Book 6 - DUMBLEDORE PLANNED HIS OWN DEATH

I know that debate on this topic has been going on for a long time and some people may even think of any editorial on this both boring and outdated, but let me assure you that I am not going to repeat what has already been discussed, I am going to approach it in a entirely different manner and I also want to draw attention to few facts which other fans have missed.

Before we start lets discuss a bit about the post of 'Defense Against the Dark Arts' (DADA) which is very crucial for this editorial. The post of DADA is jinxed by Voldemort after he was refused the post by Dumbledore. Dumbledore himself says that "we haven't been able to keep a DADA teacher longer than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort", which means that no DADA teacher can stay longer than a year, as indeed we have seen with Quirrel, Lockhart, Lupin and Moody(or should I say Crouch).

So let me now start my task of proving that Dumbledore planned his own death, first we'll assume that Dumbledore did not plan his own death and demolish that with logical arguments and evidences, and in the second stage we'll assume that Dumbledore did plan his own death and prove it by the overwhelming evidence the book six provides.

So first let's assume that Dumbledore did not plan his own death, if this was true we can make a few conclusions… 

1. Snape was working for Voldemort all along.
2. Dumbledore had no idea of Snapes true loyalty and he was sure that Snape was working for him, but he was wrong.
3. and of course the most obvious… Dumbledore had no idea he was going to die. 

So if Dumbledore had no idea that he was going to die, then he would want to continue fighting Voldemort and his followers through the order of the phoenix as he had been doing. In this case he would obviously want Snape to continue spying on Voldemort as he believes that Snape is working for him. Now we hit the biggest snag on this theory , “Why did Dumbledore give Snape the Defense against the dark arts job?”, when Dumbledore gave the DADA job to Snape he knew that he would not be able to keep Snape at Hogwarts for more than one year, as the job is jinxed. Why would he do that? Doesn't he want Snape to spy on Voldemort for him any longer? Why would he want Snape to leave Hogwarts? There can be no answer to this; there is only one answer… 

Dumbledore gave the DADA job to Snape because he knew that he himself would be dead by the end of the year, because he knew that there would be no reason for Snape to continue working at Hogwarts if he was dead, by giving the DADA job to Snape he not only saved Snapes life(I have explained this later), he made sure that there would be no doubt in Voldemort or any of his followers that Snape is loyal to the Voldemort and in this way Snape would be able to help Harry when the time comes. 

There is lots of evidence in book 6 that Dumbledore planned his death, some have been discussed in detail and some have been missed, here are some of the points in brief: 

• Notice the fact the he chose Slughorn to replace Snape, and I don't think that it is a coincidence that slughorn was the head of slytherin; Dumbledore knew that when Snape goes after one year, there would be no teacher with a slytherin background. So by giving Slughorn the potions post and Snape the DADA post he made sure that slughorn remains at Hogwarts. (of course all this is relevant only if Hogwarts is open next year). 
  
• There is the argument between Dumbledore and Snape as told to Harry by Hagrid, this has already been discussed in detail so we'll talk about it very briefly….the argument is that “Snape didn't want to do it any more” but Dumbledore insisted that he had promised and he has to do it. This had nothing to do with Katie and that necklace as Harry thought, Dumbledore knew all along that malfoy had given the necklace to Katie as we found out on that tower. The argument was because Snape did not want to kill Dumbledore that he would die to save Dumbledore's life but Dumbledore insisted that Snape should kill him. 
  
• Dumbledore took Harry to get the Horcurx, although it may seem like Dumbledore just wanted to give Harry a bit of exposure to Voldemorts magic and how he hides his Horcruxes, and of course he also wanted someone to force-feed him the potion, I think there is one more bigger reason, Dumbledore knew that after he dies, Harry would have to search and destroy the horcruxes himself and he wanted to prepare Harry mentally for that by giving a first hands experience of Voldemorts defenses. 
  
• There is the fact that Snapes did not say anything before killing Dumbledore, that his face was full of hatred. This has already been discussed in other editorials in detail, Snapes face was full of anger and hatred because he did not want to kill Dumbledore but Dumbledore had asked him to, and he was disgusted by what he was doing. 
  
• One thing nobody paid much attention is the fact that how angry Snape became when Harry called him a coward, Snape was angry because he wanted to shout at Harry “I would never kill a defenseless man like that, but I had to because he made me swear..” but of course he could not tell any of this, not that he wanted to anyway. 

Like that we could go on and on piling evidence that Dumbledore planned his death but that would be a waste of time and anyways it has already been discussed in other editorials. 

So now we come to our second question…. Why would Dumbledore plan his own death?

Well the answer is very simple…because Snape made the unbreakable vow; he made the vow ‘that he would kill Dumbledore if draco fails to kill Dumbledore'. If he had refused to make the vow then Bellatrix would know that Snape was not loyal to Voldemort and she would have undoubtedly told Voldemort, then Voldemort would have killed Snape. So Snape had no choice but to make the vow.

The situation was such that both Dumbledore and Snape knew that draco had been ordered to kill Dumbledore, and both knew that he would fail in this mission, that he would never kill, and he was going to try only because he was forced to by Voldemort. Snape himself says that the “dark lord intends me to do it in the end, but he is determined that Draco should try first”; so even Voldemort knew that draco would fail. 

Now we know that Dumbledore is not the kind of person who would let somebody else die so that he could live, he places the value of his life very low even though he is one of the most important people in the wizarding world. He understood the situation in which Snape had made the vow, whether Snape had made it in haste, without much thought did not matter, what was important was that if Snape didn't kill Dumbledore then Snape would die. There was no way out, to emphasize this point I have explained the possibilities below 

1. let's say if draco kills Dumbledore then Dumbledore dies.
2. if draco doesn't kill Dumbledore then Snape should kill Dumbledore, then again Dumbledore dies.
3. if Snape doesn't kill Dumbledore then Snape will die because of the unbreakable vow. 

So in every possibility either Snape dies or Dumbledore dies, but Dumbledore was a kind of person who would sacrifice his own life to save someone else's and that's exactly what he did.

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