doctor Who is half-way between LOTR and HP on the question of means and ends and sacrifice and power. The Doctor comes up against the question more than once, whether people should be sacrificed for the "greater good", and while he usually comes down on the side of "no, they shouldn't", he isn't always as certain about his answer as the heros in LOTR are. There have been times when he has been offered Absolute Power and refused it utterly (and scornfully), and other times when he has been sorely tempted. The person he is most willing to sacrifice is himself, and that is a Good Thing. There have been times, many times, when people have voluntarily sacrificed themselves to assist him in saving the world, and that is also right (sacrifices of volunteers is okay, because they are being self-sacrificial). There have been other times when the sacrifices weren't voluntary (the biggest being that of his own people for the sake of the universe) and he feels gutted about it afterwards. He always feels that he ought to have been able to find another, less violent way. Deep in his heart, he doesn't really think that the end justifies the means, but he hasn't always been able to keep his hands clean. And he's definitely someone who firmly believes in the value of the individual; they are the people he does all this for, for the small people that the proponents of the "bigger picture" want to sweep away and trample over.

[dreamflower]

Oh wow! That's true.

The Doctor has a very good compass that points him unerringly to "Good" or "Evil", but though it may tell him which is which, that doesn't necessarily solve the problem of what to do about it!

In the Doctor's world (as in ours) sometimes the only practical solution is to hold the nose and choose the lesser of two evils.

[kerravonsen]

The Doctor has a very good compass that points him unerringly to "Good" or "Evil", but though it may tell him which is which, that doesn't necessarily solve the problem of what to do about it!

(nod nod nod)