The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

by Irvin Khaytman

  The problem is that because Dumbledore is always deliberately keeping this information from Harry, the language used intentionally obfuscates whether Dumbledore knew about the Scarcrux. Dumbledore only ever refers to a “connection:” in the Order of the Phoenix tell-all, he says, “I guessed, fifteen years ago, when I saw the scar upon your forehead, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you and Voldemort.” (OP826-827)

  We don’t know whether “connected” is Dumbledore-speak for “swapped soul bits,” but either way Dumbledore is still uncertain about whether Harry’s scar is an unintentional Horcrux in Goblet of Fire. He may have his theories and guesses, but is not confident in said theory until Harry brings back confirmation that Voldemort was indeed splitting his soul multiple times. And even then, though Dumbledore formulated a theory about the Scarcrux by the beginning of OotP, he is still piecing it together through the end of 1995, unable to get confirmation and obstructed by Harry’s reluctance to actually discuss his scar hurting.

  So as all this is going on, Dumbledore comes to an important realization: he needs to buy some time. And he has a pretty shrewd idea of how to do so.

  Dumbledore’s Decoy

  As will often come up in a discussion of the books, Order of the Phoenix was always my least favorite of the seven books. Not for any of the usual reasons: I never had issues with Harry’s fondness for CapsLock or Sirius dying. Rather, it’s because the entire book seemed rather pointless. All the other books move the story along as a whole, but what does OotP accomplish? After 800-odd pages, we have learned that. . . (drumroll, please!) Harry and Voldemort will have to kill each other! Gee, who saw that coming?

  After all the hype and hoopla, we found out what should have been obvious from the first book: that the hero will defeat the villain. In vain, readers tried to find meaning in the prophecy, and flooded the HP fansites with essays in 2003 and 2004. Instead of all the Horcruxes debate, the fandom spent two years analyzing the prophecy. It was taken apart, every word analyzed and every ellipsis examined, as people looked for loopholes and alternate meanings.28

  But we now have the gift of hindsight and know that there really was no dramatic revelation to be found in the prophecy. This holds true even if we build up that fourth wall again and look at it from the point of view of the characters. Yes, it’s important and significant to Harry. . . but it really should not matter that much to anyone else in the wizarding world. After all, there’s nothing really to be gleaned from it. So why all the fuss?

  Well, that question is answered rather easily: the prophecy is a decoy. It serves to keep Voldemort busy. It’s Dumbledore at work, being five steps ahead of everyone else. Just like in Sorcerer’s Stone, Dumbledore likes keeping Voldemort busy and knowing what he’s up to, so he dangles a carrot in front of Voldemort’s nonexistent nose for the better part of a year.

  Let’s look at Dumbledore’s point of view at the end of Goblet of Fire. Voldemort has just returned to power. And because Dumbledore knows Voldemort, Dumbledore can guess what’s on Voldemort’s long-term agenda.

  Lord Voldemort’s Evil To-Do List, June 1995

  Kill Harry Potter. (But do it in style.)

  Kill Albus Dumbledore. With Dumbledore gone, no one will be able to oppose me. This will also make achieving point #1 much easier.

  Spring Death Eaters from Azkaban. Need more loyal and intelligent supporters. This will help to achieve point #2. Not to mention, Bellatrix Lestrange is easy on the eyes.

  Take over Ministry of Magic. Those fools are ignoring my return, which will make killing/Imperiusing them very easy. I will now be supreme ruler of the wizarding Britain! Muahahahaha!!

  Start Mudblood genocide.

  Live evilly ever after.

  We know this based on what Voldemort ends up doing in the latter books, but Dumbledore is shrewd enough to figure it out long before the reader. Stopping all these plots would take far too much energy, and Dumbledore is also a touch rattled by how successful Voldemort’s plot the prior year turned out to be. Better get a head start on bringing down Voldemort, so Dumbledore needs to find something relatively innocuous to occupy Voldemort while Dumbledore begins working on his own plans. And then Dumbledore is visited by one of his more brilliant ideas: since Harry escaped Voldemort, Voldemort will be obsessing over how to kill this boy once and for all. Voldemort will try to glean information from the prophecy. Dumbledore says as much during his “tell-all” conversation with Harry at the end of OotP:

  “And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy you.” (OP739-740)

  So why not keep him chasing after the prophecy while Dumbledore starts taking productive measures to stop him? It’s easier for Dumbledore to do his thing without Voldemort breathing down his neck. Lucky for Dumbledore, the prophecy would be useless to Voldemort, so it’s okay to send him on a wild goose chase for it. Dumbledore probably told Snape to subtly encourage this quest of Voldemort’s.

