It just never ever reads well, I've never read a story where Dumbledore was 'evil' that wasn't either a comedy, either intentionally or unintentionally.

 

The problem is that Dumbledore is too complicated a character to be evil. The closest you can do to that is to be a leader willing to sacrifice for an ideal, and even that is farfetched because Dumbledore was unwilling to sacrafice just Harry to Voldemort.

 

There's always Last Enemy to be Destroyed. I'm pretty sure most folk would call that either 'evil' or 'insanely evil'. Perhaps just 'batshit'. Still, it's close.

 

The trick would be to make sure Harry doesn't know he is evil. Hell, the reader shouldn't know it, either. Dumbledore being evil should be hinted at very, very subtly and then revealed at the very end.

 

I'd actually be really interested to see if this could be done right.


I love how 90% of the evil Dumbledore fics label him evil because he 'intends' to sacrifice Harry to save everyone else. I mean yeah that kind of sucks, but if he saw no other possible way and knew it was one kid vs the world, I mean come on, that's not evil. Or he steals Harry's money then either does nothing with it - so he's stupid - or uses it to fund Hogwarts scholarships, yes stealing other people's stuff is never ok, believe me I'm really against that. But damn he's an evil son of a bitch for trying to enrich children's lives like that.

My big problem with evil Dumbledore is just that he is not evil, he's usually just stupid.

 

Well, there are a few good stories that feature morally dubious (if not exactly evil) Dumbledore :
1. Harry Potter and the Greater Good : Dumbledore and Grindelwald take over the world.
2. The Well Groomed Mind : Competent Evil Dumbledore.
3. And Beggars will Ride : Oneshot by Opalish. Dumbledore's thoughts on Harry from PS to OoTP in a manipulative light.
4. The Potter Conspiracy and Potter's Resistance Breaking Ties : Somewhat competent Manipulative Dumbledore. Unfortunately Evil Weasleys as well.

So, Evil Dumbledore is doable. I think the best Point of Divergence for Evil Dumbledore is to keep Ariana alive and have Albus join Grindelwald, like in Harry Potter and the Greater Good. Evil Dumbledore during canon's time period has been done to death, very few of them good, and I don't have any interest in reading about it.

Also, if you want Dumbledore to be antagonist, even the main antagonist, that need not mean you make Dumbledore evil. Control has a morally dubious Harry who despises Dumbledore. Neither Harry nor Dumbledore are particularly evil in Prince of the Dark Kingdom, yet they are on opposite sides of the War. Hmmm, I actually like Antagonist Dumbledore. I wish there were more of it, rather than weak ass Manipulative!Spineless!Dumbledore.

 

Except Harry wasn't the only one sacrificed. He put the children of Hogwarts at risk multiple times to further his own plots, what with the possessed teachers, or Draco going around handing deathly gifts like party hats, and bringing death eaters to the party. He also failed to do anything after knowing that Lucius unleashed a monster on the school and threatened the board of governors. Not to mention purposely letting Sirius rot in Azkaban. Dumbledore isn't evil, but he's a cold-hearted chess master that uses Hogwarts as his giant chess board and doesn't seem to give a shit about his pawns.

 

You say that like he was had full knowledge of what was going on in all those cases, canon does not tell us that he did. I'll give you maybe the first one, probably the second one. However I doubt there was much real danger to the students for the first. Voldemort would never have harmed the children whether he got the stone or not, he'd have grabbed it and ran as quietly as he could. The only danger was a massive dog that only an idiot could have ended up getting themselves hurt to.

He didn't know death eaters were going to gain access to Hogwarts, he didn't know who or how the monster was released and I doubt there was much he could do to stop it as it's not like someone was walking around possessed the whole time to be caught.

He thought Sirius was guilty just like everyone else, he didn't 'let him' rot, nor was it his responsibility to get him out or make sure he wasn't put in in the first place.

He's not a cold hearted chess master who uses his position to manipulate all those around him and he does care about all those under his care. You've read far too much fanon that has no base in canon and it's corrupted your view significantly.

 

It's not the fanon I read, it's simply reading deeper into the books. Dumbledore knew Sirius wasn't given a trial... and to the last minute he believed Sirius to be on his side. Sirius was part of his Order. He had the authority as Chief Mugwump to at least question him. We're talking about the Dumbledore that pulled memories from Morfin in Azkaban and from a framed house elf. He would surely do the same with Sirius. It doesn't make sense for him to not do at least that. But I believe that Dumbedore didn't want Sirius as influence to young Harry, he wanted to control Harry, and I'm sure he knew that the Dursley's weren't letting Harry in on his heritage. He could have had Sirius freed, but he wanted him out of the way.
We don't know what Quirrelmort could have done, but the fact is that his actions almost caused Hermione's death in Halloween. At the end of CoS he was very aware of how dangerous Lucius was, and did nothing. In HBP, he could have sent Snape to give Draco a nice Legilimency probe to discover his plans.
If he isn't cold-hearted chess master that doesn't care about sacrificing pawns, then he must be senile and should be accused of criminal negligence.

