I Hate Albus Dumbledore

I’ll say it again for the ones in the back. I hate Professor Dumbledore. And no, I’m not talking about Michael Gambon in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I am a little scared of the hate that I may get for writing this, but as soon as I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it all made sense to me: Dumbledore had never cared for Harry. In my not-so-humble opinion, Dumbledore kept Harry excessively in the dark.

Dumbledore knew that Draco was told to kill him, and as we now know, he had a plan all along. He never gave any compelling evidence as to why Harry should trust Snape (don’t even get me started on Severus), yet he knew that Snape loved Lily. And oh yeah, he knew that Harry was a Horcrux and that he was going to have to die.

Some might argue that Dumbledore was just trying to let Harry live a normal life. He wanted him to be a kid. So naturally, he placed him in a household of people who hated him with no explanation other than “they’re family” and “for your protection.” When Harry got to go to Hogwarts and be a “regular kid” away from the Dursleys, he got mixed up in death and destruction. Every. Single. Year.

What was the biggest reason why Dumbledore looked after Harry? He needed someone to defeat Voldemort and save the wizarding world, thereby fulfilling the prophecy. Dumbledore raised Harry to be a martyr. He didn’t see much more in Harry than someone he needed to protect so that the wizarding world would be protected in return.

Maybe, maybe, somewhere deep down, Dumbledore cared about Harry. Maybe he felt bad and thought that he was doing what was best. This was a new situation. How would he know what to do? But we know that Dumbledore had some capacity to actually love, whether it be for his sister or even for Grindelwald (which Dumbledore could’ve explained to Harry, along with the Deathly Hallows, the Elder Wand, and a million other things). So how could he do this to Harry, an innocent child?

When it comes down to it, whether you believe that Dumbledore did what he thought was best or not, Harry deserved to be treated better. He deserved to know more about his parents from some of the people who knew them best. He deserved to learn of the darkness within him and to fully make the choice to sacrifice himself instead of being groomed and forced into it.

Do you think Harry is just a fluke? Now that we’ve got a glimpse of young Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, we see him masterfully manipulate Newt just as he did Harry. We learn from his first appearance that young(ish) Albus sent Newt to America, and Mr. Scamander still doesn’t know why. Just like we would witness later with Harry, we saw a manipulative mentor in a young man’s life. As a 40-something Hogwarts professor who knew Grindelwald was bad, it’s hard for me to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was supposed to have grown up a little by 1927, right?

Professor Dumbledore had a lot on his plate. I’ll give him that. He was an amazing wizard – we all know this. He may have even been the best wizard to ever exist. But he was not a good man. He didn’t know how to have genuine relationships with most people, and I reserve the right to resent him.

Harry was constantly left confused and in the dark. He never knew what was going on in his own life. And it all points back to one man: Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.