Within the Harry Potter universe there are plenty of characters who have had the fandom divided; Was Severus Snape really a bad guy, or just a victim of unrequited love? How far can we justify Ron Weasley’s anger and selfishness? And what can be said for Draco Malfoy, the boy with no choice, but is the perfect example of white privilege?
Perhaps the most polarising of people’s opinions is Harry’s own beloved mentor. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore; a character as controversial as his name is long. Many defenders of Dumbledore are quick to praise him for his intellect. His ability to defeat Grindlewald, who he once cared for, as a sign of great moral strength. Indeed, what seems to redeem Dumbledore in the eyes of some is his commitment to the ‘greater good’ - that he is willing to sacrifice himself to save the rest of the wizarding world. However, it is not just himself that Dumbledore puts on the line. It’s vulnerable eleven-year-old abused children. And so starts my criticism and denouncing of Albus Dumbledore.
Let us begin where our story begins, with Dumbledore leaving little toddler Harry on the doorstep of the Dursleys house. Granted, he has minimal experience with infants, but as a starting point it really does set up a great example of how Dumbledore treats Harry throughout the entire series. He leaves a baby, on a step, on Halloween night, with nothing but a few blankets and a letter. Just let that sink in. For much of the series, Dumbledore acts on this unreasonable hope that Harry with ‘probably’ be okay. He will ‘probably’ be okay on that step as his new guardians (more on that in a minute) will ‘probably’ find him in the morning when he wakes, and the neighbourhood is very dull and so Harry will ‘probably’ be safe. Now I’m no expert on the needs of a child, but if someone even suggested leaving my 18-month-old brother on the doorstep of a safe neighbourhood, even in a warm month, I’d have them in a headlock before you could say sherbet lemon. Especially when you consider that McGonagall has already warned Dumbledore about how awful the Dursleys are - and on that note...
Regardless of what ‘magical protection’ Harry needed, or how much Dumbledore didn’t want him to end up with an inflated ego from being the boy who lived, nothing excuses the abuse that Harry is put through under the Dursley’s roof. We know he has been verbally abused his entire childhood, as well as suffering physical abuse from Dudley which is encouraged by Petunia and Vernon. He is starved, humiliated, made to do housework beyond what would be reasonable for an eleven-year-old child. A sinister part of me believes that this is exactly what Snape meant when he accused raising Harry “like a pig for slaughter”. When Harry is finally rescued from years of abuse by Hagrid, who worships the ground that Dumbledore walks on, it is no wonder that Harry develops his own blind loyalty to Dumbledore. Years of abuse have left Harry vulnerable for a hero to swoop in and save him - and so, Dumbledore stepped into the picture to be that hero figure. Isn’t it funny how Dumbledore’s plan has come back to benefit him, securing Harry’s trust and infallible loyalty almost instantly?
But this endangerment goes far beyond the first few chapters of the series. Across Harry’s teenage years we see multiple and direct incidences of how kind, twinkly-eyes Albus Dumbledore puts Harry (as well as Ron and Hermione by proxy) in serious danger. Is it really a coincidence that each of the trials that the trio have to face in the first book in their mission to save the Philosopher’s stone are so perfectly catered to their skill sets? A Quidditch game fit for Gryffindor’s youngest seeker, a logical riddle of potions for Hermione - even a life-size game of wizard chess for Ron. It’s almost as if Dumbledore knew that the trio would need to go after Quirrell and save the stone. At age eleven, the trio’s loyalty, bravery and intelligence is already being tested for Dumbledore’s benefit. It’s no wonder why he barely lifts a finger to prevent Harry’s participation in the Triwizard Tournament - what a perfect training opportunity for when Harry will go on to fight Voldemort himself!
Failed pedagogy is something we see time and time again at Hogwarts, and as the headmaster for the vast majority of the trio’s time at school, Albus Dumbledore is largely to blame for it. He fails to conduct basic appropriate background checks on staff, or adequately train them. Lockheart is a (terrible) conman, Hagrid, though lovable, introduces uneducated students to dangerous creatures on the daily. Oh, and Quirrell turns out to be harbouring Voldemort on the back of his head. If Dumbledore is so aware of the dangers that face the school, how are these ones able to fall through the net so easily? Meanwhile, Snape’s position as a double-life spy gives him all the permission he needs to abuse students. Calling Hermione names, threatening Neville’s life - it’s all in a day’s work for the head of Slytherin house. Even when Harry brings up Snape’s vileness to Dumbledore, he does little more than shrug it off. Let’s not even get started on how dangerous the school itself is. Between Peeves, the giant spiders lurking in the Forbidden Forest, stairs that move, trees that attack you when you get too near… It’s a wonder the first years make it across the lake. Charming though all this magic is, it is a Headmaster’s job to keep his students safe from such dangers, dangers that Dumbledore seemingly does next to nothing about.
Another issue that I take with the heroic portrayal of Albus Dumbledore is his concealment of his past. We all make mistakes, and I thoroughly believe that people who make mistakes are capable of redemption. Dumbledore does not conceal truths for the safety of others, but rather, for his own gain in his fight against Voldemort. Throughout the series - even past his death - we see Dumbledore drop cryptic clues for the trio. Rather than sitting them down and telling them directly about the horcruxes, he prefers to leave them… A children’s story book. It is irrelevant whether or not they are smart enough to uncover the meanings behind these gifts. They aren’t necessary; they seem only a way for Dumbledore to test Harry’s worth. Perhaps I wouldn’t find this to be such damning, condemming behaviour, if it weren’t for the fact his consistent game-playing endangers the lives of these already traumatised children. And do I really need to repeat Snape again? He raised Harry like a pig for slaughter. He could’ve at least told Harry, somehow, about the horcrux in his own soul. Merlin’s beard.
