Chapter 110 Dumbledore is an over-the-top caricature of himself who has months to set up the perfect trap, while having access to both his century-old deep knowledge of magic and to some of the most powerful artifacts in the world (Elder Wand, Mirror of Erised, Line of Merlin Unbroken, etc.), but he gets wiped off the gameboard in minutes. This happens in a way that fulfills his enemy’s ideal scenario, any countermeasures destroyed immediately by the artifact he himself introduces into the plot.
Readers at the time thought this was so out of character for Dumbledore that this was likely all fake, and the Mirror was simply showing Quirrell his CEV (see also 2, 3, among others):
Be very careful about trusting what you see in this particular mirror. It may be that this entire process is exactly what the Defense Professor wanted to see.
Dumbledore—brilliant Dumbledore, his one true opponent in all this time—was completely fooled. Then tried to trap him with a plan he already knew, with an obvious solution he had already forseen. Then he throws his own life away in order to save Harry, just as the Defense Professor had predicted. Without any more meddling from him everything should be easy.
Coherent extrapolated volition indeed.
Dumbledore really comes across as hamming it up in this chapter. I suspect that the entire exchange is being put on for Harry’s benefit.
The events in this chapter feel contrived. I assume the Chang’s Timeless Whatever thing is a reference to something or other, but I don’t know what it is and don’t know how I could have seen it coming. So I’m just taking everybody’s word for it as to what the hell is going on. And basically it feels like a setup designed so that Dumbledore and Quirrell can have their chat, it can seem like Dumbledore set a good trap for Voldemort, and then Quirrell can have his clever reversal of it because he saw it all coming, apparently. Yet even though Dumbledore knows Voldemort is smart and is probably aware the cloak can counter the mirror, he still goes ahead with this plan. Was it really his best option? Frankly we have no idea. What would Quirrell have done against a simple Confundus Charm instead? A hominem revelio would have found Harry (Finding Harry would have been like the first thing Dumbles did after crippling Quirrell) while Quirrell is busy thinking he’s a goat and everything could have been fine.
This chapter does not satisfy me, and everything about it feels designed to force a particular scene and the feeling of Dumbledore’s insufficiently clever plan defeated by Quirrell apparently just knowing about it ahead of time. Blehhhhhh.
And before you think or say that this was intentional or designed by Eliezer to generate one more layer of mystery in the story’s final arc, note that we know it wasn’t:
Me:
writes dialogue between Professor Quirrell and Dumbledore, running straightforward models of both characters
Reader reactions:
Faaaaake
Gotta be a CEV
They’re still inside the mirror
Dumbledore wouldn’t be beaten that easily, this was too easy for Quirrell, it has to be his dream.
Knowing what we know now, the one answer that stands out to me is that Dumbledore’s heart just wasn’t in it.
Dumbledore put together a legitimate trap, he did try to stop Voldemort all by himself, but he didn’t do his absolute best. This is why:
If you are reading this, Harry Potter, then I have fallen to Voldemort, and the quest now lies in your hands.
Though it may shock you to learn, this was the end that I wished in my heart would come to pass. For as I write this, it yet seems possible that Voldemort may fall by my own hand. And then, in time, I shall myself become the darkness you must overcome, to enter fully into your power. For it was said once that you might need to raise your hand against your mentor, the one who made you, who you loved; it was said that you might be my downfall. If you are reading this, then that shall never come to pass, and I am glad of it.
Dumbledore though that if he won against Voldemort, it would mean that he would go on to become the evil wizard Harry Potter would have to defeat. And it sure seems like Dumbledore spent a lot of time thinking about that.
This insecurity of his shows in his past interactions with Harry. Every time Dumbledore and Harry confront each other, Dumbledore seems to be on the back foot, a little bit too willing to question himself and his own convictions. Which doesn’t make sense for “a wise old wizard, talking to a first year”, but makes a lot of sense for “a good old wizard who knows that he may fall to darkness, talking to a young hero prophecised to end him if he does”. In every interaction, Dumbledore is asking himself—“is he just young and naive, or is he pointing out a real flaw in me that will in time become my undoing?”
I still do not know what you think he should have done, either in the scenario where he knows he will fail due to prophecy, or the one where he does not.
In the scenario where he knows that prophecy foretells an outcome incompatible with his success here, his major decision point is long-past; he has reason to do it anyway (presumably prophetic reason). I see nothing he could do which is obviously better, and the conversation may itself be part of the keyhole future path.
If he doesn’t, this is still far from an “approximately-worst option.” It’s still a really good trap unless Quirrell knows the Mirror is going to be the trap, knows Harry’s Cloak is the genuine article that will still hide him from the Mirror, and can trick and coerce Harry into coming with him, which is three different things Dumbledore has good reason to think he probably doesn’t know. The latter two are both achieved only through adventures Dumbledore doesn’t know about—Azkaban, and Harry using up his time-loop password on the first day. As Lucius told Draco—any plan that relies on three things going right for you is at the limit of possible plans, and the real limit is two.
Chapter 110 Dumbledore is an over-the-top caricature of himself who has months to set up the perfect trap, while having access to both his century-old deep knowledge of magic and to some of the most powerful artifacts in the world (Elder Wand, Mirror of Erised, Line of Merlin Unbroken, etc.), but he gets wiped off the gameboard in minutes. This happens in a way that fulfills his enemy’s ideal scenario, any countermeasures destroyed immediately by the artifact he himself introduces into the plot.
Readers at the time thought this was so out of character for Dumbledore that this was likely all fake, and the Mirror was simply showing Quirrell his CEV (see also 2, 3, among others):
And before you think or say that this was intentional or designed by Eliezer to generate one more layer of mystery in the story’s final arc, note that we know it wasn’t:
Knowing what we know now, the one answer that stands out to me is that Dumbledore’s heart just wasn’t in it.
Dumbledore put together a legitimate trap, he did try to stop Voldemort all by himself, but he didn’t do his absolute best. This is why:
Dumbledore though that if he won against Voldemort, it would mean that he would go on to become the evil wizard Harry Potter would have to defeat. And it sure seems like Dumbledore spent a lot of time thinking about that.
This insecurity of his shows in his past interactions with Harry. Every time Dumbledore and Harry confront each other, Dumbledore seems to be on the back foot, a little bit too willing to question himself and his own convictions. Which doesn’t make sense for “a wise old wizard, talking to a first year”, but makes a lot of sense for “a good old wizard who knows that he may fall to darkness, talking to a young hero prophecised to end him if he does”. In every interaction, Dumbledore is asking himself—“is he just young and naive, or is he pointing out a real flaw in me that will in time become my undoing?”
I still do not know what you think he should have done, either in the scenario where he knows he will fail due to prophecy, or the one where he does not.
… almost anything but what he did? “Better than the approximately-worst option used” is a low bar to clear.
In the scenario where he knows that prophecy foretells an outcome incompatible with his success here, his major decision point is long-past; he has reason to do it anyway (presumably prophetic reason). I see nothing he could do which is obviously better, and the conversation may itself be part of the keyhole future path.
If he doesn’t, this is still far from an “approximately-worst option.” It’s still a really good trap unless Quirrell knows the Mirror is going to be the trap, knows Harry’s Cloak is the genuine article that will still hide him from the Mirror, and can trick and coerce Harry into coming with him, which is three different things Dumbledore has good reason to think he probably doesn’t know. The latter two are both achieved only through adventures Dumbledore doesn’t know about—Azkaban, and Harry using up his time-loop password on the first day. As Lucius told Draco—any plan that relies on three things going right for you is at the limit of possible plans, and the real limit is two.