The fidelius charm failed because they chose the wrong secret keeper - Dumbledore could have chosen himself for Harry's fidelius.
This still doesn't adress the issues of growing up under Fidelius. Think Harry grew up lonely in canon? Try having him grow up
literally unable to leave his house ever and
functionally invisible to everyone except a short list of people who have been told about him.
Also, was that even an option? If it were, then why would he not have served as the Potters' secret keeper? IIRC, the Fidelius is described as old, lost magic which Lily researched and rediscovered, and it doesn't reappear until it's used on 12 Grimmauld Place in OotP; maybe Dumbledore didn't
learn the charm until well after Harry had been placed at the Dursleys.
The "7 Potters" plan was an example of incredible stupidity without any sense.
That I will admit; if nothing else, they could have rescheduled to some randomly selected day between one and two weeks before the protections fell.
That doesn't change the fact though that the blood protection is not doing anything.
It keeps him from being assassinated before the age of 11 by any Death Eater who knew Point Me and Bombarda. We don't
see it doing anything because when it works it's a non-event.
Death Eaters could harm Harry without trouble at Hogwarts and elsewhere - where he spent most of his time.
And it was never meant to.
Who was a) a house-elf, apparently able to apparate through almost any wards, b) was not an enemy, and c) had no intention to harm Harry.
nor did it did not even stop the dementors
Who were not Death Eaters, agents of Death Eaters, or connected to Voldemort in any way at this point.
Now, if say the protection would cause Snape top collapse in pain each time he harms or wants to harm Harry...
Snape was not an agent of Voldemort at this point. (Whatever his personal politics, he
had betrayed the Dark Lord and was no longer working for him; his hostility towards Harry was for personal reasons, and thus not a legitimate subject of the blood protection.)
if Malfoy wouldn't be able to touch Harry if he believes in blood superiority...
The blood protections guarded against
Voldemort and his agents, not 'blood purists'.
if Pettigrew couldn't touch Harry, fopiling the resurrection...
Okay, that one's fair; they
could have protected him against Peter in the graveyard, and the fact that they did not is a mark against them. Not, however, a fatal one: they were strongest against Voldemort himself and when living with his mother's blood; the fact that they were unable to defend him against an agent during the school year does not mean they could not and did not protect him against agents while growing up or during summers.
Another option: the blood protections were
supposed to protect Harry like you want them to. That's what Dumbledore
expected when he placed Harry with the Dursleys, and if it had held true his decision would have been entirely justified. It didn't, but that just means he was
wrong, not that it was a bad judgment call.
I suppose what really bugs me is
failure to follow through.
You want to write a fic where the blood wards are weak and worthless? Fine, they are weak and worthless.
So why did Dumbledore want to put Harry with the Dursleys? If you are writing your Dumbledore as a comedic bumbling fool (e.g. most of Rorschach's Blot's stories) then you're good; he was stupid and wrong, let us laugh at him and move on. But otherwise, you need to deal with the implications somehow. So either:
- The flaws in the wards were subtle. In which case, your favourite character does not get to lambaste and hate Dumbledore for wanting to put Harry there; it was a mistake anyone could have made (though a moment of sorrow and disappointment when they realize that the Great Dumbledore is not nearly as infallible as they had thought is appropriate). You also have to explain how your characters discovered this flaw when Dumbledore did not.
- Dumbledore knew the wards were worthless, and wanted Harry there anyway. This implies an ulterior motive, which means an evil (or at least amoral) manipulative!Dumbledore. But if you're writing Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin (First Class), Grand Sorcerer, Supreme Mugwump, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Defeater of Grindelwald, and 50-year-experienced politician as a manipulative antagonist, you damn well better not have the protagonists running rings around him.
- Admit canon non-compatibility and declare AU. The wards are weak, and the flaw are obvious. Thus, non-stupid, non-evil Dumbledore never even considers placing Harry with the Dursleys.
If all that is too much to deal with, you can always assume that the wards
aren't worthless - in which case we're back to my original point: taking Harry away from their protection should have consequences.
That might work - but I am rather sick of the whole "Dursley's get to abuse Harry" canon shit to start with. I find it overdone, stupid, and wrecking my SoD, as well as making it hard not to spit at Dumbledore and everyone else for letting such stuff happen to Harry.
Hmm. I agree that it was badly handled - or, rather, I have a hard time coming up with an interpretation where there wasn't
something Dumbledore could have done to improve things. But I don't find it SoD-breaking. There are a number of factors to consider:
- How bad were the Durselys, actually? Was what we saw directly in the books the worst of it, or just the tip of the iceberg?
- When Harry arrives at Hogwarts, he is skinny, but he is not malnourished. So, while they weren't feeding him like Dudley, they weren't starving him - and given how Dudley and Vernon turned out, he probably was better off for it.
- Harry speaks excellent English. This implies that someone spent many painstaking hours teaching him to speak correctly. Well before school age, too, which implies it was either Petunia or Vernon or they hired someone to do it.
- Harry has glasses. Old and patched with tape, but functional. Which implies optometrist, glasses stores, etc., again placing a minimum level of effort and money they expended on him.
- There is no evidence they ever physically abused him, outside of the infamous frying pan incident. Which, I should point out, happened when Petunia thought Harry was threatening her son with black magic.
- The cupboard is a problem. The best excuse I can come up with is that he was placed there when he first arrived, as a make-shift crib, and just sorta never left: every time they started thinking about moving him out to a proper bedroom, he would commit some (real, imaginary, or magical) misdeed and be left there 'a little while longer' as 'punishment'; by the time canon started, the Durselys knew that he was getting too big to fit in there and they would have to move him soon - the letters just pushed up the timetable. However, that's a pretty weak explanation, I'll admit.
- Conclusion: The attitude and environment Harry grew up in was deplorable and negligent, but his actual living conditions and treatment were, with the exception of the cupboard, no worse than a child from a poor, but not destitute, household. (Which is totally unfair to him, given the Dursleys were wealthy middle class, but means Dumbledore wasn't enabling outright child abuse by leaving him there.)
- How much did Dumbledore know about Harry's actual living conditions? The whole 'magical monitoring devices' thing is, AFAICT, fanon. He had Ms. Figg, of course, but she can only report what she sees; whether the Durselys were abusive or simply negligent inside their own home, their facade of normalcy would require that they keep their treatment of Harry within socially accepted bounds for a 'problem child' in public. (C.v., at the zoo, after getting Dudley his ice cream, Harry gets a ice lolly because the person selling them asked him what he wanted before they could leave; they bought him the cheapest thing available, but they still bought him something rather than try to explain why one child was getting a treat and the other nothing.)
- What could Dumbledore do? The Dursleys hated and feared wizards; consider how they reacted to a brief, friendly visit by the Weazleys. If he had come into their house, remonstrating them for their parenting decisions, they would have taken it out on Harry after he left. Dumbledore might quite reasonably have decided that he wasn't going to step in for anything less than a critical incident, because his presence would just make things worse.
- What standards were Dumbledore judging by? He was born in 1881, remember. Harry's treatment may seem abusive to us, but how bad was it by the standards of the late 19th century? (Note that corporal punishment wasn't banned in British public schools until 1987, and child labour was quite legal at the turn of the century.)