The professor’s unsavoury past - his liaisons with Grindelwald, the unfortunate death of his sister Ariana, his poor relationship with his brother Aberforth - I could look past. It isn’t that he outright lies to Harry, rather, the fact that he withholds this information from him. Harry has a far too over glorified view of Dumbledore, which again, is what Dumbledore needs from Harry. An unshakeable loyalty and belief beyond doubt. However, would it not better serve Harry’s wellbeing to have a mentor who has made mistakes, so that Harry himself knows that it is okay for him to make mistakes? By the time he finally opens up about his ugly past, both he and Harry are in the afterlife/limbo. Talk about deathbed limbo. Truly, the only person we ever see show Harry the bravery and honesty in admitting to one’s mistakes his godfather, Sirius Black.
If deception and the endangerment of children isn’t enough to make you consider Dumbledore’s heroics twice, perhaps a closer examination of his treatment of Sirius Black will be. It’s an often overlooked fact that Dumbledore was the one who performed the Fidelius Charm between the Potters and Pettigrew, which when betrayed by Pettigrew, leads to their murder and Harry’s anointment as the ‘chosen one’. Of course, Dumbledore is not to blame for the Potter’s death (though he chooses not to act when Snape tells him they are in imminent danger…) but he is to blame for not defending Sirius in court. He is the only other living person who knows that the secret keeper was Pettigrew, not Sirius as many believed. If he had been witness for Sirius in court, Sirius would have been proven innocent of Pettigrew’s murder and able to raise Harry. It’s no coincidence, then, that Sirius ends up in Azkaban. It was more convenient for Dumbledore that Harry live with the Dursleys.
Clearly twelve years in Azkaban was not enough of a traumatic experience for Sirius in Dumbledore’s eyes, as we see that after he has spent two years on the run eating rats with Buckbeak, Dumbledore insists that Sirius live in Grimmauld Place. You know, his childhood home where he spent years of his life being abused. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In all of the Order’s work that we see, there seems to be very little effort being put into Sirius’ public redemption so that he might be able to live freely after almost sixteen years of having been sentanced for a murder he never commited. Instead, Sirius is left to rot in the Order headquarters with little company other than Kreacher, who hates him, until his death barely minutes before the Ministry could arrive and excuse his of his supposed crimes.
When reading some other articles and essays surrounding Dumbledore and how problematic his character is, I came across an interesting post on LiveJournal. It was posted back in 2004, far before the Harry Potter fandom had much of an online presence, but the writer (Marania Rusalka) had an interesting point to make I’d never fully realised in my own considerations of the Dumbledore/Sirius dynamic I have been writing about:
“[Sirius is] not loyal to Dumbledore at all; he's loyal to Harry. From Dumbledore's point of view, it's as if he's playing wizard chess, and one of the knights suddenly decides that he doesn't care what happens to the king, he's just going to take care of that little pawn on the left. So Dumbledore [...] sticks his recalcitrant knight into a safe, isolated corner of the board and keeps him from making any moves. Perfectly sensible and strategically sound, as long as you don't expect your game pieces to have any pesky emotions or psychological issue that needs to be taken into account.”
From what we see, it is blind loyalty that Dumbledore admires above all else. Every act of kindness and protection he offers people returns, eventually, to end up hurting them. For example, take Hagrid. We know that Dumbledore is the reason Hagrid was kept on at Hogwarts as the school’s grounds keeper, after the fiasco with Aragog, Tom Riddle and the chamber of secrets. Because of this ‘protection’ Hagrid is eternally loyal to Dumbledore, going to extremes to put himself in danger for Dumbledore’s benefit - such as making contact with giant communities. Ordinarily this loyalty would go unquestioned as true friendship. However, Dumbledore is not Hagrid’s friend, he is his employer. If Hagrid’s loyalty were to waver, it could result in his losing his job - and protection from the cruel treatment of half-giants in the wizarding world. Dumbledore is the only person who would employ Hagrid - and both of them know it - putting Hagrid as both his inferior and vulnerable semi-dependant. Again, sounds familiar doesn’t it? Rusalka noticed this pattern among many of Dumbledore’s most trusted workers:
“Dumbledore judges the people he works with based first and foremost on how loyal they are to him [...] he views people as game pieces, and you can't have your game pieces acting up, can you? [...] I think there's something very ambiguous about Dumbledore's habit of seeking out desperate, socially outcast people and doing them one or two huge favors that leave them bound to him for life. Remus, Hagrid and Snape all fit that pattern, and Trelawney and Firenze…”
Whilst I can understand the better qualities that Albus Dumbledore has, and understand his commitment and motivation to the greater good, I can not pretend to condone his actions. There is never an excuse to stay passive in the face of child abuse. There is never an excuse to allow staff members to abuse their charges. There is never an excuse to let an innocent man go to the world’s most insufferable prison. And so I can not excuse Albus Dumbledore.
I would like to thank two particular sources of information I drew on in the creation of this piece. Firstly, I would like to thank Marina Rusalka of LiveJournal. You can find her essay on Dumbldore’s character analysis here. I would also like to thank Lisa Therese Olsen for her absolutely stunning paper on ‘The Ethics of Albus Dumbledore’, which you can find here. It makes for an amazing read and explores even more thoroughly the moral and ethical issues that I have touched on surrounding Dumbledore. So, what do you think? Where do you stand on Albus Dumbledore?
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