[HPforGrownups] Veritaserum and Wizard Lawyers (and a one lin er about photo choices)

[Tandy, Heidi]

No: HPFGUIDX 19680

Pah, what a bad weekend I chose to go out of town - all these interesting
threads for me to play catchup on! 

Scott wrote
> One thing I know we discussed in the past, but I can't remember and 
> I'm not going to bother going through the archives for is whether a 
> person under Veritaserum's influence would remember an event as it 
> actually happened, or as they experienced it. For example if we gave 
> Harry and Voldy Veritaserum and asked them what happened in the 
> Graveyard would we get the same story?
No, I don't think so. I think Barty Crouch tells his story the way he
believed it - I don't have my copy here, but I remember some of his language
as being very "perspective-laden" - will try to fill in blanks later, if I
can. It would take a lot of magic in perception to see an event from an
omniscient perspective, and on this issue, I think it's clear that even
witches and wizards are only human - if they had omniscience, nobody
would've suspected sirius or overlooked peter, fudge wouldn't be
disbelieving Harry right now, etc. 


Scott also wrote: 
> Do they have lawyers at all? From what we saw in the Penseive the 
> answer seems to be no, but I think we all agree that mightn't have 
> been regular circumstances.
Other than the Bagman bit, those were sentencing and evidentiary
proceedings. It's not completely unheard of for a lawyer to take a backseat
in a sentencing proceeding even in Muggle courtrooms, compared to what a
lawyer does in a courtroom, and it's possible that part of Karkaroff's deal
was that he wouldn't have a lawyer during the proceeding. But the Bagman bit
- no lawyer? It's possible that he had a lawyer off to the side, and that
his schpiel was a result of a discussion with his lawyer, but even when I
read it, it struck me as weird that he didn't have representation there. It
still does. 

Ebony wrote a lot about evil, and MarshaMoon covered my thoughts (as
discussed here before - search for abuse and attach and my name if you care
to read the old posts from april & september) about Harry pretty well, so
I'll stick with responding on the issue that anyone who's been here for more
than a month has been waititng for me to respond to:

> ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS  (Draco Malfoy) 
> "But just as evil can spring from a failing of the heart, so, 
> too, can it 
> grow from the head. "You can have people who have a 
> well-developed capacity 
> for empathy, relating, who are very close to their friends, 
> but who have 
> been raised in an ideology that teaches them that people of another 
> religion, color or ethnic group are bad," says psychologist 
> Bruce Perry of 
> the Child Trauma Academy in Houston. "They will act in a way that is 
> essentially evil based upon cognition rather than emotion." 

Correct. Absolutely. We even see glimmers of this, on what are likely lesser
levels, from other characters, like Ron, who popped up with automatic
anti-werewolf sentiments and prejudices against giants.  I can't imagine
Molly or Arthur indoctrinating the weasley boys the way I imagine Lucius
indoctrinates Draco (for more on that process, see my fanfic - A Surfeit of
Curses - at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP_Paradise/files/A%20Surfeit%20of%20Curses/)
but it happens anyway, just by growing up in a household where thoughts
about "others" are even discussed - a child in that household learns what he
or she lives. 
But now for my usual Draco Defense - this kind of upbringing doesn't *have*
to percolate into evil, because an outside influence can change it from that
track, the same way an influence of support and understanding can keep a
child from an abusive or neglectful environment from becoming abusive or
sociopathic in turn. To date, we haven't seen any *acts* of *evil* against
*people* by Draco (words, yes; meanspiritedness, yes; magical creatures,
yes) and that means that at present, he is *not* evil. Potential is there -
but so are opportunities for him to be turned. 

But given what I read in a gaming magazine about one of the new HP video
games, I have a feeling that he's going to actually become evil in the books
- one of the games has harry chasing draco - no, not for *romantic* reasons
(Sorry, rhysenn! I agree - Feh!) but because he's "robbed a student." Now, I
know that Canon!Draco is more or less an insufferably mean git, but theft?
Really, that's more extreme than he's been so far in terms of violating the
code of civilization, and I cannot believe JKR would've allowed it if she
had plans to let him be an example of how people can turn away from what
they've brought up to learn and revere, which would be (a) interesting, and
(b) a good lesson, especially to those kids who think evil is *fun*. 

So maybe videogame!draco has opened the door to the evil costume party, and
is making his IntoTheWoodsPrince costume and mask and getting ready to go
in. Darn him!

And Susan just wrote:
> Or perhaps the person who sent it had gone through a whole album going
> "oh yes - that's sweet - oh damn, that rotter who murdered the McKinnons
is
> right on the front row - that's a good one of Lily - dreadful one of James
-
> and isn't that Rozier lurking around at the back? - this one looks ok -
oh,
> no, it isn't - all four of the back row of that team were at  the infamous
> Muggle Baby Barbecue - oh, soddit, he can have the wedding photo and be
done
> with it.  At least it was never *proved* about Black.  And anyway, doesn't
> little Peter look so cute in his top hat and tail"
Since this is such a long post already, all I can say is, LOL and :)