Actually, now that you’ve reminded me of it, we know that for certain.
I can see Voldemort making strategic screwups or even tactical ones, but I have trouble seeing him screw up a well-planned magical maneuver. This guy is supposed to be the super-badass of magic.
I don’t see Dumbledore deliberately setting up anyone’s parents to die. Dumbledore isn’t quite THAT Machievellian with other people’s lives (though he ain’t no saint either!) and he simply isn’t that in control of events, particularly Voldemort’s actions. Dumbledore is repeatedly surprised, outmanuevered, and so on. He’s human and doing the best he can in the face of Voldemort’s murderous killings, not secretly running the whole game.
I agree that there’s very little chance of Snape ending up evil, thematically, but I’m more than willing to entertain the possibility that he’s evil right now.
I can see two possible scenarios, and I find them both equally compelling:
-
Dumbledore consented to die in order to save Snape’s and Draco’s lives, either by prior agreement or on the spot through Legilimency. Snape is Dumbledore’s man through and through.
-
The Dark Arts are an addiction, and Snape, for the last sixteen years, has been the magical equivalent of a dry drunk. Gaining the DADA job put him in the way of more temptation than he could sustain, and his apparent defection to the Death Eaters is genuine. (If this is the case, I do think that 1) Snape really was a good guy through Books 1-5 – Harry would be dead many times over if he hadn’t been; and 2) he’ll get a big redemptive death scene in Book Seven.)
I just acn’t bring myself to find #2 plausible, though I do have to say that at least you have an answer to why Dumbledore has kept Snape from the DADA position and I simply have no explanation for it. The only think I can think of is what Dumbledore says about the position in general: no one can last more than a year since Voldemort was denied it.
If something big and important is supposed to happen when Snape is made DADA teacher, we certainly see nothing out of the ordinary in the book. In fact, it’s something of an anti-climax, for all it was played up to be.
So was Palpatine. So was Yoda. So was Leona Helmsley.
People screw up.
-Joe
Okay, let me chip in with a few ideas and questions…
This may sound a little off, but it’s not clear to me that Snape really did kill Dumbledore. Er, one possibility is that AD isn’t quite dead - though I wouldn’t argue this too far. Still, why hasn’t AD’s face shown up in his portrait yet? He’s off getting some rest of some kind? Huh? With a vibrant, powerful spirit like that?
The other fairly dark idea is that Snape didn’t kill AD, really, because Harry had already done so (most unintentionally on Harry’s part); AD was a dead man walking by the time Snape got there, so Snape put AD out of his misery. It’s possible that AD didn’t know the potion was fatal until he started it, but he knew that it probably would be. (Say, was AD saying those things while he was drinking up out of pure delirium, or does AD have some dark secrets of his own?) Anyhow, Snape killing AD seems too pat - I think it will turn out to have been a set-up of some kind, somehow and somewhy arranged in advance between AD and Snape.
…With all the opportunity and reason in the world, Snape hasn’t done anything even to much injure Harry. But Snape certainly does have issues over that word “coward.” Hmm. Me, I could see that Snape probably did have a crush (at least) on Lilly, and would have seriously conflicted feelings about the child she had from the man he most detested.
Keep in mind how the war was progressing at the time. People were being killed left and right. Devoted anti-Dark Arts wizards like Barty Crouch were allowing the use of Unforgivables on suspects – that’s how desperate some of them had become. Hogwarts was supposed to be one of the few safe places left in Britain. You can see how bad it was by everyone’s reaction to Harry. He’s a saviour to them. They had little hope until Voldemort was blasted with his own curse. So what was Dumbledore to do, back when he first heard the prophecy? It was a glimpse of hope, after 12 years of darkness. In OotP he calls the prophecy a weapon with which Voldemort could kill Harry, but it was also a weapon to destroy Voldemort. I don’t see it being Machievellian as much as being forced to make a very difficult decision in having to weigh the Potters (or Longbottoms) against the wizarding world.
