What Dumbledore REALLY Saw in the Mirror of Erised - Harry Potter Explained

Hey everyone,

Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. In this video, we’re going to be discussing Albus Dumbledore, and what he saw in the mirror of erised. Now, I know what you might be thinking - he saw socks, didn’t he? Well, it’s not so straightforward.

When Harry first discovers the mirror, it’s described as follows:

“It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. “

Then, he experienced the following:

“He looked in the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. He reached out a hand and felt the air behind him. If she was really there, he'd touch her, their reflections were so close together, but he felt only air - she and the others existed only in the mirror.”

"Mom?" he whispered. "Dad?"

“They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees -- Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.”

After losing himself in the mirror for hours, captivated with what he was witnessing, Dumbledore stumbles upon Harry:

"So -- back again, Harry?" said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, "you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.

“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts.” - he continues
Harry then proceeds to ask Dumbledore:
“What do you see when YOU look in the mirror?"

To which Dumbledore replies:

"I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks." - "One can never have enough socks," - he continues.

At this point Harry returns to bed, and it is revealed that when lying in bed it struck him that ‘Dumbledore might not have been being quite truthful.’

So, what does this mean? What did Dumbledore actually see? It just so happens that in the most recent film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the mirror of Erised resurfaces, and we see none other than a young Dumbledore standing in front of the mirror - faced with another man. This man is of course Gellert Grindelwald. Grindelwald was of course very impactful in Dumbledore’s life, and the mirror depicts the pair engaging in a blood pact. The blood pact represents the pair swearing that they would never fight each other- something that wasn’t entirely upheld, as we know that in 1945 the pair have an epic face-off in which Grindelwald’s reign of power is brought to an end.

But, just because that’s what Dumbledore saw when he was young, that doesn’t mean that it’s what he saw when he was older. ‘Grindelwald’ isn’t the revised answer to this question.

So, in his old age, what did he see? Socks? Grindelwald? Something else?
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Видео What Dumbledore REALLY Saw in the Mirror of Erised - Harry Potter Explained канала Harry Potter Theory