Albus Dumbledore and True Authority
Albus Dumbledore is easily accused of irreverence or laxity. He frustrates me, for example, with his apparent lack of support to the bumbling efforts of his often strange and sometimes downright inept selection of faculty members. Rubeus Hagrid could have benefited, one has to think, from more direction and guidance in his early efforts as a professor in the Hogwarts class on Care of Magical Creatures. What is Dumbledore doing up in his office while his students and teachers muddle their way through dangerous classroom activities or battle deadly enemies within the dungeons and forests surrounding the ancient school under his care? If the passwords protecting his office are any indication, Dumbledore is apparently syphoning off uncomfortable thoughts into his Pensieve while nibbling on Sherbet Lemons and Cockroach Clusters. Not only this, but Dumbledore encourages the foolishness of his favorite students as he provides Harry with the invisibility cloak from his lost father and winks at Harry over the possession of the Marauder’s Map that Harry has stolen from the office of the school’s caretaker, Argus Filch. Even the apparently decorum-minded professor Minerva McGonagall is glad to break the law with Dumbledore’s blessing as she secretly provides Hermione Granger with a time-turner. As Dumbledore presides over all of this chaos and disregard for discipline and common sense, all that he has to offer to his scattered flock are four-words speeches such as: “Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”
As I read the Harry Potter books out loud to our third child, a friend of mine is doing the same with his oldest. My friend recently asked me about this question of authority and reverence in the Harry Potter world. Just as there are in reality, three kinds of authority exist within the Harry Potter stories:
a false authority maintained by intimidation and raw, self-serving power (i.e. evil “authority”),
a false authority dependent upon rules and regulations or measurable outcomes (i.e. bureaucratic or legalistic “authority”)
and a true authority that invites others to join in the pursuit of a goodness and truth that is available to all without being easily or readily apparent to anyone (i.e. contemplative and Christian authority).
