Oho! Reconsidering Dumbledore’s Death

June 28th, 2006 · 19 Comments · Book 7 Speculations, Death, Themes

Despite my previous adamant assertion that Dumbledore is dead, I’ve been forced, reluctantly, to reconsider the issue. After reading two lengthy essays, I am forced to at least conclude that the option is very much available: Dumbledore may not be dead.

Every time I’ve read through the cave scene of Half-Blood Prince, one particular word has bothered me: When Dumbledore says, “Oho!” We’ve never heard Dumbledore use the word before, but we’ve heard Slughorn use it all year long. Someone called “Gumshoe” has put together a clever argument, based on canon and non-canonical sources, that the Dumbledore who went with Harry to the cave was Slughorn on polyjuice potion. I’m not sure I buy that, but read the article; it’s really intriguing.

If you find yourself with a free hour or more, check out this article by Joyce (Red Hen). It’s really involved and complicated, and the basic thesis is that Snape and Dumbledore were in cahoots before the prophecy was even made, and that they together acted upon that very prophecy (which was a big mistake), involving a long conspiracy including their making the prophecy come true and a staged Dumbledore death.

Sounds absolutely crazy, I know. Again, I don’t think I buy it; but read the article - it’s at least feasible. Either way, these two articles do a couple of things. First, they both include the evidence for a faked Dumbledore death, much of which I hadn’t spent much time considering. Evidence includes the very strange-acting AK curse, Dumbledore’s “slow fall” over the tower (why would it be “slow”?), the way the body was handled (i.e., only by Hagrid), and the phoenix that rises out of the flaming tomb. Second, they posit potential ways of reading the series that seem to fit with a faked Dumbledore death.

What say you? Any chance we’ll see a return of Dumbledore in Book 7?

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19 responses so far ↓

1 Christina // Jun 28, 2006 at 6:44 pm

Wow…Gumshoe’s argument is compelling to say the least. He/she did an incredible job researching this theory, and I find it intriguing. It is well thought-out, and causes me to pause and say, “Wow…I remember thinking that was odd at the time, and now I see possibly why!” I would love for it to be the case!!
2 Kjetil // Jun 28, 2006 at 7:50 pm

Intriguing, but I don’t buy it just yet.

But I can in fact remember to find Dumbledore’s words before entering the cave (that Riddle’s opening mechanism was “crude”) to be just a little too crude, not the Dumbledore I knew.

Best,
3 korg20000bc // Jun 29, 2006 at 7:59 am

Also been thinking that when Rowling said that one character gets a reprieve could she be referring to Dumbledore?
4 Travis Prinzi // Jun 29, 2006 at 8:20 am

That crossed my mind, Matt. Might do a post on it later.
5 Dawn // Jul 1, 2006 at 5:57 pm

Great article! I DO believe Dumbledore is alive, and there are so many ways that this could have happened. I”m glad this person acknowledged the slow fall off the tower, and once again (though I’m told it’s not canon) it reminds me of the words someone said about JKRowling’s reaction to the third movie..that there were many clues in it. Dumbledore slowed Harry’s fall from his broom during the Quidditch match, and when Harry was in the hospital, Ron said how awful he looked. Fred and George wondered how Ron would look if he fell off THE ASTRONOMY TOWER.
Interesting, I NEVER once got the impression that Slughorn was a good guy. I always assumed that he was out for himself. According to this, I missed all the clues about him. Back to the books for me! I’m hoping that Dumbledore’s “death” was misdirection all along…that he was never dead and that she never gave him a reprieve… I’m hoping that the character that gets the reprieve is Harry himself.
Gosh, I just had a thought. If Dumbledore and Slughorn did change places, then couldn’t the locket found with the note be a plant to throw everyone, including Voldemort off the trail? If they did orchestrate everything, then why not orchestrate that, too? Dumbledore and Slughorn could be in possession of Slytherin’s locket, perhaps wanting to protect Harry from the same fate Dumbledore suffered when he destroyed the ring horcrux. It just seems like such a waste of time (and paper) for that whole adventure in the cave to be for naught, doesn’t it?
Happy 4th! God bless America!
6 Travis Prinzi // Jul 1, 2006 at 8:44 pm

Dawn, glad you picked up on that! Yes, if the whole death was staged (and for me, that’s a really big “if,” the locket, heck, the entire trip to the cave, the green potion - it’s all up in the air. Because if the theory is correct, then the whole thing was a big performance.

