I think the key line here is Dumbledore’s “The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order’s families.”(Ch. 62). IMO, he openly burned Narcissa alive, as a method of scaring the Death Eaters into leaving the Order’s families alone. It’s a reason that many would consider valid, I think, but it would sunder Harry from either Dumbledore(more likely) or Draco(less likely) when Harry finds out.
The catch would be explaining why Dumbledore killed Narcissa instead of kidnapping her as a hostage. If you’re in control enough of the situation to kill someone slowly and painfully, why aren’t you in control enough to knock them out and carry them off?
But aside from that hitch, that’s a great motive for Dumbledore. Dumbledore does have this pattern of finding “poetic story logic” a convenient excuse for almost unlimited occasional evil. (Harry’s intended parents, Snape as a kid, Snape’s victims as an adult.) And in story terms it would be a great way to finally “open Harry’s eyes” about Dumbledore, if the author wanted to send the story that way.
I’d still say Bellatrix is two or three times as likely a candidate as Dumbledore. Both because Bellatrix fits the boundaries of Harry’s oath to Draco so neatly, and because Dumbledore’s other vile actions have been explicitly in pursuit of assembling “fairytale tradition” on the side of Hogwarts or Harry. Killing Draco’s mother doesn’t fit the pattern for making Hogwarts heroic or Draco a hero, unless...
… well, unless Dumbledore has some specific reason to want Draco to want to try to kill him. Of course, Draco is indeed tasked to kill Dumbledore in canon. But I don’t think MoR!Dumbledore has read his own canon. That would be too much meta.
War makes people do some pretty awful things. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by the Death Eaters massacring families en masse as a threat to their opponents—in fact, Quirrell explicitly confirms that they did, in his post-Battle of Zabini speech.
If you’re the commander of the forces of the light, and you know that someone is knocking your people out of the war with tactics that you have no plausible way to stop directly(too many innocents to secure, etc.), then you’re faced with a problem that you must address for the war to continue, and one that you must address indirectly at that. Honestly, I can think of no better solution to that problem than...well, burning a completely innocent woman alive as a terror tactic. Maybe two or three, if the lesson didn’t take. Voldemort won’t care, but his people will, and it should at a minimum reduce the numbers of such attacks. It’s not fairytale logic of the sort Dumbledore prefers, but we know that he can be a hardass at need, and this seems like a need.
These are the tradeoffs you get when lives are the playing pieces of your game and you can’t walk away from the board. War sucks.
As for the hostage case, consider the logistics of holding a hostage. Voldemort is essentially all-powerful, and not even Dumbledore can best him in a straight-up fight(and of course, Voldemort’s a lot more likely to come rolling in with a SWAT team at 4 AM than to let you have a fair fight, especially MoR!Voldemort). You need some sort of fortification that can resist a trained and very pissed-off witch being inside it indefinitely, and an unbeatable army at the gates. Hogwarts is as close as Dumbledore has available, and as we saw in Deathly Hallows, it’s not sufficient. The alternative is a secret location, using magical anti-detection methods, but those have flaws of the sort the HP books spent a lot of time dealing with, and to my understanding of the spells involved, simply bringing Narcissa inside would ruin the secrecy were she ever to get out again. And of course, how do you pass messages telling Lucius that you have his wife and that you’ll kill her if they keep killing your family members, and have them be believed and respected?
Or suppose Dumbledore did take Narcissa prisoner first, and that wasn’t good enough to make the enemy stop.
Dumbledore kidnapped Narcissa and held her hostage.
attacks on the Order’s family members continued.
Dumbledore, heaving great sighs of regret, burned her alive to make his point, sent Lucius the evidence...
Dumbledore informed Lucius that Draco would be taken captive next.
attacks on the Order’s family members stopped.
That’s just cold-blooded, not gratuitously cruel, and Lucius might not be able to publicize his side of the story without admitting to more Death-Eater backstory than he wants discussed. So this could work.
(In our world, even most guerrilla and terrorist groups have routinely held significant prisoners alive for intelligence or as hostages. Even the deliberately cruel groups have found it feasible to take captives when they wanted leverage or information.
So if Dumbledore claimed that his war with Voldemort was so difficult that he just couldn’t ever take prisoners, that he had to torture innocents for leverage rather than capture them, he’d have claimed more moral exemptions than claimed by Hezbollah or the IRA or the Taliban.
That’s unlikely already. Still less likely is that Fawkes and McGonagall are mostly happy in his company now after a “cruelty because convenient” pattern of behavior in the not-so-distant past.
So I think Dumbledore has to have tried to use her as a hostage alive before killing her, for his internal behavior and his external reputation to fit what we observe.)
That’s a reasonable narrative. We’ll have to wait to see exactly how it played out, of course, but I wouldn’t find that version surprising at all.
Conversely, however, remember how many of the basic protections we take for granted that don’t exist in the wizarding world. In a lot of ways it’s a medieval society, and very few leaders from that era would have flinched at doing something utterly brutal to make a point. Even real-world terrorist groups try to pretend to play by the rules of civilized society, because those rules are so expected that ignoring them would damage their cause terribly. It’s the same as dictators running “free elections”—they’re not, but they pretend for the PR value. I doubt that PR value exists in the wizarding world.
I doubt PR counted for much among deatheaters, so Dumbledore did not lose anything here, and for the rest of wizarding Brittain—they didn’t have a choice other than Dumbledore, so they wouldn’t believe deatheaters that DD could do sth like that. And later they would not change their opinions, but would forgot their motivation (because it was unplesant—fear of worse evil).
Very similiar thing happened in real life in WW2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre Nazi Germany announced in 1943 that they have found mass graves of tousands Polish prisoners of war all killed by shot in the back of head by soviets. USA and UK had treaty with Stalin, and Germany was more immadietly dangerous, and Stalin was instrumental, so nobody believed Germans, and after the war Poland was sold to USSR, and only in 1990 Katyn massacre was made public.
Wow. I like the idea that Dumbledore burned Narcissa, told Lucius and the other Death Eaters and consciously relied on his good reputation to ensure no one else would believe he’d done it. That’s creepy. You’re right, that does take care of the “how does he have such a positive reputation, then?” objection.
I still think Fawkes would have a problem with it unless he’d tried everything else first. Fawkes is presented as quite the moral absolutist. But maybe Fawkes wasn’t around—and possibly he did try lesser measures first.
I still think Fawkes would have a problem with it unless he’d tried everything else first.
If family members of order of the phoenix members are being killed on a daily basis, one doesn’t quiet have the luxury of “trying everything else” first.
(I expect Dumbledore’s learned how to keep a secret from his pet bird by now, so Fawkes may not know, but if he did then I suspect he’ll be disgusted. Phoenixes don’t seem to do situational morality well.)
Interestingly, PR value did exist in the medieval world. King John suffered some serious dissent among his barons for his severity (hostage executions, etc.).
You’re right that “be restrained with everybody” is a recent values innovation. There’s a more limited version that goes way, way back in history: “be restrained with other elites, especially if they have relatives supplying you soldiers.”
I’m not sure if the surrounding dialogue supports this:
Automatically, the mask of the innocent Harry said exactly what it would have said: “Are my parents in danger? Do they need to be moved here?”
“No,” said the old wizard’s voice. “I do not think so. The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order’s families. And if Voldemort is now acting without his former companions, he still knows that it is I who make the decisions for now, and he knows that I would give him nothing for any threat to your family. I have taught him that I do not give in to blackmail, and so he will not try.”
I think the last sentence makes it clear that what the Death Eaters learned was that attacking or threatening the Order’s families was ineffective because Dumbledore would not give in to such threats, not because he would retaliate on a massive scale.
I’ll admit, a big part of my reason for that belief is narrative causality—I would not find this evidence convincing in an open world, but in the context of a fictional story, it fits a little too neatly for coincidence. It’s obvious that Harry is going to move out of Dumbledore’s camp at some point—their worldviews differ too strongly—but this would make an absolutely beautiful cause for the split.
And yes, “I don’t give in to intimidation” is a good start for getting people to stop threatening you, but ”...and if you try, I’ll start intimidating your people and see how you like it” works much better. There’s a reason nuclear deterrent involved having your own nukes, and not just saying “London can take it” writ large.
I think the key line here is Dumbledore’s “The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order’s families.”(Ch. 62). IMO, he openly burned Narcissa alive, as a method of scaring the Death Eaters into leaving the Order’s families alone. It’s a reason that many would consider valid, I think, but it would sunder Harry from either Dumbledore(more likely) or Draco(less likely) when Harry finds out.
That’s a great possibility.
The catch would be explaining why Dumbledore killed Narcissa instead of kidnapping her as a hostage. If you’re in control enough of the situation to kill someone slowly and painfully, why aren’t you in control enough to knock them out and carry them off?
But aside from that hitch, that’s a great motive for Dumbledore. Dumbledore does have this pattern of finding “poetic story logic” a convenient excuse for almost unlimited occasional evil. (Harry’s intended parents, Snape as a kid, Snape’s victims as an adult.) And in story terms it would be a great way to finally “open Harry’s eyes” about Dumbledore, if the author wanted to send the story that way.
I’d still say Bellatrix is two or three times as likely a candidate as Dumbledore. Both because Bellatrix fits the boundaries of Harry’s oath to Draco so neatly, and because Dumbledore’s other vile actions have been explicitly in pursuit of assembling “fairytale tradition” on the side of Hogwarts or Harry. Killing Draco’s mother doesn’t fit the pattern for making Hogwarts heroic or Draco a hero, unless...
… well, unless Dumbledore has some specific reason to want Draco to want to try to kill him. Of course, Draco is indeed tasked to kill Dumbledore in canon. But I don’t think MoR!Dumbledore has read his own canon. That would be too much meta.
I think.
War makes people do some pretty awful things. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by the Death Eaters massacring families en masse as a threat to their opponents—in fact, Quirrell explicitly confirms that they did, in his post-Battle of Zabini speech.
If you’re the commander of the forces of the light, and you know that someone is knocking your people out of the war with tactics that you have no plausible way to stop directly(too many innocents to secure, etc.), then you’re faced with a problem that you must address for the war to continue, and one that you must address indirectly at that. Honestly, I can think of no better solution to that problem than...well, burning a completely innocent woman alive as a terror tactic. Maybe two or three, if the lesson didn’t take. Voldemort won’t care, but his people will, and it should at a minimum reduce the numbers of such attacks. It’s not fairytale logic of the sort Dumbledore prefers, but we know that he can be a hardass at need, and this seems like a need.
These are the tradeoffs you get when lives are the playing pieces of your game and you can’t walk away from the board. War sucks.
As for the hostage case, consider the logistics of holding a hostage. Voldemort is essentially all-powerful, and not even Dumbledore can best him in a straight-up fight(and of course, Voldemort’s a lot more likely to come rolling in with a SWAT team at 4 AM than to let you have a fair fight, especially MoR!Voldemort). You need some sort of fortification that can resist a trained and very pissed-off witch being inside it indefinitely, and an unbeatable army at the gates. Hogwarts is as close as Dumbledore has available, and as we saw in Deathly Hallows, it’s not sufficient. The alternative is a secret location, using magical anti-detection methods, but those have flaws of the sort the HP books spent a lot of time dealing with, and to my understanding of the spells involved, simply bringing Narcissa inside would ruin the secrecy were she ever to get out again. And of course, how do you pass messages telling Lucius that you have his wife and that you’ll kill her if they keep killing your family members, and have them be believed and respected?
Or suppose Dumbledore did take Narcissa prisoner first, and that wasn’t good enough to make the enemy stop.
Dumbledore kidnapped Narcissa and held her hostage.
attacks on the Order’s family members continued.
Dumbledore, heaving great sighs of regret, burned her alive to make his point, sent Lucius the evidence...
Dumbledore informed Lucius that Draco would be taken captive next.
attacks on the Order’s family members stopped.
That’s just cold-blooded, not gratuitously cruel, and Lucius might not be able to publicize his side of the story without admitting to more Death-Eater backstory than he wants discussed. So this could work.
(In our world, even most guerrilla and terrorist groups have routinely held significant prisoners alive for intelligence or as hostages. Even the deliberately cruel groups have found it feasible to take captives when they wanted leverage or information.
So if Dumbledore claimed that his war with Voldemort was so difficult that he just couldn’t ever take prisoners, that he had to torture innocents for leverage rather than capture them, he’d have claimed more moral exemptions than claimed by Hezbollah or the IRA or the Taliban.
That’s unlikely already. Still less likely is that Fawkes and McGonagall are mostly happy in his company now after a “cruelty because convenient” pattern of behavior in the not-so-distant past.
So I think Dumbledore has to have tried to use her as a hostage alive before killing her, for his internal behavior and his external reputation to fit what we observe.)
That’s a reasonable narrative. We’ll have to wait to see exactly how it played out, of course, but I wouldn’t find that version surprising at all.
Conversely, however, remember how many of the basic protections we take for granted that don’t exist in the wizarding world. In a lot of ways it’s a medieval society, and very few leaders from that era would have flinched at doing something utterly brutal to make a point. Even real-world terrorist groups try to pretend to play by the rules of civilized society, because those rules are so expected that ignoring them would damage their cause terribly. It’s the same as dictators running “free elections”—they’re not, but they pretend for the PR value. I doubt that PR value exists in the wizarding world.
I doubt PR counted for much among deatheaters, so Dumbledore did not lose anything here, and for the rest of wizarding Brittain—they didn’t have a choice other than Dumbledore, so they wouldn’t believe deatheaters that DD could do sth like that. And later they would not change their opinions, but would forgot their motivation (because it was unplesant—fear of worse evil).
Very similiar thing happened in real life in WW2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre Nazi Germany announced in 1943 that they have found mass graves of tousands Polish prisoners of war all killed by shot in the back of head by soviets. USA and UK had treaty with Stalin, and Germany was more immadietly dangerous, and Stalin was instrumental, so nobody believed Germans, and after the war Poland was sold to USSR, and only in 1990 Katyn massacre was made public.
Wow. I like the idea that Dumbledore burned Narcissa, told Lucius and the other Death Eaters and consciously relied on his good reputation to ensure no one else would believe he’d done it. That’s creepy. You’re right, that does take care of the “how does he have such a positive reputation, then?” objection.
I still think Fawkes would have a problem with it unless he’d tried everything else first. Fawkes is presented as quite the moral absolutist. But maybe Fawkes wasn’t around—and possibly he did try lesser measures first.
If family members of order of the phoenix members are being killed on a daily basis, one doesn’t quiet have the luxury of “trying everything else” first.
Yes, but will Fawkes care?
(I expect Dumbledore’s learned how to keep a secret from his pet bird by now, so Fawkes may not know, but if he did then I suspect he’ll be disgusted. Phoenixes don’t seem to do situational morality well.)
As a recent example compare the attitude towards bombing civilians before WWII, with what every side wound up doing during that war.
Interestingly, PR value did exist in the medieval world. King John suffered some serious dissent among his barons for his severity (hostage executions, etc.).
You’re right that “be restrained with everybody” is a recent values innovation. There’s a more limited version that goes way, way back in history: “be restrained with other elites, especially if they have relatives supplying you soldiers.”
I suppose my grammar was rather ambiguous. PR value certainly existed in the medieval world, I meant “that” as in “that particular”.
Use ‘that that’.
I’m not sure if the surrounding dialogue supports this:
I think the last sentence makes it clear that what the Death Eaters learned was that attacking or threatening the Order’s families was ineffective because Dumbledore would not give in to such threats, not because he would retaliate on a massive scale.
I’ll admit, a big part of my reason for that belief is narrative causality—I would not find this evidence convincing in an open world, but in the context of a fictional story, it fits a little too neatly for coincidence. It’s obvious that Harry is going to move out of Dumbledore’s camp at some point—their worldviews differ too strongly—but this would make an absolutely beautiful cause for the split.
And yes, “I don’t give in to intimidation” is a good start for getting people to stop threatening you, but ”...and if you try, I’ll start intimidating your people and see how you like it” works much better. There’s a reason nuclear deterrent involved having your own nukes, and not just saying “London can take it” writ large.