Manipulative Dumbledore sat at his desk in his office contemplating the newly heard prophecy.
He had narrowed the child in question down to two possibilities; it was either the Longbottom child or the Potter child. Dumbledore sighed as he scribbled the names atop a piece of parchment each. A child could not defeat Tom, which meant that this war would drag on for much longer than he had hoped. How long could a community live with such anxiety, hopelessness and constant fear.
But on the positive side of things at least both the Longbottom child and the Potter child were children to the side of light. With these children being raised in an unfortunate time of war, but with good parents who were clearly fighting for light and for that matter some of the lights top fighters (Dumbledore was going to raise the Potters ranks to ensure they were some of the top most informed people of the light, he could forgo the normal five year journey up the ranks in this case and allow the youth's entry) and all children look up to their parents. What with such strong willed parents, and always being surrounded by people on the side of the light, these children would know nothing of the other side, except that it is dark, and bad, and fought against all their loved ones, they would be a shoe in, raised to fight for the right cause.
Dumbledore scribbled on both parchments "Children of the Light, all positive influences and role models will be fighters for the light. Must Never be exposed to the Dark, must not have extensive positive interactions with spy's, Must Never humanize the enemy, must not see the world in shades, Light and Dark is all."
Dumbledore looked sadly upon the names at the tops of each of the parchments. He was sure that plan A would not work, mostly because both the Longbottoms and the Potters were fighting in the top ranks of the Light side, and as with any war, there were casualties. He was especially worried about the potters, at the age of 20, they were still in training to become auora's, they had very little practice in the field. They certainly had some, as everyone was needed, but it didn't really compare to the Longbottoms experience, at 25, and 27 they had years of in the field experience to hone in on their skills, and know what really does and doesn't work. Still all of them were at war, and the chances for casualties were high, he doubted that any of them would live to see their child reach 7 years, never mind send them off to Hogwarts. And even if they were to quit the order of the Phoenix they would still most likely die, they were already marked as targets of the dark.
Dumbledore began to work out a plan for the likely event in which their parents died, and he quickly remembered the method of "Brain washing" he had read about being used by the muggles in the Korean war, and by 'cults', they hadn't been terribly effective, but they set a path and gave him some idea's, he could surely tweak it and personalize the techniques to work precisely in his favor. He also remembered that a child's teenage years (the years in which Dumbledore had control) were the years in which a child formed their identity, that of one separate from their parents, (hence the rebellion) or in the case of kids with absent parents, they would surely search to learn more of their background so they could incorporate it into their understanding of themselves and their own identity.
Dumbledore summoned a book on developmental psychology (being a principal of a school he had a fair few of these) and a new parchment. Plan B could very well work out to be much better than plan A.
Dumbledore began jotting notes down on how to shape the children's lives to begin to shape their beliefs and values to the cause, he was lucky to know the four parents quite well as order of the phoenix members, and he used this to help shape his mind map, along with what he expected the children to look like, how they may react to various situations at various stages of their lives, how some of those reactions may differ, what things may change this. His mind map soon became so incredibly complicated that only Dumbledore could possibly ever understand it. He had used magic to add not only a third dimension to the parchment but also a fourth. There were spirals of events with spirals spinning off of them shooting out in all the four dimensions. There were links between so many of the spirals and string and color coding links all over the thing, so much so that to anyone else it looked like a crazy ball like toy, that only Dumbledore would hold on his desk, but Dumbledore could read it.
After much time, Dumbledore scribbled on the original parchment marked Longbottom "Guardian; grandmother" and on the parchment marked potter "Guardians: Dursleys" Dumbledore knew that the Potters would never allow their child to live with the Dursleys but Dumbledore did not feel the need to tell them of this plan. They would elect Sirius as the Guardian, not considering the true effect of war, and Sirius was just as sure to die in this war as they were themselves, if not more so, he always was a bit of a wild risk taker. Longbottoms grandmother on the other hand was much too old to fight actively in the war, and was not considered a threat by the dark. And the Dursleys were muggles, they were uninvolved and insignificant just one family of muggles like millions of others to the dark.
Dumbledore silently wished that Longbottom had muggle relatives; it was always easiest to give a child to relatives, to raise them, away from a war. To top it off their natural fear of things that they don't understand means that the Potter child will surely be left to fend for himself whenever it is almost reasonable, he will hopefully develop a scene of independence, fully finding it rational and better accepting it when he finds out that he is expected to defeat Tom on his own at a young age. He will be used to sorting out his own problems, and that should just be another one.