Which is one of the reasons I don’t like the theory…but I’m willing to give it more thought.
7 Dom1212 // Jul 2, 2006 at 4:59 am

Although it would be a weird but wonderful twist if Dumbledore swapped with his brother Alberforth, because im assuming that the polyjuice potion would wear off when he was killed but if slughorn swapped with Dumbledore and was killed then he would turn back to him self and Slughorn is quite fat so it wouldn’t look like Dumbledore at all. But Alberforth with a similar build as Dumbledore would look the part under the velvet at the funeral.

Dom
P.S im not sure if its Alberforth or Aberforth, please corect me.
8 Travis Prinzi // Jul 2, 2006 at 11:31 am

Dom, I think it’s Aberforth.

The whole Dumbledore/Slughorn swap - well, it depends on whether or not the person who was hit by Snape’s AK curse and fell off the tower actually died. There’s something really odd about the “slow” fall off the tower. If that person did not die, there’d have to be some kind of body put in place at the bottom (something transfigured to look like Dumbledore?) to be discovered.

This is why the theory gets a bit to complex for me.
9 Dom1212 // Jul 2, 2006 at 12:53 pm

It is particuly odd but even if the jinx didn’t kill who ever it was, that person would have been killed by the fall so surely he must have had an acomplice. Im confused i think i’ll sleep on it, this is geting confusing!

Dom
10 Travis Prinzi // Jul 2, 2006 at 6:20 pm

Dom, the “slow” fall would indicate that the person sort of levitated themselves slowly to the ground, rather than it being a dead fall. So in the theory, the person who fell wouldn’t have died.
11 phoenix_rises // Jul 3, 2006 at 12:19 pm

I think Sluggy exists as a character to illuminate Snape’s and Riddle’s characters. He’s neither clever nor motivated enough to perform as a double agent, like Snape, for the DE. He’s Peter Pettigrew’s opposite number, conflicted, with the impulse to do right but imbued with a weak, cowed spirit.

I believe Dumbledore is the character who receives a reprieve from death. I think the word is significant. Dumbledore is really dead, Snape killed him (on Dumbledore’s orders), but Rowling’s work is steeped in archetype. He will receive a phoenix-like resurrection, but it is only a temporary reprieve. In the end, the mentor makes way for the hero to come into full maturity, often in a final act of self-sacrifice. Dumbledore’s death in the tower doesn’t fit the bill. He didn’t die directly to save the hero, destroy the villain, or even the cursed amulet. Rowling makes it abundantly clear that, at least as far as these objections, it was an unnecessary sacrifice. When Dumbledore leaves for good, it will be with his affairs in order, the fate of the world assured, and his protege come to maturity. I’m looking forward to how Rowling does it, but I’m afraid we’re going to get Dumbledore back only to lose him in the end. Sigh…
12 Travis Prinzi // Jul 3, 2006 at 12:58 pm

Just for clarification, Rowling has been adamant that one of the rules of magic in her wizarding world is that once someone is truly dead, they can never come back. So our options are either (a) Dumbledore is dead and not coming back, or (b) Dumbledore is not dead, and we’ll see him in book 7 (though if this is the case, I think I agree with you - we’ll lose him again).

Stay tuned for an essay on the question of Dumbledore’s death…
13 Rich // Jan 7, 2007 at 3:29 pm

Just noticed a small detail from when Harry and the teachers are gathered after D’s death. Harry proposes the funeral with students in attendance, but Slughor agrees “in a rather agitated voice”.

Why?

Sorry if this has already been mentioned.
14 Alice // Jan 8, 2007 at 10:23 pm

There’s a theory going around that Dumbledore’s blackened wand hand may indicate that he had already been hit by a fatal spell before school starts and is being kept alive by a combination of Snape’s “stoppered deathâ€ potion and the last of the Elixor of Life.
So he was sort of dead already, when Snape finished him off.
That blackened hand is a real mystery for me. JKR makes a point of letting us see how nimble DD is with it at one point, at the Dursley’s, I think. And for some reason, DD won’t tell Harry how it happened.
Speaking of small details, the way DD sort of hung out in space for a minute after Snape fired off the AK reminded me of that wierdness after Katie Bell was exposed to the cursed locket.
15 Martin // Mar 17, 2007 at 8:15 am

1. I believe Dumbledore is dead. Severus made Snape unbreakable vowes. If Dumbledore had not died Snape would have died. Dark lord would have noticed.

I think when Dumbledore was talking to Draco he was theching Harry the last lesson. It was not a speech of Slughorn. I do not think that Harry would be able to vanquished the Dark Lord without the help of Death Eaters.

Some people belive and so do I that the potion Dumbledore drank was a horcrux. When Snape killed Dumbledore, he destroyed 1/7 of Voldemort’s sole as well.

2. I trust Severus Snape. He was teaching Harry even when he was leaving Hogwarts.

“Blocked aganin, and again until you learn to keep your mounth shut and your mind closed, Potter!”

Do not forget that Setucmspectra is non-verbal spell.

3. Would you say Dedalus Diggle might have buried Harry’s parents?
16 Reyhan // Mar 17, 2007 at 11:54 pm

There was a lot of mystery around Dumbledore’s death: what he said in the cave, what he said to Draco, the slow fall, the handling of his body, the phoenix, not to mention the wounded hand that wouldn’t heal, and the “Oho”.

I’m willing to put the slow fall and the “Oho” down to the author being too rushed to correct the manuscript, but not the rest.

There is obviously something else going on behind the scenes, which Snape and to a lesser extent Hagrid, are party to.

I don’t know what that is.

This is what I am certain of: Voldemort was at least partially inhabiting Dumbledore’s body near the end; Dumbledore had given Snape instructions that he - or his body -was to be killed at some point: when Snape saw him, he knew the moment had come; perhaps these two things are one and the same: Dumbledore told Snape that if Voldemort ever took over his body, Snape was to kill him.

I am also certain that Dumbledore is dead. My certainty is not based on any plot detail, it’s based on the deep logic of the story. Too many people, including Harry, grieved Dumbledore and too deeply, for him to return. I do believe that in HP7 Harry will visit the deathly hallows, and that Dumbledore may have joined that rank, but he will be visiting a spirit, and not the living man.
17 Mia // May 24, 2007 at 4:46 am

Well, Rowling has confirmed by now that Dumbledore is dead and that he wonâ€™t return. So maybe weâ€™ll be reading something about him in retrospect.

The slow fall: I think that Snape needed to put Dumbledoreâ€™s body out of the DEâ€™s reach, but he wanted him to arrive gently to the ground. Perhaps heâ€™s used some non-verbal spell to decelerate the fall.
18 riel // May 24, 2007 at 10:50 pm

dumbledore is really dead..that’s what i believe. maybe there’s a reason why he died..

look, try to scan the pages where hagrid narrated the argument of dumbledore and sanpe in harry potter 6..snape says “I couldn’t do that..” well, you know, i feel there’s something in it..i think albus ordered snape to kill him.
19 Reyhan // May 24, 2007 at 11:18 pm

riel, there has been a lot of debate and conjecture about Snape’s reasons for killing Dumbledore at this site. For the most recent discussion, check out the post:
Book Review: The Great Snape Debate (part 2).