The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore Irvin Khaytman (reading books for 4 year olds .TXT) 📖

show rather than tell. However, at this point Dumbledore only had a month left to live, which is cutting it rather close.

Dumbledore seemingly staked all his chips on this final Horcrux lesson with Harry, since presumably that’s when he would have told Harry about Gryffindor’s sword being an ideal tool for destroying Horcruxes. However, since he doesn’t get to, it’s only sheer dumb luck that saves Dumbledore’s plans from going up in flames. Harry gets the sword because Phineas Nigellus overhears where the Trio is camping through his portrait, allowing Snape to go and deliver the sword. It all worked out in the end, but it would have been much more sensible to tell Harry during one of their Horcrux lessons, “By the way, if I should kick the bucket, grab Gryffindor’s sword from my office right away!” I suppose no one’s planning is perfect.

Much of the blame for how ill-equipped Harry is to hunt Horcruxes can be put at Draco’s feet. Draco managed to get Death Eaters into Hogwarts after all, leading to Dumbledore dying before he’d gotten all his ducks in a row. Of course, Draco interfered in Dumbledore’s plans in an even more significant way. . . stick a pin in that.

We now come to the crux of this entire exercise and must determine what exactly Dumbledore dreamed up during Half-Blood Prince to end the war. I must warn you, from this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of Dumbledore’s mind into thickets of wildest guesswork. Figuring out Dumbledore’s plans thus far was challenging, because he is brilliant and works off-screen for the most part. But the gist of them can be gleaned with some amount of certainty. Figuring out his ultimate plans for Deathly Hallows is a Herculean task that required pages of notes taken from the last three books, the reconciling of myriad contradictions, and the extraction of copious coincidences. From here on in, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron (HBP197).

Plan A: The Horcruxes

We begin with the most straightforward plans: getting rid of the Horcruxes (including a sacrifice on Harry’s part) and defeating Voldemort. Note that these plans are probably all formed during the beginning of Half-Blood Prince, as soon as Dumbledore is aware he will not live to see the end of the war play out. After evaluating all of his options, Dumbledore comes up with a plan and a backup plan, both of which rely exclusively on two individuals: Harry and Snape.

However the end will play out, both plans start with the same few steps.

Snape becomes master of the Elder Wand upon killing Dumbledore.

Harry destroys all the remaining Horcruxes somehow: the locket, cup, Nagini, and an unknown Horcrux of Ravenclaw’s.

Harry is alerted to the fact that his scar is a Horcrux.

Harry sacrifices himself to destroy the Scarcrux.

Harry’s willing sacrifice imbues the wizarding world with the same protection that Harry got from Lily’s sacrifice, ensuring that Voldemort cannot hurt them anymore.

However, from here events may play out in two different directions. There is one direction that Dumbledore anticipates it going in, and what he hopes for—let’s call this Plan A:

Because Harry is tethered to life by Voldemort, he should theoretically not die when Voldemort tries to kill him.

Harry comes back to life and proceeds to defeat Voldemort.

Dumbledore can be reasonably assured that these first five steps will go according to plan. Let’s put the Elder Wand aside for a minute, since that has no bearing on the rest of Plan A. Assuming Harry manages to not get himself killed, he should be able to get rid of the Horcruxes eventually. This destruction of Horcruxes is the top priority, and Dumbledore does not mess with this part of the plan (except for the aforementioned glaring oversight of not getting Gryffindor’s sword to Harry in an efficient manner). Then, once Harry is informed of the Scarcrux, he will doubtless go to sacrifice himself, because that is who Harry is. And the protection spell should work out fine as well.

The complications arise in the last two steps—namely, whether Voldemort tethering Harry to life would be enough to keep Harry actually alive. Recall that Voldemort used Harry’s blood to regenerate, and therefore Voldemort’s body is helping keep the enchantment of Lily’s sacrifice alive. Dumbledore thinks this will keep Harry alive. However, “[Harry] and Lord Voldemort have journeyed together into realms of magic hitherto unknown and untested.” (DH710) So Dumbledore cannot be sure whether Harry will live or not.

In fact, Jo stresses that there was no way for Dumbledore to know that Harry would survive being killed by Voldemort. On her old website, she wrote, “It is important to state that I always saw these kinds of magic (the very deepest life and death issues) as essentially un-scientific; in other words, there is no “Elder Wand + Lily’s Blood = Assured Survival” formula.”

If Harry does survive (the supposed and preferred outcome), he then goes about defeating the newly mortal Voldemort. This would still require prodigious skill, since Lord Voldemort’s powers are formidable. But Dumbledore believes it can be done, especially since Harry will have good allies and his trusty phoenix-feather wand with its complex relationship to Voldemort. But defeating Voldemort is of paramount importance, so a contingency plan is needed.

It Is Our Choices

Let us revisit Step 5: Harry’s willing sacrifice imbuing the wizarding world with magical protection from Voldemort. Dumbledore is hoping to invoke the same magic that gave Harry magical protection through Lily’s sacrifice, but on a grand scale. The crucial factor for that to work is choice: there must be a choice presented and a choice made for the sacrifice to result in magical protection.

Knowing the power of such magic, Dumbledore has been emphasizing the importance of choices for years. It first comes up in the books’ most enduring quote, in Chamber of Secrets: “It is our choices, Harry, that