 

Maybe he knew Sirius had no trial but he like everyone else thought he was guilty in the end, so at most he's as guilty as everyone else is that knew.

Doesn't really mean anything, he knew there was a traitor in it, why not him?

There's actually no evidence given that he was Chief Mugwump at that time, then again there is no evidence he was not. Yes he probably had the authority to question him, but again, he believed he was guilty with fairly good reason. After all, Sirius did all but confess in the street after Pettigrew escaped.

I really disagree, I see no evidence to that at all.

Yes again I can give you the events of the first book to some degree. I doubt very much that Voldemort would have actively tried to harm anyone while in the castle though as he did not want to arouse Dumbledore's suspicion.

I treat the first book very differently from the rest, simply because when JKR wrote it you can feel the lack of future planning when reading it again. Many things that happened in that book no longer make sense once you understand the world that has been build in the following ones. Just look at Dumbledore flying to the ministry on a broom. Therefore I'm very forgiving to pretty much any of the events in it.

It is also likely that with regards to preventing Voldemort's return the choice of hiding the stone in the school was the best one.

There was nothing he could do, do not forget that Lucius had the Minister's ear and no solid evidence against him. Sure he knew it was him, but that was it. Even if he got the memory of Lucius slipping Ginny the diary was used there is no reason to believe he knew what he was doing. Also no one actually saw him slip it in, Harry just deduced that was when it had happened. Lucius slipped it inside/inbetween books then dumped the lot back in Ginny's cauldron, I do not believe anyone could have actually seen what he did.

No he couldn't because Snape was sworn to try to assist Draco if possible as well as to protect him, breaking into his mind would have been the complete opposite and possibly triggered the vow. Also he already knew that Draco planned to kill him, he did not see him as a threat, he didn't have the faintest idea that he was actually planning on getting Death Eaters into the castle.

No I think he just like everyone else cannot expect and prepare for everything. Nor can he solve everything.

 

Oh Goody, StarFox5 2.0. Just what I wanted. Just when I thought we got rid of all of them...

 

Everything you wrote comes with some presumption that Dumbledore doesn't have a very investigative, shrewd mind, and a lot of power. That's not what we see in canon. The man who investigated the past of Tom Riddle, would at the very least investigate Sirius, ask him why he betrayed them, ask what else he told Voldemort about the Order. Remember, Dumbledore believes in second (third... fourth... fifth....) chances. And Dumbledore didn't seem surprised at all when Harry told him Sirius was innocent. He was very ready to free Sirius. And at that time he was the Supreme Mugwump, and can arrange Sirius a trial, what with the substance known as Veritaserum, and there haven't actually been any evidence of Sirius' wrongdoings. But Sirius was Harry's godfather, and had actual legal authority on Harry, unlike Dumbledore or the Dursleys (really, taking baby Harry from the ruins and refusing to give him to Sirius at the time was flat out kidnapping). And Dumbledore flat out admitted that he knew of the conditions Harry lived in. He arranged that, from the moment Harry learned about Magic, he also learned that Albus Dumbledore was a "great man".
The same Veritaserum could have incriminated Lucius, and even if there wasn't any evidence of him giving the diary to Ginny, there is ample evidence of him threatening to curse the families of the board members.
I doubt that the Unbreakable Vow would have prevented Snape from using Legilimency on Draco, but even then, Dumbledore himself could have done it with ease. He knew all along about Draco's murder attempts and didn't bat an eyelash when they almost caused death to innocents.

As I said, to the ignorant, uninquisitive reader those things might not be clear, but you only have to connect the dots and ask a few strategic questions to reveal what conspired behind the events we know. To deny Dumbledore's awareness of the gross injustice that transpired is to say that he is a complete fool, and we both know that he isn't.

 

So many fics just get horcrux mechanics all wrong.

1. You can't directly affect a horcrux. That's the point of a horcrux. You can't kill a horcrux with a killing curse, a Dementor can't suck a horcrux out of its receptacle, and certainly there aren't any medical procedures that can extract it.

Even when you do something to destroy the horcrux, like stabbing one of Voldemort's horcruxes with a basilisk fang, you're not directly affecting the soul piece. The basilisk venom doesn't kill the soul, it destroys the physical object, after which the soul must move on. The only way to destroy a horcrux is to physically destroy the receptacle. This is such a basic point that so many people fail to understand.