  Let’s look at what the prophecy actually says:

  “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches . . . born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies . . . and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives . . . the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies . . .” (OP841)

  First, keep in mind that Voldemort already knows almost half the prophecy because Snape overheard it. According to Dumbledore, “He heard only the beginning, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort.” (OP743)

  Of the information that’s left, there are two salient points. The first is that “the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.” But this is all in the past already, and Voldemort already suspects Harry has some power that he does not because the boy keeps not dying and keeps stymying his evil plots. This information would be no help to Voldemort.

  The second point is that “either must die at the hand of the other.” Well, Voldemort certainly intends to kill Harry, so that information does not really help him either. In short, there is no information that Voldemort can glean from this prophecy that would merit so much fuss being made about it.

  What’s more, after two years of the fandom agonizing over this prophecy, and several months of Harry worrying about it, Dumbledore comes right out and says that it doesn’t matter! During one of his private lessons with Harry in Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore gets very agitated, and finally tells Harry, “You are setting too much store by the prophecy!” (HBP509)

  Even Harry feels the anticlimax of all this. “‘So, when the prophecy says that I’ll have “power the Dark Lord knows not,” it just means—love?’ asked Harry, feeling a little let down.” (HBP509)

  Harry believes that the prophecy requires him to kill Voldemort, but Dumbledore disagrees, and moreover exclaims that, “It is essential that you understand this!” (HBP510) Dumbledore then explains to us, conclusively, that the prophecy does not matter at all.

  “Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!”

  [. . .]

  “I’d want him finished,” said Harry quietly. “And I’d want to do it.”

  “Of course you would!” cried Dumbledore. “You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal. . . in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you. . . which makes it certain, really, that—”

  “That one
of us is going to end up killing the other,” said Harry. “Yes.” (HBP511-512)

  And there you have it. The prophecy’s only importance in the story is the backstory it provides on why Voldemort initially attacked Harry and set this entire chain of events in motion. At this point, Harry and Voldemort will fight to the death regardless of the prophecy, and Dumbledore is well aware of this.

  So the obvious conclusion is that Dumbledore used the prophecy as a decoy to keep Voldemort busy during his first year back. But what’s astonishing is how far this deception went and how Machiavellian Dumbledore was about the whole thing. Indeed, thus far it can be argued that Dumbledore’s actions have all been unequivocally good, but now we enter the phase of some murkier morality in his actions.

  The Order’s Role

  Dumbledore funnels most of his considerable resources into keeping Voldemort away from the prophecy. Considering what is being guarded, this appears totally unwarranted—but if the prophecy is a decoy, then it would be a top priority to keep it from Voldemort.

  One of the Order’s main tasks is the guard duty over this object. Logistically, this is impressive: Dumbledore puts in the effort to sneak people into the Ministry undetected to keep a 24/7 watch on this prophecy. And considering the entire Order of the Phoenix seems to be roughly twenty people, that is a considerable portion of their finite resources being used to guard this prophecy and keep Voldemort at bay.

  But here is the scary part: the Order does not actually know that they are guarding a decoy. They seem convinced that keeping Voldemort from this prophecy is a matter of life and death, not just a stalling technique. After Mr. Weasley is attacked by Nagini, Sirius says, “there are things worth dying for!” (OP477) He is evidently convinced that protecting this prophecy is one of those worthy things. Dumbledore does nothing to disabuse the Order of this notion, not even when Sturgis Podmore is carted off to Azkaban or Mr. Weasley gets almost fatally attacked by Nagini while on guard duty.

  And digging deeper, it becomes evident that the Order does not even know what it is they are guarding!

  [Sirius said,] “In any case, gathering followers is only one thing [Voldemort]’s interested in. He’s got other plans too, plans he can put into operation very quietly indeed, and he’s concentrating on those for the moment.”

  “What’s he after apart from followers?” Harry asked swiftly. He thought he saw Sirius and Lupin exchange the most fleeting of looks before Sirius answered.

  “Stuff he can only get by stealth.”

  When Harry continued to look puzzled, Sirius said, “Like a weapon. Something he didn’t have last time.” (OP96)

  This passage is Jo at her finest—misdirection galore! She makes it appear as if the Order knows all there is to know. But if one looks at the information given, it seems like the only thing the Order knows is that they are guarding something in the Department of Mysteries. . . and that this is Voldemort’s focus at the moment.

