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

Dumbledore revisits the idea in Goblet of Fire after Cedric’s death: “Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort.” (GF724)

It’s worth noting that every time Dumbledore  explicitly brings up the importance of choices, it is always right after he receives a crucial piece of information about Voldemort’s Horcruxes. That information serves as a reminder to Dumbledore that he will have to invoke magic based on good choices in order to eliminate the Horcruxes. Or perhaps it’s because making Horcruxes is among the worst choices someone can make, and it just brings choices to Dumbledore’s mind. Either way, Horcruxes and choices are inextricably linked in the text.

Finishing up the motif, Dumbledore and Harry’s final word on choices comes at the end of the final Horcrux lesson, in the chapter titled “Horcruxes,” where Dumbledore finally gets the crucial piece of information regarding multiple Horcruxes: that Tom Riddle intended to make seven.

“It is essential that you understand this!” said Dumbledore, standing up and striding about the room, his glittering robes swooshing in his wake; Harry had never seen him so agitated.

[. . .]

“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.”

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew—and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents—that there was all the difference in the world. (HBP510-512)

There is not just a moral difference here, there is a magical difference. Intent matters in self-sacrificial magic just as much as it matters in casting Unforgivables: there is powerful magic whose efficacy depends entirely on choice. If Dumbledore intends to utilize this arcane branch of magic, it is imperative that Harry believes he has free will—otherwise, the magic won’t work. This is why Dumbledore is so agitated: all his plans rely on Harry’s buying in to this concept.

But Dumbledore has done a good job over the years: Harry gets it in the end. As long as Harry is making a conscious choice to “walk into the arena with his head held high,” there will be all the magical difference in the world. And that will form the centerpiece of Dumbledore’s contingency plan.

Plan B: Snape’s Redemption

This plan is concerned with the eventuality of Harry dying by Voldemort’s hand. Let us assume the first five steps in Plan A occurred exactly as they would otherwise. Starting after Step 5, this plan diverges from Plan A:

Voldemort succeeds in killing Harry.

Thanks to the protection from Harry’s sacrifice, and the fact that Voldemort’s now mortal, another reasonably talented wizard should be able to kill Voldemort.

Ideally, Snape uses the Elder Wand to defeat Voldemort, thereby clearing his name.

So let’s say Harry does not survive the sacrifice. Upsetting though that would be, Dumbledore has planned for this possibility. If Harry ends up dying, his sacrifice should offer protection for all those on the side of good. Therefore, any of Harry’s allies could take up the fight against Voldemort, and since they will be protected from Voldemort’s magic, it’s reasonable to assume they would be able to defeat Voldemort.

This does not even clash with what the prophecy says—namely, that Harry is the “one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.” (OP841) In this scenario, Harry was the one with the ability to protect the world from Voldemort, empowering someone else to actually do the vanquishing. And in this case, Harry is the one who dies at the hand of Voldemort, so the prophecy still works out.

Dumbledore must have prepared people for this eventuality, no doubt by telling the most powerful of his allies (like McGonagall and Kingsley) something along the lines of, “Harry will be the one to defeat Voldemort. However, should Harry die, it falls to you to kill Voldemort.” At the very least, Dumbledore told Snape this, and he ensured that Snape should be well equipped to kill Voldemort by making Snape the master of the Elder Wand (see Plan A).

If Snape is to be the one to kill Voldemort, he would have had to rely on nothing more than his own prodigious skill. Snape does not have all of the magical protections that Harry has against Voldemort; including a wand imbued with Fawkes’s tailfeathers for a core, Harry’s enormous courage, and Voldemort’s own deadly skill (DH711). So Dumbledore plans to give him the next best thing: the most powerful wand in existence. We’ve discussed the conflicting language before, but I think it clear that Dumbledore (at some point) intended Snape to have the Elder Wand, so Snape could be the one to defeat Voldemort should Harry fail. This is supported by the following exchange:

“[Y]ou meant [Snape] to end up with the Elder Wand, didn’t you?”

“I admit that was my intention,” said Dumbledore (DH721)

This is the first change of plans Dumbledore has regarding the Elder Wand, given that Dumbledore originally meant to die without having the power of the Elder Wand transfer to anyone else. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Dumbledore not living to see the Voldemort War conclude certainly qualifies. This is the first change of plans, made in the beginning of HBP, but it will not be the last.

The plan for Snape to master the