ClassicDrogn Wrote:As for alignment... intentionally placing a child in a bad environment, always letting the bad guys off lightly to repeat offend, intentionally endangering a school full of kids by setting up traps inside it - no, good Dumbledore is NOT canon. At all.While I admit that Dumbledore made some mistakes throughout the series, the specifics which you cite are likely not among them.
1). Dumbledore wasn't placing Harry into a bad environment, he was placing Harry into a secure environment. While Ben Franklin did claim that "he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither," the fact is that Voldemort, his Death Eaters and all of their mentally controlled thralls sat outside of that house waiting for the protection to drop naturally rather than trying to attack Harry directly, so that must have been a pretty damn good defense.
2). Letting the bad guys off lightly to repeat offend? Fanon hippy pacifist Dumbledore. He let Snape act in a petty and petulant manner because he needed Snape as his only spy within Voldemort's inner cirlce. Where else in canon do you see Dumbledore's supposed revolving door of justice?
3). Oddly, setting up those traps in the school may have saved kids. The Potter timeline has Quirrell meeting the Dark Lord while on sabbatical sometime between September 1990 and June 1991. Thus Voldemort already had an agent in Hogwarts before the entire plot with the philosopher's stone came about. The only likely reason for Hogwarts to be targeted at that specific time was if Voldemort was gunning for Harry Potter.
Since Dumbledore was trying to track Voldemort's movements, he knew that the Dark Lord had been in the Albanian forests right up to the time Professor Quirrell was there, after which he moved on. He must have also suspected that Quirrell was Voldemort's agent. Dumbledore kept Harry alive by purposefully dangling the philosopher's stone in front of Quirrell as a greater temptation, since attacking Harry would have exposed him, thus preventing him from getting his hands upon a priceless magical artifact which could supposedly be used to help his master regain a living form.
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"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV