The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

passionate MuggleNet commenters have pointed out that Snape’s behavior is excusable based on his hearing only the part of the Marauders’ story that focused on their school years and none of the later bits about Sirius’s innocence and Pettigrew’s guilt. While this exonerates Snape to us readers (to an extent), it’s doubtful that Dumbledore was aware of this finer distinction. We have had years of rereading the passage to pick up on this. Dumbledore has only had a very emotional and hurried account from Sirius, an evidently biased account from Snape, and some disjointed yelling from Harry and Hermione. This is one of the very rare instances where we readers know more than Dumbledore. And as evidenced by the subsequent events I’m about to go into, Dumbledore is certainly unhappy with Snape, so this seems the most plausible line of reasoning.

What is striking is that the move to goad Snape might hurt Dumbledore’s endgame. Dumbledore knows that Voldemort will rise again one day, and when that day comes, Snape would be an invaluable asset—he already made the mistake of losing Snape’s allegiance once before. So what possesses Dumbledore to so antagonize Snape?

The answer is Harry, Dumbledore’s big blind spot. Especially after the events in the Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore has grown to care for Harry immensely. Harry is Dumbledore’s weakness; he cares more for Harry’s wellbeing than for the eventualities of war. He says, “What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy?” (OP839) Therefore, Dumbledore was willing to antagonize Snape for Harry’s happiness.

Having his godfather around would be the best possible thing for Harry’s happiness. Dumbledore wants to have Sirius around to take care of Harry, to serve as a much-needed father figure. Dumbledore finally has a way of ensuring Harry’s emotional wellbeing, so when Snape threatens that, Dumbledore is absolutely not having it. This is why Dumbledore, rather riskily, sides with Sirius over Snape, and Snape knows this.

This leads to an off-screen estrangement between Dumbledore and Snape. The following morning, Snape “accidentally let slip that [Remus] is a werewolf” at breakfast (PA423). Snape must surely have calmed down somewhat overnight, so this is a rational act of open defiance against Dumbledore. Snape knows how mad Dumbledore would be if Remus’s secret got out—after all, Snape has been keeping it since he was sixteen.

This is very deliberate on Snape’s part, proving that his mind is still lingering on The Prank. There are a thousand different ways he could have chosen to spite Dumbledore—indeed, we’ll see some of them later on. But his opening blow is to do the one thing that Dumbledore forbade him from doing the first time Dumbledore sided with the Marauders over Snape: reveal that Lupin’s a werewolf.

We have to wonder whether Snape and Dumbledore had a chat sometime between the hospital wing screaming match and breakfast, given that they were arguing in the hospital wing until after midnight. If they did, Snape was not satisfied, leading to his outing of Lupin in total disregard of Dumbledore’s orders. It’s also possible they didn’t, because we have a tiny bit of evidence that Snape did not tell Dumbledore everything that transpired. When interrogating Crouch Jr. a year later, Dumbledore does not know about the Marauder’s Map: “Map? What map is this?” (GF690) Yet Snape knows about the Map, because not only is he present for Lupin’s discussion of it (PA355), he also sees it in Lupin’s office: “Lying on your desk was a certain map.” (PA358)²² It’s possible Snape and Dumbledore talked and it didn’t come up, but it seems likelier they were both in a huff and didn’t talk that night.

So Snape outs Lupin. Dumbledore, meanwhile, acts even more drastically: he calls in a new right-hand man. No longer willing to rely on Snape, Dumbledore gets in touch with his old friend Alastor Moody over the summer and asks him to come to Hogwarts as the new D.A.D.A. teacher. Moody replaces Snape as the wizard Dumbledore can rely on to watch over Harry, and to help out with things. Sirius assumes Dumbledore called Moody in because Dumbledore is “reading the signs,” (GF226), but I fail to see how the Dark Mark at the World Cup is much more worrying than notorious mass murderer Sirius Black coming after Harry the previous year. Moody isn’t called in for extra protection; it’s because Dumbledore no longer relies on Snape. And that leads to a very unpleasant year at Hogwarts for all involved.

Chapter 4:

Albus Dumbledore and the

Goblet of Fire

Giving credit where it’s due: Voldemort’s plan in Goblet of Fire was brilliant. But first, let’s focus on Dumbledore. In Goblet of Fire, for once, he is being outplayed by Voldemort. Between Trelawney’s prophecy the previous year²³, the deaths of Bertha Jorkins and Frank Bryce, the Dark Mark at the World Cup, and then Harry’s name coming out of the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore knows that something is afoot and it probably has to do with Voldemort. He is extra vigilant in watching Harry and relies on his old friend Moody to do the same. And in the meantime, he wracks his brains trying to figure out who’s behind all this.

I will not dive too deeply into his reasoning throughout the book, because I almost wholly agree with Josie Kearns’s masterful essay, “A Very Bad Year for Albus Dumbledore.”²⁴ The gist of it is that Dumbledore can narrow down the suspects to Bagman, Karkaroff, or something weird and magical going on. (After all, he just witnessed Pettigrew come back from being presumed dead, and as an Animagus, to boot—this certainly expands his lines of inquiry.) Dumbledore also knows that something weird is going on with Mr. Crouch when he stops showing up to the Tournament, but what is it and what does it have to do with everything else?

Snape’s Grudge

Dumbledore is trying to solve this whodunit at