I don’t think Harry has even noticed that the rule of three exists yet. He hasn’t actually had any of his plans fail, so he has no experience with trying to make sure that they don’t. This is why I’m fairly skeptical of his whole “If your plan isn’t working, be more clever” attitude—sometimes, clever isn’t enough. Dumbledore’s inactivity seems a lot more sensible in a lot of cases, as would be expected from someone who’s learned the hard way.
That a plan might be possible that would allow him to achieve all his goals will not benefit him if he doesn’t think of it, and there is no guarantee that he is capable of thinking of it. Harry is a very bright boy, and the laws of magic allow a lot of cheating. But there are a bunch of reasonably intelligent opponents out there that would be opposing his efforts, and the Harry of this story is demonstrably not smart enough to calculate in advance all of their possible countermoves and preempt them.
His knowledge of the rule’s existence is irrelevant. I don’t think It was meant to be taken as a limiting boundary on all plans, just good advice that Lucius seemed to trust. And his solution isn’t to be merely clever, its to be creative. Harry’s point is that a world where evil goes unchecked is barely worth living in, and so there’s no real room for compromise. With power like magic that can literally rewrite the laws of physics, no situation is ever really unsolvable if you’re creative enough to directly manipulate the rules.
I understand the attitude, but Harry’s default plan seems to be to throw complexity at any given problem. That doesn’t end well, magic or no magic. And to steal a quote from canon, “the problem is that our enemies have magic too”.
I don’t think Harry has even noticed that the rule of three exists yet. He hasn’t actually had any of his plans fail, so he has no experience with trying to make sure that they don’t. This is why I’m fairly skeptical of his whole “If your plan isn’t working, be more clever” attitude—sometimes, clever isn’t enough. Dumbledore’s inactivity seems a lot more sensible in a lot of cases, as would be expected from someone who’s learned the hard way.
sometimes, there isn’t enough clever
This is also true.
would you care to elaborate?
That a plan might be possible that would allow him to achieve all his goals will not benefit him if he doesn’t think of it, and there is no guarantee that he is capable of thinking of it. Harry is a very bright boy, and the laws of magic allow a lot of cheating. But there are a bunch of reasonably intelligent opponents out there that would be opposing his efforts, and the Harry of this story is demonstrably not smart enough to calculate in advance all of their possible countermoves and preempt them.
His knowledge of the rule’s existence is irrelevant. I don’t think It was meant to be taken as a limiting boundary on all plans, just good advice that Lucius seemed to trust. And his solution isn’t to be merely clever, its to be creative. Harry’s point is that a world where evil goes unchecked is barely worth living in, and so there’s no real room for compromise. With power like magic that can literally rewrite the laws of physics, no situation is ever really unsolvable if you’re creative enough to directly manipulate the rules.
I understand the attitude, but Harry’s default plan seems to be to throw complexity at any given problem. That doesn’t end well, magic or no magic. And to steal a quote from canon, “the problem is that our enemies have magic too”.