I suspect that Voldy created a horcrux with the murder of James but it is NOT Harry. Think of the proximity (the Potter house), destroying the last horcrux will force Harry to make a great personal sacrifice.
What I’m saying, though, is that in all these cases, the supervillian didn’t screw up the use of their super-power. They made blunders of judgement or strategy, but not the kung-fu. Likewise I don’t see Voldemort screwing up such a huge magical maneuver… I mean, this is a chunk of his own soul we’re talking about, he wouldn’t risk it in a vengeance raid alone against an unknown number of opponents, not when he could just store his soul in some secondhand antique that will stay where he left it and does not have parental guardians.
One rumor my son floated to me is that it’s not Harry that’s the horcrux, but his scar. That would allow the horcrux to be destroyed without killing Harry.
I hope I’m not confusing this with a thread I’ve read. At the end of Half Blood Prince, didn’t Harry say he was going to Godric’s Hollow? Is the missing horocrux still there from the night Voldy had the spell backfire?
In my gut I just can’t see Harry being a horocrux. However many liberties Rowling takes with the rules of magic I see the spell as being done with an object at first and then the sacrifice to empower the object.
The killing curse backfired, it is a seperate spell than the one that creates the horocrux. So how could Harry be a horocrux?
The idea of the scar being a horocrux is so silly I can’t even debunk it. If I’m wrong on that two years from now I’ll print out this thread and eat it.
Humor me for a minute with this Wild-Assed Theory ™.
Suppose, just suppose, that Dumbledore was somehow the extra horcrux. This works on two levels. First it has a touch of delicious irony in Dumbledore’s explaination that it’s unwise to have horcruxes be people with free will. Secondly, it would help explain why Snape would kill him and still be an ally to Dumbledore. It seems possible that Dumbledore may have made Snape vow to killhim in order to destroy one of those horcruxes.
Of course, I can’t piece together the circumstances which would be needed to make this theory work, but it wouldn’t be the first time that JKR let a big chunk of exposition to be done out of context to serve the storyline.
Incidentally, the details about Dumbledore having the burnt, dead hand is going to somehow be important, and I’m convinced that there’s more to that weird archway in which Sirius fell through. I’ve been conditioned to never believe a death is a death until you see the body.
Well, because of this thread, I now have to re-read all 6 books.
Jerks. 
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t his face in the portrait? I thought it was sleeping (I expected a little chit-chat between Harry and it so as to truly establish the nature of such objects and how, if they are so like the person, they cannot be treated as such. Coldn’t Dumbledore’s portrait continue to instruct and teach Harry and explain everything that had happened?
Something about the whole death scene was off to me. Every time we’ve seen the killing curse used in the books, the victim simply drops, often wearing a look of surprise. In this case, however, Dumbledore is blasted over the edge of the tower, appears to hover for a moment, then drops. When Harry finally sees the body, the description indicates that Dumbledore appears quite peaceful.
In a way that supports the theory that AD arranged his own death for some purpose. The peaceful look would imply that he’d been prepared for it and made peace with it, as opposed to be shocked or horrified like others in worse circumstances.
This also could have something to do with the phoenix Harry sees (or imagines?) rising from Dumbledore’s tomb at the end…
The curtain and Sirius not really being dead is a fascinating idea, but Rowling’s nixed it in interviews (I can’t give a cite, sorry)–Sirius is dead dead, definitely not coming back. sniffle
I also think that Dumbledore may have put a protective charm on Harry right before he died, similar to the one Lilly put on Harry.
If it was precisely the same charm, it would only protect Harry from Snape, but Dumbledore was a powerful wizard…
Don’t see much wrong with that. Curses often blow people backwards. The hanging was because he was in midair and this was a dramatic, almost slow-motion scene for Harry. He was peaceful because Dumbledore is a peaceful, wise old man who very obviously knew his death was coming (and may have even planned it for all we know). What did you want: Dumbledore’s face to be frozen in a scream with blood shooting out of his eyeballs?