Chapter 19: Demon Possession, Temper Tantrums, and Dumbledore's Guilt

Order of the Phoenix

The Indwelling of Voldemort

   We’ve had the confrontation between the DA members and the death eaters, then the Order of the Phoenix joined, then Dumbledore arrived, then Voldemort himself came. There was a confrontation between Harry and Voldemort, and then Dumbledore comes on the scene and takes over. 

For the first time, according to Harry, Dumbledore seemed afraid when Voldemort was possessing Harry. The description of what it felt like to be possessed was like poor Dr. Poe’s elbow surgery: pure agony without escape. 

Death is not the end. Harry says, “death is nothing, and I’ll see Sirius again.” And when he thinks that, the tables turn for Harry and Voldemort, but we don’t learn that until later. It is then that Harry's spirit overpowers the indwelling spirit of Voldemort, and now of the sudden it is Voldemort who is in unbearable pain. 

Sometimes our best image of something is the opposite of what it is and we can’t get a handle on the way it truly is; we can only understand the opposite of what it is. Here Rowling is describing a deadly possession: the idea of being fused to another intelligence. She’s describing the opposite of the new birth, being embraced by the Spirit of God. Instead of pain unimaginable, we have light and joy. One of the things she’s doing in all of this is making a case for Christianity and how one comes to God. The idea of dying and the substitutionary death is an important part, but the regeneration part is left out. The whole motif we find littered throughout the New Testament is left out of most modern-day works. Rowling, however, is doing the opposite; she’s not writing theology, but a story, and she’s showing us what it’s like in a hideous, destructive way. To be fused to the Spirit of God is the opposite of this experience of Harry and Voldemort.

Harry wants Dumbledore to kill him so it’ll be over, and Voldemort soon begins using Harry’s voice. Harry now knows death is not the worst thing in the world. Harry’s blessed hope is that there is something beyond death because he wants to see Sirius again. When he thought of Sirius, his heart filled with emotion, and Voldemort was pushed from Harry’s body in pain. Voldemort is incapable of love, and it was physically painful for him to possess Harry while he felt such love.

The device she’s using of the two beings being joined is the opposite of the Christian life. We have the mind of Christ, so this whole business of Occlumency and Legilimency is like how part of our spiritual goal is to know the Will of God and to have the mind of Christ. We spend our whole life developing those skills, and thankfully, the Lord is constantly making himself known to us.

Meanwhile, Back at the Office...

   After the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Harry gets back to the headmaster’s office and eventually Dumbledore returns. Dumbledore tries to empathize with Harry, but Harry says he can't possibly know how he’s feeling. At the beginning of this book, Harry was against Ron and Hermione for being in on everything that was going on in the wizarding world while he was stuck at Privet Drive.

There’s a certain safety in being able to rant and rave at those you’re closest to, so now Harry rants at Dumbledore and pitches a royal fit. He’s fifteen, facing sixteen, so he is solidly in the middle of his adolescence. He start’s smashing and throwing Dumbledore’s things and having a wild temper tantrum.

Dumbledore tells him that suffering is part of being human and caring about people. It’s hard to reason with anyone with a fever pitch emotion, but Dumbledore is persisting in hopes of calming Harry down. Harry declares that he doesn’t care anymore, but the idea of caring is an important thing.

These are all mystery stories, but it doesn’t work unless the audience cares. You have to care about the mystery and the truth to it; it’s a necessary ingredient. One of the conventions of a mystery story is that at the end of the mystery, the detective explains it all. This chapter is the big explanation. But at the end of this mystery story, it is not the detective (Harry) explaining the ending of the story, it’s Dumbledore!

Again, Dumbledore is not God. He is, however, a type of prophet. Dumbledore is a wizard, the wise man, Elijah and Samuel, and he has a band of followers in the Order of the Phoenix to follow his cause. It falls to Dumbledore to explain it all to Harry and to put it all together. His is also the role of the interpreter.

Dumbledore's Guilty Conscience 

   Harry blows off steam and says he doesn’t care, to which Dumbledore disagrees. Harry has lost his parents and his godfather, and when Dumbledore tried to emphasize, Harry doesn’t agree.  Normally, when we say this, we don’t really know how they’re feeling; we just haven’t had that experience. We can sympathize with the person, but we can’t really empathize with them. But Dumbledore tells Harry that he understands because he truly does understand. Dumbledore is not like the Rock of Gibraltar, unmoving and unchanging. He is human. He messes up just like everyone else. In this case, because we later find out what happened to Dumbledore, we know that Dumbledore really can empathize. He’s been through it all. Dumbledore lost his parents and his sister, and it’s something that dogs him all the time.

Dumbledore is upset with himself because he didn’t tell Harry upfront about everything that was going on, and he kept too many secrets from him. Dumbledore has a brother, Aberforth, who really understood life and what mattered in a way that Dumbledore did not. If Dumbledore had been open with Harry, Harry would never have been tricked into going to the Ministry (and as Dumbledore believes) Sirius would still be alive; Dumbledore gives himself all the blame. 

