Pre-Godric's Hollow: How dark is Dark?

[heathernmoore]

No: HPFGUIDX 31927

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Katze <jdumas at k...> wrote:

> If I understand you correctly, Draco's view of the Dark Arts is probably
> limited. He knows that his father was involved, but not to the full
> extent. I really don't think Draco understands the extent of V's hatred.
> Draco was raised after V fell, so his concept of what the world was like
> with V around is diminished. I don't think he understands how dark those
> days really were. We'll have to wait and see what he thinks when he sees
> good ol' dad killing all sorts of people. I believe Draco will be a
> person who is going to have to choose between "what's right, and what's
> easy." I think he'll have his own personal struggle to deal with. 
> 
> -Katze


  I'd like to interject a note here to say that, frankly, *we* don't have much of a clue how dark those days "really" were. Apparently they weren't so dark that the larger society has any clue what was going on in the magical subculture; they're still willing to send their kids to Hogwarts if circumstances work so that they find out about it. They may well have not been as very dark as would turn the stomach of an elitist prat like young Draco Malfoy.
I mean, there's what normal people like us would consider dark (say antebellum South), and then there's summer-of-sam dark, and then there's me-and-the-droogies-out-for-a-bit-of-ultraviolence dark, and then there's jews-in-the-Secret-Annexe dark. Somehow I'm suspecting that nobody had reached the secret annexe phase as of 1981. 

 I'm beginning to wonder whether a comparison between Voldemort and someone like, say, Charles Manson isn't more appropriate than Voldemort/Hitler. Or perhaps something more like some Latin American would-be dictator whose plans for coup were brought up prematurely short by the Godric's Hollow Incident.  

I wonder if we aren't being too influenced by the concept that Voldemort was at the "height of his power" in 1981 -- that doesn't necessarily mean that he was the dominating cultural force yet, only that terror influence he had built at the time was strong enough to show that he wasn't in any danger of slowing down.