The Dumbledore Family
Most of what happened to the Dumbledores boils down to the question of who Ariana was and how she died. Theories and rumors run rampant through the last book, and the tragedy of what happened to her reverberates through everything else that happened: Percival’s incarceration, Kendra’s death, the falling out between Albus and Grindelwald, and the rift between Albus and Aberforth.
Everyone Harry speaks to has their own guess or opinion. Elphias Doge feebly sticks to the party line: “Ariana was delicate!” (DH155) Muriel guesses that Albus “did away with his Squib sister!” (DH154) And Rita Skeeter puts a sinister spin on the whole thing:
Was she the inadvertent victim of some Dark rite? Did she stumble across something she ought not to have done, as the two young men sat practicing for their attempt at glory and domination? Is it possible that Ariana Dumbledore was the first person to die “for the greater good”? (DH359)
The truth can only come from a primary source: Aberforth Dumbledore, who reveals the full tragedy of the Dumbledore family to the Trio right before the Battle of Hogwarts. (The story is then corroborated by Albus Dumbledore at King’s Cross, so we know it to be factual.) The story is awful: Ariana was traumatized by Muggle boys; Percival incarcerated for seeking retribution; Kendra killed accidentally by her unstable daughter; “And Ariana . . . after all my mother’s care and caution . . . lay dead upon the floor” due to a stray spell in a duel among Albus, Aberforth, and Grindelwald (DH717). But the story is also reassuring in that nothing evil was being done by the Dumbledores—they were all handling a bad situation as best they could.
“He Was Young”
Far more interesting to consider is that Dumbledore was, indeed, culpable of making some very bad decisions in his youth: plotting with Grindelwald to subjugate Muggles. Harry and Hermione very clearly delineate the two opposing arguments here.
Harry responds emotionally and will not excuse Dumbledore because of his youth.
“I thought you’d say ‘They were young.’ They were the same age as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting their rise to power over the Muggles.” (DH361)51
Hermione, on the other hand, adopts a more lenient stance.
“He changed, Harry, he changed! It’s as simple as that! Maybe he did believe these things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to fighting the Dark Arts! Dumbledore was the one who stopped Grindelwald, the one who always voted for Muggle protection and Muggle-born rights, who fought You-Know-Who from the start, and who died trying to bring him down!” (DH361)
The fascinating thing is that both arguments, which are both valid, received some of their strongest backup from none other than Albus Dumbledore himself.
The chief reason that Harry’s argument holds water is how he makes it from the moral high ground: he is doing things no teenager should have to do. Of course, it’s not Dumbledore’s fault that Voldemort regained corporeal form much sooner than preferred and was facing off against a teen Harry instead of a hardened middle-aged Auror Harry. But it’s still Dumbledore’s deployment of his young protégés that casts his own youthful mistakes in such an unflattering light.
But to Hermione’s point, Dumbledore is renowned as someone who “believes in second chances.” (GF472) For example, he offers one to Severus Snape and to Draco Malfoy, both Death Eaters. Now we know why he’s so adamant about that: he himself needed a second chance at age eighteen. He knows what it’s like to have your actions lead to unthinkable deadly consequences, so he shows mercy to those who’ve gone through a similar ordeal.
Dumbledore’s Army
Perhaps the most powerful statement about Dumbledore’s legacy is one that flies under the radar: the DA. Even after all the slander Dumbledore was subject to during that year, it is “Dumbledore’s Army, Still Recruiting!” (DH575) Elphias Doge makes the bold claim that Dumbledore “was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Hogwarts headmasters.” (DH20) And though we know that to not be true for a quarter of the wizarding population—those who wear emerald and silver—it appears to be true for the three houses present in the Room of Requirement.
What makes this so impactful is that there is an alternative readily available: Potter’s Army. Recall that Dumbledore invested a lot of energy in turning Harry into a symbol; the Order rallies around him and Hagrid throws “Support Harry Potter” parties (DH442). But the DA, who may have even more belief in Harry than a laywizard who wasn’t taught D.A.D.A. by him, chooses to remain affiliated with Dumbledore.
On the one hand, there are practical reasons for this: the legacy of the original DA, and the association of Dumbledore to Hogwarts. Dumbledore and the school have been intricately entwined in the Wizarding public’s consciousness for a long time. The reason Hogwarts was always a bastion against Voldemort was because Dumbledore was there. Dumbledore was the Headmaster for two entire generations of wizards, for forty-one years. Dumbledore was even buried on school grounds, in an unprecedented move, never to be separated from the school.
The first time the DA formed, it was to defend Hogwarts against an evil regime that had ousted Dumbledore. That mission statement is no different this time around, so there is no reason to change the name.
But we must also consider who made the decision to keep the name. We are told that the leadership of the group fell to Neville, Luna, and Ginny. Assuming Luna can’t be bothered with such mundane things as group names (Snorkack Army, anyone?), it would have been Neville and Ginny making the call, whether or not they had input from the rest of the DA. It so
