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

“You have used me. [. . .] I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter—” (DH687)

This is it in a nutshell. Dumbledore manipulated Harry only so Harry could (maybe) die when needed; he ruthlessly used Snape’s love for Lily to employ Snape as a spy, lying to Snape the entire time about why, and then made Snape a pariah by convincing Snape to kill him. All of this is done elegantly and with impressive ruthlessness, leaving those of us who idolized Dumbledore in quite the moral quandary.

Lorrie Kim makes the point: “Snape had never asked why Dumbledore was protecting Harry.” (SNAPE278) In that sense, Snape is suddenly (and bizarrely) the audience surrogate in this scene. Readers, too, never thought to ask why Dumbledore would want to protect Harry—in all the millions of words written analyzing the series before the final book, that question never came up. And that leaves us feeling as betrayed as Severus did at the revelation.

Sure, there is an argument to be made for the necessity of what Dumbledore did, because all of these actions are about bringing Voldemort down. But it’s chilling, how much Dumbledore was willing to sacrifice to bring about Voldemort’s downfall.

One line Dumbledore says to Harry in Order of the Phoenix, when viewed in this light, takes on some sinister layers of meaning: “[Voldemort] hoped, when he possessed you briefly a short while ago, that I would sacrifice you in the hope of killing him.” (OP828)

The scary thing is: Voldemort was right. Dumbledore would not have sacrificed Harry in that moment, because he knew it would be ineffective to try killing Voldemort while Horcruxes were out there. But Dumbledore intended to make that move eventually. For all that Dumbledore makes of Voldemort not understanding love, Voldemort was absolutely correct in his estimation that Dumbledore would sacrifice Harry to kill Voldemort.

Jo sums it up best:

“Although [Dumbledore] seems to be so benign for six books, he's quite a Machiavellian figure, really. He's been pulling a lot of strings. Harry has been his puppet. When Snape says to Dumbledore, ‘We've been protecting [Harry] so he could die at the right moment'—I don't think in Book One you would have ever envisioned a moment where your sympathy would be with Snape rather than Dumbledore.” 39

For those unfamiliar with Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, “Machiavellian” is “the view that politics is amoral and that any means however unscrupulous can justifiably be used.” In simpler terms: the ends justify the means—which describes Dumbledore’s actions perfectly.

It can be argued that Dumbledore is being utilitarian here, that he is just trying to make things as good as possible for as many people as possible. And for his utilitarian ends, he will sacrifice anything and anyone. . . including himself. Hardcore fans tend to bring up the parallel between Dumbledore’s death in HBP and the chess match in Sorcerer’s Stone. Ron, the black knight (Dumbledore), sacrifices himself by allowing the white queen (Snape) to kill him. This leaves the opportunity for Harry to defeat the white king (Voldemort) (SS283).40

I think this is a moot point, because Dumbledore does not choose to die when he could have lived. Ever since the Ringcrux’s curse affected Dumbledore, he knew he would die within a year. As we’ve discussed, he nearly runs out the clock on this: the night he actually dies, eleven months are already up, and he is weakened from a nasty potion.41 Even if by some odd chance he survived the battle against all the Death Eaters, he would still die within a month. So although his death will be for the greater good, he still chooses a death that would be quick and painless for him, and we don’t know fully how self-sacrificing he really is.

In fact, here Dumbledore is taking a page right out of The Prince: “Those [cruelties] may be called properly used, if of evil it is possible to speak well, that are applied at one blow and are necessary to one's security, and that are not persisted in afterwards.” (Chapter VIII)42 Lorrie Kim, in SNAPE: A Definitive Reading, connected this quote and the “cruelties” to Dark magic, and to Dumbledore’s request that Snape kill him (SNAPE211).

“[Severus,] you alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation. [. . .] I confess I should prefer a quick, painless exit to the protracted and messy affair it will be if, for instance, Greyback is involved. [. . .] Or dear Bellatrix, who likes to play with her food before she eats it.” (DH683)

Kim uses this as evidence that Snape is the titular Prince, since he will be the one using a Killing Curse as necessary. But since the idea is Dumbledore’s, since the Killing Curse is necessary to his security, I take it as further evidence that Dumbledore is the Prince.

I don’t believe Dumbledore would have sacrificed himself for the cause. Alive, Dumbledore is just about the greatest asset that the side of good has. Therefore, by Machiavellian reasoning, Dumbledore should stay alive at all costs, except perhaps if there’s a choice between Harry and Dumbledore. But it never came to that, and Dumbledore sure seems Machiavellian through and through.

In fact, the identity of The Prince of the HP series was one of Jo’s cleverest red herrings. When Half-Blood Prince was released, the answer seemed obvious: the Half-Blood Prince was the duplicitous Snape, who must have been clearly modeled on Machiavelli’s Prince. Many an article was written about that; the best to my memory were Andrew Cooper’s and B.J. Texan’s, both titled “Machiavelli’s Half-Blood Prince.” The theories were very compelling, and “guy out for himself and playing everybody” served as a very appealing third option to “good guy” or “bad guy.” But this was an instance of Jo’s misdirection at its finest, because how wrong we all