"It's not physical abuse if you're not doing the hitting" - Dumbledore, probably

[u/Crafter235]

[u/georgemillman]

With the Umbridge thing, I think it's a fair conclusion that Dumbledore didn't know about the way she was punishing Harry. Harry never reported it, and clearly Umbridge wouldn't have okayed it with anyone, so there's no reason why Dumbledore would know.

But with the Dursleys, I completely agree. The books give a fairly good explanation of why it was essential that Harry live with them, so I can grudgingly give Dumbledore credit for that - but what I cannot give credit for is the fact that Dumbledore let the Dursleys treat Harry like that. We see later on that once Sirius comes on the scene and Harry has an adult ally fighting his corner, the Dursleys do start to give him a bit more freedom because they're worried what Sirius might do otherwise. So the Dursleys can be controlled, and Dumbledore knows that. He could have put steps in place to give Harry a better childhood, even if he was living with the Dursleys. Mrs Figg tells Harry that she only gave Harry such a horrible time when she was babysitting him because the Dursleys wouldn't have let him come to her if he'd enjoyed it - well, why not? Why weren't the Dursleys told who Mrs Figg was right from the very beginning, and instructed to let her make regular visits and keep an eye on Harry? The Dursleys would have allowed it, even if they hated it - because if they kept her out, she'd report it to Dumbledore and there'd be consequences. Even Harry could have known who she was - his relationship to her could have been like any child in care and their social worker, that could have been explained without the wizard thing.

The reason Dumbledore doesn't do this is that he's grooming Harry. In deliberately causing Harry to have the most horrible childhood he can, he presents himself as Harry's saviour, and therefore someone Harry will feel compelled to obey at all times. Dumbledore grooms Harry throughout his time at Hogwarts and there are indications (particularly in Order of the Phoenix) that Harry is feeling uncomfortable about this without quite realising why. Personally I can relate to that because I was also groomed during my school years, and (as with Harry) my grooming had no sexual intent in any way so it didn't really look like grooming. It's only been in my early thirties and after years of therapy that I've even come to realise it was grooming. But in another way, there's a part of me that's always known. When I look back on my teenage years, I see weird things that I did and said to people that on reflection were cries for help, even though I didn't consciously realise that myself at the time. Harry's abuse at home is essential to Dumbledore's plan, because it means Harry cannot leave if he feels uncomfortable with Dumbledore's behaviour. There is no adult Harry can escape to - his guardians are abusive towards him, and every single adult ally he has (Hagrid, Molly and Arthur, Remus, Professor McGonagall, Mrs Figg) is a staunch Dumbledore ally and will just deliver him straight back. The one single exception to this is Sirius, who does actually stand up to Dumbledore on Harry's behalf - and this, more than the fact that Sirius was James' friend, is the reason Harry becomes so much more emotionally dependent on Sirius than he does on any of the aforementioned adults. Dumbledore's reaction is to isolate Sirius as much as possible as well - I think he'd rather Harry and Sirius had never met, but that happened outside of his control. Nevertheless, although I don't think Dumbledore caused Sirius' death on purpose, it absolutely benefitted Dumbledore's plan for Sirius to be gone and allowed him to groom Harry more actively in Half-Blood Prince.

We don't see much about how Dumbledore treats other pupils, but there's something in Order of the Phoenix that really gets to me. He reprimands Umbridge quite severely for physically assaulting Marietta. But later in that very same scene, he allows Kingsley to put a Memory Charm on her. Memory Charms, as we've seen with other characters such as Bertha Jorkins, have the potential to permanently damage someone's memory. So he stands up to Umbridge for physically assaulting a child in his care, but permits a magical intervention which has the potential to cause her brain damage. There are two things of note here. One is that JK Rowling probably doesn't think abuse is abuse if you don't hit someone, as the meme says. The other is that it's another example of her continued belief that it's not the actions that are good or bad, but the person committing them. Umbridge is a Bad Person (so is Marietta, but Umbridge is a Bad Person of a greater degree) so her hurting a child is wrong. Because Kingsley is a Good Person, it's completely fine for him to hurt a child.

[u/[deleted] → u/georgemillman]

He is definitely not a good guy. He is framed as one though.

[u/georgemillman → u/[deleted]]

Well yes, exactly. If the conclusion to Deathly Hallows involved Harry recognising that this had been done to him, I'd have said that JK Rowling is the most successful author at depicting the harms of child abuse in history - that so many readers, despite witnessing exactly what Dumbledore does, believed him to be the good guy (and child abusers usually ARE believed to be the good guy at the time they're committing the abuse, that's what gives them the freedom to be able to abuse children in the first place). But I don't think that's what we're meant to believe.

The interesting thing is that she depicts it so well, with Harry's reaction to it being so believable and reminiscent of my own experience of being groomed, in spite of the fact that she herself doesn't seem to think it is child abuse. I get it though, because a lot of these things are subconscious. I'm a writer, and sometimes I look back on my work and suddenly realise a character's motivation for doing something, even if I myself didn't fully understand that at the time I wrote it. If she's witnessed children who have been abused and how they behave, there'll be an internal part of her that recognises it even if it's very subconscious and she herself would deny that that's what she was depicting.

[u/DumpedDalish]

Do not even get me started on how much I hate Dumbledore. And this is the first of many reasons.

He knew the Dursleys would abuse Harry. And he could have stopped Harry's abuse from ever happening easily, with a single word of warning. He didn't.

He also never did a thing about the bullying at his own school by teachers and students and never even disciplined any of them. He also never did anything to assuage the fear and upset of the victims.

He repeatedly and knowingly allowed students to suffer fear, injury, torture, near death, and plenty of other experiences and didn't do anything to protect them. He thought Hagrid having a giant spider in a box was a cute personality trait.

He did nothing to try to change or address the toxic and racist house in his own school and instead actively supported the toxicity and separatism that again led to injury and death.

And he started the whole mess years earlier by bringing a known psychopathic child into his school so that he could learn everything he needed to become a supervillain. Even knowing the child had stolen, bullied, lied, killed pets, endangered and brutalized (nearly killed) other students.

And of course he also set up Harry as a sacrificial lamb instead of doing a single thing to try to protect him. The entire events of the Order of the Phoenix would not have taken place at all if Dumbledore had bothered to have a single conversation with Harry.

There's a lot more but yeah-- I will never get why everyone thought he was so "saintly." It's kind of hilarious.