The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

year, he has already confirmed that Quirrell is the one after the Stone.
Meanwhile, Dumbledore drops another hint to Harry in the form of the news article about the Gringott’s break-in that Harry finds at Hagrid’s. Isn’t it odd that Hagrid would have a five-week-old news clipping lying around? I’m betting Dumbledore put it there for Harry to find—clearly, Dumbledore is using Hagrid to unwittingly feed Harry information.
Hagrid has also provided the first line of defense for the Stone. Fluffy has a very specific role to play—otherwise, as Ron says, “What do they think they’re doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?” (SS161) The Stone was perfectly safe within the Mirror, so why have a murderous three-headed dog sitting in the school, behind a door that’s susceptible to a basic Alohomora charm?
This is the first time we see that Dumbledore very much likes to control when things happen to suit his purpose, and that’s where Fluffy comes in. Keep that tendency in mind, as it will be an absolutely crucial concept when we get to Deathly Hallows. Fluffy is there to slow everything down, to allow Dumbledore to set the stage for Harry to go after Quirrell. He wants Harry to learn some magic, and he also wants to learn more about the boy before sending him to face Voldemort. If Quirrell got right to the Mirror, he would take it and scamper, and there goes Dumbledore’s plan for the Harry vs. Voldemort showdown. But trying to figure out how to get past Fluffy would keep Quirrell busy for quite some time.
Keep in mind that at this point, none of the other protections are in place. We only learn of protections other than Fluffy in February, when the Trio assumes there must be other things guarding the Stone (SS227), and it’s not confirmed by Hagrid until weeks later (SS232), which is in April, according to the HP Lexicon’s timeline.
The fact that the protections are tailored to the Trio means that they had to be put in place once Dumbledore actually knew who Harry’s closest friends would be. Therefore, the very earliest the protections could have been constructed is November, since Hermione wasn’t even friendly with Harry until Halloween.3 Allow a few weeks to learn that Hermione really had become Harry’s friend for good and for Dumbledore to learn more about Hermione, and it seems unlikely the protections were put in place earlier than December. But I think it may have been later than that.
We know that between September and December, Fluffy was in place, and protections two through six were not. But was the Mirror, with the Stone in it, in place at this time? No.
Dumbledore would not have wanted to risk Quirrell getting past Fluffy and fleeing with the Mirror before Harry had a chance to face him. Dumbledore, while making fanfare about Fluffy and what it’s guarding, actually kept the Mirror and the Stone elsewhere. It doesn’t matter where, since no one would know that the Stone was hidden inside the Mirror. . . for all we know, maybe it was in Dumbledore’s office the whole time! And meanwhile, he let Quirrell get on with trying to get past Fluffy, perhaps chortling at the thought of how peeved Voldemort would be if they did get past Fluffy and found nothing there.
Either way, after four months of this, it’s the Christmas holidays—Quirrell still hasn’t figured out how to get past Fluffy, and Dumbledore believes he knows enough about the Trio to start setting up the obstacles. But before that can happen, Harry needs to be told about the Mirror of Erised—having his first encounter with the Mirror happen during his faceoff with Quirrell could be disastrous! (Picture Voldemort convincing the naïve eleven-year-old that what he sees in the Mirror will come to pass if Voldemort is resurrected). As Dumbledore tells Harry, “If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared.” (SS214) So Dumbledore takes the Mirror out of hiding, wherever it was, to show to Harry.4
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Dumbledore followed Harry on Christmas night. That was the day Harry got his Invisibility Cloak, and Dumbledore would have known that Harry would take it for a spin—the timing of Dumbledore giving it to him, like everything else, was deliberate. Let’s face it, the odds of Harry stumbling onto the one room with the Mirror are astronomical. Counting on Harry’s adventurous nature, Dumbledore probably waited outside the Gryffindor common room for Harry to emerge, followed him invisibly, and put the Mirror into the room that Harry was about to enter. Then, he likely watched with tears in his eyes as Harry looked into the Mirror and saw his family—the same vision that Dumbledore himself sees.5
Dumbledore may have hoped that Harry would figure out what the Mirror did on his own, but Harry doesn’t, not even when he brings Ron the following night. And Dumbledore sees that Harry is consumed by what the Mirror shows him, so on the third night he finally shows himself to Harry and explains what the Mirror does. Then he says, “The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow.” (SS213) Note that it’s a “new” home—I believe that this is when the Mirror was put underneath Fluffy’s trapdoor for the first time. And after the Mirror was in place, Dumbledore had McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, Snape, and Quirrell put their protections in place in early January.
Things then quiet down for a while, until Quirrell gets Hagrid drunk and finds out how to get past Fluffy. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Dumbledore, the Trio has been sleuthing and made the Nicolas Flamel connection, realizing that the Sorcerer’s Stone is what Fluffy is guarding. We know that Dumbledore is unaware of this because he is surprised by Harry’s knowledge of Flamel (SS297).
After Quirrell finds out about Fluffy, his behavior likely tips Dumbledore off, and Dumbledore now needs to let the Trio know about the Stone. But Dumbledore doesn’t want his involvement to