One thing that’s going on there, now that we know the whole story, is that he’s still blaming himself for his sister’s death, he’s still carrying it with him, and that makes it easier for him to blame himself for everything else. He’s carrying a huge burden of guilt. We’re also getting a full dose of the frailty of Dumbledore that’s explained to us in the last book. We don’t find out what’s really animating him until the last book, and rereading the series sheds a whole new light on his character. Rowling is writing this, knowing how the thing is ending. "She is a genius, clearly."

Dumbledore has this plan, you see. He guessed that Harry’s scar would be a connection between Harry and Voldemort. On the flipside, Dumbledore is dealing with guilt, dealing with all his secrets, and knowing what connections he drew, he still can’t tell Harry what his scar, what this connection, really means, nor what will eventually have to be done about it (destroy the horcrux of himself).

In the first few years, Dumbledore goes through what Voldemort was doing, his history, on and on until he admitted he put off telling Harry why Voldemort had tried to kill him when he was just a baby. Dumbledore is now telling us how he goes about deciding when, why, and how to keep secrets. He avoids telling Harry the truth to avoid hurting him anymore. Here we finally have the rationalization of Dumbledore’s pattern of secret keeping.

Dumbledore fell into the trap he had foreseen: he cared more for Harry’s happiness than of his knowing of the truth; he acted exactly as Voldemort would expect the fools who love to act. Dumbledore has kept a close eye on Harry throughout his time at Hogwarts, more so than Harry can imagine (Mrs. Figg at Privet Drive; always knows what’s going on at Hogwarts and because Dumbledore doesn’t need an invisibility cloak to make himself invisible). 

The last person Dumbledore took care of and was responsible for was his younger sister. Needless to say, he "muffed that one", so Harry is his second chance. Of course, we don’t know that during his conversation with Harry; in fact, we don’t find this out about Dumbledore until he’s already dead. 

 As Harry got older, Dumbledore kept finding reasons not to tell Harry. But as Harry’s finally calms down and gets drawn into Dumbledore’s story, he tells Harry that Voldemort tried to kill him because of a prophecy made when he was just a baby. Voldemort only knew a bit of it of the prophecy, and because he acted before he heard it in its entirety, the rebounding of the Avada Kedavra curse led to his demise. 

Now that Voldemort has been returned to his body, he is determined to hear the rest of the prophecy so he’ll know exactly how to kill Harry. Dumbledore doesn’t reveal to Harry the nature of the horcruxes or the fact that Snape was the one who told Voldemort the snippet of the Prophecy he’d overheard. Was Dumbledore right to hold this back? Are there some instances you don’t tell everything you know? We’ve seen Aberforth say that Dumbledore is wrong to keep secrets, but he’s not an objective observer; he blames Albus for their sister’s death. It’s absolutely necessary to keep the secrets for the last two books (one reason is because of the money to be made).

The Nature of Prophecy

   Sybill Trelawney was the one who gave the prophecy, and she experienced a true Seer moment like the one Harry witnessed in the third book. The prophecy orb is destroyed in the fight at the Ministry, but Dumbledore pulls the memory from the Pensieve so that Harry can see and hear it all happen.Dumbledore was, perhaps, right in keeping the conviction of this knowledge form Harry; the absence of the knowledge might’ve been the only thing that allowed him to function. This is what Dumbledore was hinting at; if Harry had known why he was getting these visions, it would’ve made a difference with his Occlumency lessons.We need to think about words like "destiny", "karma", and what really imply because that’s the way Harry’s going to bring it up.We have the European understanding of how everything works out: the fates weave the rope of destiny and determine everything that will happen. But the Hindu understanding of why we do things is "karma." You do this because this is who you are, and you can’t do other than your true nature. While the Egyptians believed everyone had their Ka that was laid out before them.We have this concept in different cultures, and Rowling is dealing with the nature of prophecy and how it works. The Chosen One actually could’ve been Neville instead of Harry. The reason Harry’s name was put on the prophecy is because of Voldemort’s actions. He interpreted the prophecy in a certain way and tried to fulfill the prophecy without knowing the contents in full. Modern science fiction stories have used the term prophecies in them. It’s in the Chronicles Narnia, but you expect it from Lewis. What’s the source of these prophecies? Where do they come from? Divination and Prophecy are entirely different things. Trelawney was never able to make an accurate prediction during Divination class, yet she’s the one that makes the two, genuine prophecies in the Harry Potter series.We will talk more about the prophecy, Harry’s destiny, how it affects his actions when we get to the two last books.
What About Umbridge?Umbridge was taken by the centaurs and traumatized by the experience; she almost got Harry killed in the beginning by sending dementors to Little Whinging, and she’s willing to torture him with the Cruciatus Curse. When she offended the centaurs, they carried her off, and she got off awfully easy with them. Dumbledore simply trudged into the forest and retrieves her after he’s been restored as Headmaster. Umbridge, however, wastes her second chance; her character doesn’t changed once Dumbledore rescues her, and she’s just as vile as she ever was.