Velorien comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 110 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Gondolinian 24 February 2015 08:01PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (112)
Tags: fiction hpmor harry_potter fanfiction

Comments (112)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: fezziwig 24 February 2015 10:43:11PM *  2 points [-]

Dumbledore behaves very strangely in this chapter.

He likens Riddle's spirit to a dumb animal, which does not know that it was sent away. That's a sad, sympathetic image.

He laughs at the skewed symmetry between Good Riddle and Evil Riddle, saying that this is what Riddle could have been if he'd been raised by parents who loved him. If you feel any sympathy for Riddle at all then that's not funny, it's tragic: Riddle's crimes and suffering, his whole live, arose from sheer bad luck on his part. To think it a joke, or to expect Riddle to share it, is something I don't understand at all.

EDIT: Also, he's not taking the prophecy very seriously anymore, did you notice? "Oh well, I trapped you in time so Harry will defeat some other dark lord". One wonders what Dumbledore's "unusual power of Divination" is.

But I don't think that necessarily means he's a fake, inadvertently conjured up by Riddle (one wonders why real!Dumbledore would throw away the Wand and Line, for example, but why would fake!Dumbledore do so?). I don't know what it means.

Comment author: Velorien 25 February 2015 10:36:51AM 5 points [-]

The old wizard looked back up at Harry, and said, in a hoarse voice, “He is not like Grindelwald, Harry. There is nothing human left in him. Him you must destroy. You must not hesitate, when the time comes. To him alone, of all the creatures in this world, you must show no mercy; and when you are done you must forget it, forget that you ever did such a thing, and go back to living. Save your fury for that, and that alone.”

We've seen that Dumbledore has worked very hard all his life to be wise and compassionate and generally fit the archetype of the true hero. I can't help wondering if Voldemort is the one person he allows himself to truly hate, which is why that hatred is unusually intense and fully brings out Dumbledore's otherwise unseen dark side (or as fully as Dumbledore has one, which is still less intense than most people's when faced with someone who's hurt them that much).

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit