I actually like Dumbledore. I know that he was at least a bit manipulative, but he still has many good points.
This essay is worthwhile, and I agree wholeheartedly with the author
www.fanfiction.net/s/7594886/1/ Having read that, this is the review I posted
I disagree. I mean I don't see him as more evil than Voldemort, the way some authors paint him but I don't think for a moment that some of the things he did can be attributed to mistakes.
His placement of Harry with the Dursleys - I want to make one thing quite clear about manipulation. You can't do it years in advance. For all of that '10 dark and difficult years', there was no way Dumbledore could have known on the 2nd November 1981 that Harry would grow up abused and would end up a specific way. The observations Minerva McGonagall made were of two parents who spoilt their only child. Having never left the nephew of a sister who Petunia had complex feelings about on her doorstep before Dumbledore didn't know enough about Petunia to know what would happen. For all he knew Harry could have been seen as the second child they'd wanted, been spoilt to the same degree as Dudley and refused to come to Hogwarts because he thought all wizards were freaks.
However. For all that you 'love' the fact that people who think that Dumbledore should have checked up on Harry because he put him somewhere he had no right to. If you leave a child somewhere it is your responsibility to go back and make sure that child is alright. Vernon may have been a company director in 1991, but he certainly wouldn't have been in 1981 and a second child might have been an expense too far.
Also while the Dursley's may have been safe enough in the short term the key word you used was 'initial'. If he had returned once things had calmed down to find Harry sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs then he should have acted on that. Harry could spend the better part of 10-11 months of the year not at Privet Drive and the protections stayed intact so he could have been moved to a non-abusive household for the majority of the year.
Hogwarts may be the safest place in the country (although I would quibble on 'best defended'. There are all of 14 fully qualified witches and wizards at Hogwarts, discounting Hagrid, Filch, Quirrel and Binns but there are a whole bevy of children to threaten) but it is also a school. As in a place filled with young, vulnerable people who were in danger (or at least subject to sub-par teaching) for a year because of Dumbledore's decision to let Hogwarts play hidey-hole.
Flamel is 600 odd years old. He's kept that stone safe for 600 years. I highly double Voldemort is the worst wizard in the past 600 years. And yet he lets Dumbledore have access to the vault it's in (also the Goblins don't even check the note for authenticity, wow that's a hell of a lack of security. Maybe Harry, Ron and Hermione should have just walked in with a note from Bellatrix Lestrange saying they had permission to access her vault) and Dumbledore is the one who gets to decide what to do with it. We have no mention of Flamel getting to decide what to do with Flamel's own property.
Dumbledore didn't plan for Harry to go after the Stone - The door was only locked with whatever Alohamora can undo. The location of it was announced to the
entire bloody school with what was essentially 'I double dare you to go there'. Transfigure the damn door into a painting or make it disappear into the wall. Or don't announce it at the opening feast. Or have the last room have a note saying 'Fooled you' and keep the stone in your underwear drawer. Hell, have every single potion in Snape's room be a poison.
As for the 'diverse set of obstacles would have kept Voldemort out'. He managed to get through once (without drinking any of Snape's potions) so evidently they didn't. Frankly, immensely powerful and complex magic would have stopped him better. Voldemort pre-1981 or fully reborn might have been able to get through it (being also immensely powerful) but Quirinus Quirrel, with the soul of Voldemort sucking at him? Yeah, I doubt that. Voldemort's soul might have known how to do it but Quirrel never shows any great magical talent.
Did he intentionally abandon the school the night it happened - He decided to
fly to London.
On. A. Broom. For scale, it takes the better part of 13 hours to travel from Thurso (the northenmost railway station in mainland UK) to central London. Apperation? Floo? Portkey? Phoenix? Nope, I'm going to
fly.Now the Firebolt goes 150 mph. Which means that Harry's Nimbus doesn't do that and whatever broom Dumbledore had wouldn't do what Harry's Nimbus could do. If we say that Dumbledore's broom did a respectable 90mph it's roughly 500 miles from Hogwarts to the Ministry as the crow (or wizard) flies. That's still 5 and a half hours each way. Even going 150 mph that's 3 hours each way.
The Horcrux hunt - Jumping from book 1 to book 6/7. Dumbledore has an entire year of lessons with Harry knowing that he is dying. Knowing that Harry will have to fight. Knowing that Harry will have to die. Does he sit down with Harry, his heir apparent in the fight against Voldemort, and actually explain things? Nope, we get a year's worth of vague lessons about Tom Riddle's history.
And I can tell you why.
Dumbledore values loyalty to him over everything.
CoS, he says 'you must have shown me real loyalty down in the Chamber'. He doesn't praise Harry's courage in rescuing Ginny or facing a Basilisk ten times his size. No, the only thing he comments on is Harry's loyalty to
him.
If he'd told Harry too much in HBP then Harry's loyalty to him (which had wavered post Sirius' death) would have disappeared and doing things outside of Dumbledore's influence.
And then there's Snape. I have a particular loathing for Snape but that's a personal dislike based on the fact I think abusive teachers are scum regardless of their motivations.
If OOtP made me think critically about Dumbledore then DH cemented my dislike of him. Read The Prince's Tale and tell me that Dumbledore is a good guy who made mistakes. THAT is the point where Dumbledore's ability to manipulate comes into its own rather than any of the earlier books.
Snape comes to Dumbledore to tell him that the Potter's are in danger and that he wants Dumbledore to safeguard Lily. Dumbledore's response is 'and what will you give me in return?'. The thing is that he probably had every intention of doing so but he needed a double agent in Voldemort's camp and this is a perfect opportunity to get one. His previous line to Snape is a contemptuous 'you disgust me' but his personal dislike of Snape's obsession with Lily doesn't matter - securing Snape's loyalty is a good move and BOOM, he has a perfect soldier when Snape says 'Anything'.
When Snape comes back after Lily's death and asks why Dumbledore didn't keep her safe he immediately turns that back around on Snape and Snape's bargain with Voldemort. He then proceeds to shepherd Snape into the role of reluctant caretaker by playing on Snape's feelings for Lily and Harry's resemblance to her.
'I prefer not to put all my secrets in one basket' - Albus Dumbledore. Now it is true that a general (although I don't believe that he had much to do with the war against Grindelwald other than fighting the man himself) mustn't go handing out his secrets willy nilly but he also can't keep his lieutenants in the dark or any attack will go deeply askew. Dumbledore doesn't hand out secrets lightly. In this case he only tells Snape what he sees in Harry's future when Snape begins to look like he will mutiny. And also, I think, as an insurance policy if Harry doesn't figure out what to do. Not that he could have anticipated Snape handing over his memories to Harry but figuring that Snape would be able to tell him if it became necessary.
He spent seventeen years making sure that Snape remained loyal to him.
And Snape isn't the only person.
Hagrid for one. Dumbledore rescues him from expulsion, lets him stay at Hogwarts, thus ensuring his loyalty and his feeling that he owes Dumbledore in a manner which will never be quite forgotten so long as he is Gamekeeper. He gives Hagrid important missions (like retrieving Harry twice, getting the Philosopher's Stone from Gringotts, becoming a teacher and going on a diplomatic mission to the giants) despite Hagrid's relative lack of experience, lack of suitability or sublety because he knows that Hagrid is unswervingly loyal and that is more valuable to him than experience, suitability or subtlety.
Lupin for another. He let Remus come to school, making him feel like he owed Dumbledore. Which begs the question, was Remus Lupin the only werewolf child who needed to go to Hogwarts? I mean after the first war with Voldemort surely there would be more magical werewolf children since Fenrir Greyback was running around biting kids. Dumbledore only invokes this loyalty (and does Remus another huge favour) in PoA where he brings Remus to the castle, which begs the question, if Remus was available why didn't he hire him last year rather than Lockheart? Answer - Sirius Black. Sirius whose loyalty Dumbledore can no longer count on (and I have a feeling never really could, I think Sirius was always more loyal to James, Remus and Peter - two of whom were very loyal to Dumbledore). He needs to combat 'I knew your parents' from Sirius with 'I knew your parents' from a source he knows is loyal to him.
And he needs loyalty because he needs to know that people will do what he tells them in spite of their gut telling them otherwise (McGonagall letting Dumbledore leave Harry with the Dursleys despite having more evidence on them and a bad feeling). Sirius was a wild-card because his loyalty was always to Harry above everyone else. Because Dumbledore wasn't the one who did Sirius the favor, it was James Potter. Dumbledore might have been able to manipulate Sirius to an extent by playing on 'this is what's best for Harry' and the fact Sirius was a wanted fugitive that Dumbledore was having his people divert attention from. But the second that Sirius felt differently, he was going to do that rather than anything Dumbledore wanted.
'Harry named a kid after Dumbledore' - The epilogue was mostly written years before OOtP, HBP and DH, back when the series was fluffier and lighter. Also Harry named that same kid after a guy who bullied him for years, was obsessed with his mother and tried to trade Harry and James' lives for Lily's - so I think Harry really should have been banned from naming his kids.
Honestly, I think Dumbledore was a manipulative and rather negligent asshole for the most part. I do think he cared about Harry to an extent however.
Actually that's a pretty concise summary of my feeling about Albus Dumbledore.
There are some things which half of me wants to believe were machinations on Dumbledore's part but half of me is saying 'orchestrating that shit would turn Dumbledore into somebody who, at best, played long odds and got fantastically lucky or micromanaged the shit out of everything in a way that makes him much darker than I imagine'.
Those things being a. Harry's upbringing and b. his initial meeting with the Weasleys.
As I said above, Dumbledore does not have enough data on the Dursleys in order to know that they'd abuse Harry in the way that they did without getting caught and he would come out the way he did rather than Tom Riddle-ish, damaged, dead or put into care.
As for the meeting with the Weasleys. That just screams contrived to me. Molly Weasley has been to Hogwarts more times than she's had birthdays (Molly is 41 as of 1991. Assuming seven years at Hogwarts coming home at Christmas and then going to the platform four times every year from 1982-1991, she's been there roughly 60 times) and still has to check what the platform number is. Loudly. In the middle of a crowded muggle station.
But at the same time that would be so ridiculously difficult to set up. I mean, if Vernon had decided to leave Harry at King's Cross earlier or if Harry had been standing further away or not looking at them or if he'd decided not to ask but to just watch and copy or if the Weasley's had been earlier or later it wouldn't have worked.
And yes, their webs are wonderful. 