  For years, this passage bothered me. Why on earth does Sirius refer to the prophecy as a “weapon?” This term is emphasized quite a bit throughout the rest of the book as a red herring for us and for Harry. But Sirius is always direct with Harry and would not intentionally deceive him. And I doubt he would view it as Dumbledore did, where the “weapon” is the knowledge of how to destroy Harry.

  The only logical conclusion is that Sirius—and, by extension, the Order—truly believes that they are guarding a dangerous weapon from Voldemort. And this is just blatantly untrue. But it’s also classic Dumbledore.

  Aberforth says of his brother, “Secrets and lies, that’s how we grew up, and Albus . . . he was a natural.” (DH562) Dumbledore never trusted anyone completely and kept all his cards extremely close to his chest, particularly after Voldemort was reborn. He would not trust the Order with the information that they were a mere distraction for Voldemort. Rather, he allowed them to believe that they were doing something worth risking their lives for, thereby ensuring the ruse was complete. And he was willing to let members nearly die just to keep Voldemort occupied a little longer.

  A Livejournal user, Sophierom, wrote that a central theme in Order of the Phoenix is that hierarchical relationships are bad, whereas relationships built on commonality and equality are good. This is an important lens through which to view Dumbledore’s actions here: Dumbledore’s relationship with the other members of the Order is not equal, and his deception of them is an abuse of power. This is in sharp contrast to Dumbledore’s Army, where the leader is a fellow student, and is even democratically chosen (OP391).

  Considering the very high price Dumbledore was willing to pay, one just hopes that whatever he was taking this time to do was worth it. . .

  In Essence Divided

  With the time that the decoy bought him, Dumbledore digs deep into Tom Riddle’s past. This time period, the latter half of 1995, is when Dumbledore did his most intense research. He is still missing the crucial number of Horcruxes, but Dumbledore is not sitting idly by while he figures that out. No, he is reviewing memories of Tom Riddle to figure out what the Horcruxes might be.

  When he has lessons with Harry in HBP, the memories have been carefully curated to display the Horcruxes. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg—Dumbledore did not get Tom Riddle’s past pre-packaged into a half-dozen memories that perfectly display relevant information. He had to peruse all possible data about Tom Riddle—and first, all those memories (useful or useless) had to be obtained, sometimes with great difficulty. He must have looked through dozens or hundreds of memories, including his own, of Riddle’s seven years at Hogwarts, keeping an eye out for potential Horcruxes and their possible hiding places. He must have found myriad false clues as he worked on connecting the dots. This would have taken him most of Harry’s fifth year at Hogwarts.

  It’s no wonder Dumbledore seems stressed out in Order of the Phoenix—he’s fighting three battles at once! He has the Order pitted against Voldemort and the Death Eaters to keep everyone busy with the prophecy, he is battling Umbridge and Fudge’s meddling at Hogwarts, and he is attempting to research the Horcruxes.

  By the end of 1995, Dumbledore has perused the memories enough to be reasonably confident in the locket, ring, and cup as Horcruxes. He is developing a rather sinister theory about Harry’s scar being an unintentional Horcrux. (This is a separate line of questioning for Dumbledore, since Harry was obviously not intended to be a Horcrux among Voldemort’s fixed set.) And he also begins to have some niggling suspicions about a less conventional Horcrux candidate: Voldemort’s snake Nagini seems to be strangely obedient to Voldemort, even given that he’s a Parselmouth. Hmm. . .

  Suddenly one night, Harry is in Dumbledore’s office again, saying he had ventured into Voldemort’s mind while Voldemort was in Nagini’s mind. Dumbledore taps one of his instruments, which emits a smoky snake. Dumbledore asks, “But in essence divided?” and the snake splits in two, which confirms whatever Dumbledore is thinking (OP470).

  This tiny passage caused more speculation than almost any other in the first six books. Finally, after Deathly Hallows was released, Jo told us what it meant in an interview on Bloomsbury.com.

  “Dumbledore suspected that the snake’s essence was divided—that it contained part of Voldemort’s soul, and that was why it was so very adept at doing his bidding. This also explained why Harry, the last and unintended Horcrux, could see so clearly though the snake’s eyes, just as he regularly sees through Voldemort’s. Dumbledore is thinking aloud here, edging towards the truth with the help of the Pensieve.”

  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 s
till 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!