Harry Potter: Why Didn't Dumbledore Send The Order After Horcruxes?

Summary:

• Harry and his friends were way less powerful than the Order of the Phoenix wizards, but Dumbledore chose them for the Horcrux Hunt.
• However, the Order’s members would never have allowed Harry to sacrifice his life, and the final Horcrux would have remained.
• Dumbledore prevented others from learning about the Horcruxes to secure Harry’s autonomy in making the final decision.

At first glance, it looks like Albus Dumbledore sending his Golden Boy to locate and destroy the essential anchors that prevented Voldemort from dying was a massive plot mechanism — since he had a small army of fiercely loyal and experienced battle wizards for whom this job would have been a much more trivial challenge.

But unlike us, Dumbledore planned way ahead: if he were to employ the Order of the Phoenix instead of Harry Potter for the Horcrux Hunt, Voldemort would’ve won.

Harry Potter’s Horcrux Hunt Was A Tough Challenge

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were essentially alone on their quest to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes, and they had little to none information about them. It took the Golden Trio the entire year to only locate two out of the five remaining soul anchors, and that entire adventure was a struggle: hard, dangerous, and compromised.

Harry and his friends were not battle wizards, trained Aurors, or anyone like that. They were yesterday’s students who didn’t even complete their Hogwarts education. Why were they all of a sudden more competent for this grueling and crucial task in Dumbledore’s eyes than the experienced and ultimately more powerful members of the Order of the Phoenix?

The answer is simple: they weren’t.

Dumbledore Had Planned The Horcrux Hunt Way Ahead

The final goal of the Horcrux Hunt wasn’t vandalizing a handful of unique magical trinkets — it was killing Lord Voldemort for good. The Order’s members would have been more efficient in finding and destroying the Horcruxes, but if they were the ones to undertake this task, Voldemort would have likely won the war. Why, you may ask?

What do you think the noble and compassionate members of the Order would have done when they learned that Harry Potter himself was a Horcrux?

The Order’s wizards were loyal to Harry and Dumbledore, and they would never have killed him or attempted to destroy the Horcrux in him themselves.

If they learned that Harry had to sacrifice himself to Voldemort for the final Horcrux to be destroyed, they would never have allowed him to do that, preventing further progress.

The entire point of the Hunt was to kill Voldemort, but to do that, Harry had to die. For Harry to die, he had to willingly sacrifice himself, and it had to be his and only his decision. Dumbledore, who knew it all along, made the right call when he prepared Harry for the Horcrux Hunt instead of resorting to the Order’s experience.

Harry had to be autonomous when making the final choice.