HP and The Ten Commandments #1

[Zarleycat at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 23752

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., foxmoth at q... wrote:
> 
> 1) I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 
the 
> house of bondage.

snip

 In Rowling's world, as in many folktales, magical objects 
> improperly obtained or malignly used exact a vengeance on their 
> possessors. There are many examples of this: Hermione's 
misadventures 
> with the polyjuice potion, Lockhart's disastrous attempt to put a 
> memory charm on Harry and Ron, the threatening phantoms that emerge 
> from Voldemort's wand.  If this is a known principle of the magical 
> world, it would explain why Dumbledore is so permissive. Magical 
crimes 
> punish themselves in the end, so he merely needs to protect the 
> innocent until the guilty have reformed themselves or paid the 
ultimate 
> price for their misdeeds.

The idea of magical crimes punishing themselves seems to work to some 
extent on what I'll call minor misdeeds.  Dumbledore can afford to be 
lenient if the idea is that misuse of things like the polyjuice 
potion or Lockhart's idiocy are the crimes.  But, if you look at 
other crimes, those outside of Hogwarts,  we don't have evidence that 
this theory holds up.  Peter Pettigrew has not paid for his crime - 
Sirius Black has paid for it.  Granted, Peter may get his in the end, 
or he may pay for his actions in some selfless act later on, but he 
may still find a way to slither out of sight if things go wrong for 
Voldemort. And we've been told that a number of DEs managed to avoid 
imprisonment by saying they were under the Imperious Curse, and not 
responsible for their actions.  Again, in the future, we may see that 
people's actions come back on them, but at this point in the series, 
there are a number of people who have gone unpunished.

Marianne, who thoroughly enjoyed this post and is looking forward to 
the next nine.