2. Horcruxes don't have default invulnerability. Something being a horcrux does not in itself grant that object any special invulnerability to damage. The Dark wizard creating the horcrux must enchant the receptacle to resist damage separately from the process of making it a horcrux.

3. There isn't a default set of horcrux-protecting enchantments that all horcruxes possess. The wizard creating the horcrux puts the protections on the receptacle, and what things that wizard chooses to protect against depends on the wizard's choices and capabilities. Different horcruxes will therefore be protected against different things.

This is what it means to put a horcrux beyond magical repair (and thus destroy it): you put the horcrux beyond that horcrux's specific ability to magically repair, not beyond some abstract concept of magical repair in general. Basilisk venom, for example, does not necessarily put something beyond magical repair: if you have phoenix tears, you can repair the damage of basilisk venom. So the horcrux in Harry wasn't destroyed by basilisk venom in CoS, because he wasn't put beyond magical repair by it, but it does destroy the others because Voldemort didn't protect them against basilisk venom.

It's specifically stated, however, that basilisk venom is not some set-in-stone horcrux-destroyer, it destroys horcruxes simply because the ingredient necessary to resist it is so rare.

All of this was explained explicitly in Deathly Hallows chapter 6.

Horcrux being tied innately to its physical container:

Protections on a horcrux are put there separately by the Dark wizard making it:

Efficacy of basilisk fangs in destroying horcruxes depends on horcruxes not being protected against it, due to the rarity of its single counteracting force:

 

You seem to assume that the Supreme Mugwump has complete control over the Wizengamot. We know that that isn't the case, and we don't even have the date when Dumbledore becomes Supreme Mugwump.

"Did you case the deaths of the Potters?" "Yes" Case closed.

To all involved it looked as if he'd killed a wizard and thirteen muggles in broad daylight.

Sirius says he had previously arranged with James and Lily to "check on Peter" that Wednesday. When he discovered Pettigrew was missing from his hiding place, Sirius got worried and took his flying motorcycle to the house in Godric’s Hollow, where he was horrified by the destruction and death (PA19). Hagrid is still there and comforts him, and Sirius, as Harry’s godfather, asks to take the child. However, Hagrid is on strict orders from Dumbledore to bring Harry to his Aunt and Uncle’s house on Privet Drive. Sirius gives his motorcycle to Hagrid for the trip, saying "I won’t need it anymore." (PA10) Totally sounds like a kidnapping.

Fanon, not Canon.

Citation needed.

You're assuming in this post that Dumbledore is both omniscient and maleficent. People tend to ignore the fact that Dumbledore is actually human, not something like Contessa from Worm.

 

Peeve:

Chief Warlock --> Wizengamot

Supreme Mugwump --> ICW

ffs

 

Dumbledore was not Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot at the end of the First War, in any case. Barty Crouch Sr presided over the trials of Death Eaters and Dumbledore was just a regular member.

 

There were probably more important things to do at the time and after things had settled down he saw no reason to or simply forgot. Perhaps he didn't even want to know why someone would do that to who he thought was his best friend.

I'll give you this, that could be important information, though what was there to tell?

It is possible his lack of surprise was because Sirius had just told him that before he went to visit Harry in the hospital wing, even if he didn't believe it why would he be surprised Harry thought that it was true? He was probably ready to free him because the pieces of the puzzle came together and made sense when he heard Sirius' tale.

You actually don't know that, we don't know when he moved into the position, however based on the trial memory for Barty Crouch Jr. where he sat next to Moody on the benches I think it's more likely that he was not the Supreme Mugwump at that time.

Sure, except that the conditions he lived in were not actually all that bad, he was neglected yes, but not abused, no more than many other kids anyway. His safety from Death Eaters/Voldemort trumps that I think. You could argue that after a couple of years he could have been moved though I suppose.

Give the man who escaped being given Veritaserum as a death eater the truth serum on a 'hunch' that he indirectly opened Slytherin's chamber to kill muggleborns? Really?

No, you're just trying really hard to see things in a way that supports your theory, you are not an informed, inquisitive reader.

 

Oh god. I'm not gonna argue with you if you're going to blatantly ignore all logic and reason. This kind of backpedaling and stupid excuses is something I'd expect from the likes of Cornelius Fudge or Dolores Umbridge - like talking to a wall. Yes, I have noticed that you're not quite all there.

 

Feel free to leave, we won't mind. It's obvious your opinions cannot stand up for themselves when confronted with fact.

 

Or I'm just not into wasting my time on people without the capacity to look into what the facts tell us.