Some additional reflections on Temperance

[pigwidgeon37 at yahoo.it]

No: HPFGUIDX 30001

There was a famous conductor called Wilhelm Mengelberg, whose motto 
was: "Everything that is 'too' is bad." 
Veyr remarkable, I think, and certainly not only valid referring to 
music.
Temperance should be THE heavenly virtue, in fact, none of the other 
six should be observed without observing temperance as well. Being 
just is a good thing, but by being overly just, you end up as Mr. 
Crouch senior. Being strong (fortitude) is advisable, but being too 
strong, you will rather be stubborn. To be prudent is a good thing, 
but too much prudence leads to indecision. Same goes for the 
theological virtues. Neither Fides nor Spes nor Caritas are virtues, 
if overdone.
And finally, Temperance should keep an eye on itself, so to say. In 
the Potterverse, there are two figures to exemplify this: 1) 
McGonagall. Without having any real proof for it in canon, I suppose 
that something in her past (my favourite idea is that she was married 
and lost her husband during the Voldemort years)might have caused her 
to become as we see her now: Stern, not unkind, but not exactly what 
you could call spontaneous. In GoF, in the chapter "The Unexpected 
Task", Lavender and Parvati both giggle at the thought that 
McGonagall could ever let her hair down. She never loses her temper, 
except for the scene in GoF after Crouch has been kissed by the 
Dementor, but OTOH, if she has emotions, she never shows them, the 
students sometimes suspect that she might want to smile or say 
something more harsh or more kind than what she actually says, but 
she never actually *does* so. This is ceraitnly an example for 
Temperance not being controlled by itself.
2) Snape: Now don't throw tomatoes at me, I know that, at first 
sight, he doesn't really seem overly restrained, considering that he 
indulges certain weaknesses. But at closer inspection I'd say that my 
POV is not entirely wrong. I think that, on the contrary, the man has 
put himself under such severe restraint (which, OTOH, he is not able 
to control, because after all he *is* a human being with very strong 
passions and emotions) that sometimes he is not able any more to keep 
the lid on the boiling cauldron. For those few situations, he has 
made up sufficient justifications (Harry has a blown-up ego, Neville 
is a weakling, hermione is a know-it-all)which, most interestingly, 
have to do with- surprise, surprise!!- temperance: Harry has to be 
kept from believing himself Hogwarts' Golden Boy, Neville must learn 
to overcome his weakness, Hermione must learn to hold back her 
impulse to prove her superior knowledge. Noticeably, the one and only 
time we see Snape on the brink of insanity, at the end of PoA, shows 
him when he has completely lost all his restraint, after a major 
(and, as I'd say successful) attempt at it, namely resisting the 
temptation to eventually kill unconscious Black by Avada Kedavra and 
say he died from shock because of the Demetor attack (or call the 
dementors back to kiss him right away). For Snape, this was certainly 
a supreme effort at Temperance which he hopes to see duly rewarded, 
not necessarily by the order of Merlin, but certainly by Dumbledore's 
appreciation. 

So much for Heavenly Virtues out of control- I'll rater finish, 
before this becomes a full fledged Snape Defence Act.

Susanna/pigwidgeon37