TBAY: Re: "Despiadado" Crouch and HumanRightsMartyr!Wilkes

[lucky_kari]

No: HPFGUIDX 43326

On a table somewhere in Theory Bay, Eileen has set up a quantity of 
little paper cups filled with a substance that might have an origin as 
seafood. A banner above reads, "C.R.A.B.C.U.S.T.A.R.D. It's so 
exciting, it'll make your eyes bulge!"

The reactions so far have been either puzzled or vaguely positive. But 
then, Eileen hears a gagging sound from her right.

"Elkins!"

"You're still flogging that red herring!" says Elkins. "Have you 
forgotten so quickly?"

"People like it, Elkins. I'm only giving them what they want. People 
like to think that "Classy, Rich, Ambitious, Bold, Crouch's Unsung 
Sexiness Tempts All Raunchy Damsels."

"I thought "B" stood for beastly," says Elkins calmly, reaching into 
her wandpocket. Eileen flinches, but Elkins merely waves her wand and 
cries "Accio canon!"

>I will happily help Eileen to man this canon, 
> in the hopes of blasting that nasty crab-flavored herring out of the 
>water for once and for all. 
Elkins announces to Theory Bay.

"Well," says Eileen after a second's pause. "I'm game. You see, the 
original C.R.A.B.C.U.S.T.A.R.D. theory was in reaction to 
B.A.B.E.M.E.I.S.T.E.R. (Brilliant Actor Barty: Evil Man Easily, 
Infinitely Sexier Than Ex-Riddle )."

"And the problem with that?" asks Elkins.

"Well, you know, Crouch Jr. is a sadist and well... really, really 
evil."

"But he had so much fun."

"Err.... Could I make confession, Elkins? Don't tell anyone but I 
really, really love Barty Crouch Jr. I've fought against it a long 
time, but I can't help it."

"We'll talk about that later, if you want," said Elkins with an amused 
smile. First, let's deal with Wilkes, Wilkes who has finally got his 
own Exclamation Mark: HumanRightsMartyr!Wilkes."

I wrote:
> > But, it's always bugged listies, hasn't it, that the aurors didn't 
> > have the authorization to use "Avada Kedavra" in the first place. 

Elkins responded:
> It's never particularly bugged me.  As discussions of Harry and 
>Sirius in the Shrieking Shack show, there are plenty of other ways to 
>kill people, and I suspect that the aurors were always authorized to 
>use them in self-defense, or to protect the innocent.  

But none of those killing methods people have suggested for Harry and 
Sirius have struck me as pleasant. Accio Heart! and Drop a rock on 
Sirius's head etc. I'd take Avada Kedavra any day. It's quick and who 
knows? it might even be painless. Of course, not having died myself, I 
wouldn't know.... 

[Below is Elkins' take on the passage, which I have let stand full, 
because every part is pretty essential. If you remember it clearly, 
scroll down.]

>But I don't really think that authorizing the Aurors to kill in 
self-defense
>was what Crouch did, and I don't think that Avada Kedavra was really 
the
>Unforgiveable Curse that Sirius was talking about, either.
>Here is the full passage (written in English) to which Eileen 
referred:

>"The Aurors were given new powers -- powers to kill rather than 
capture, for
>instance. And I wasn't the only one who was handed straight to the 
dementors
>without trial. Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorized 
the use of
>the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as 
ruthless
>and cruel as many on the Dark Side."
>
>Okay. Two things here.
>
> First thing. Sirius does *not* say "The Aurors were given new powers 
-- powers
>to kill, for instance."
>
>What he does say is: "powers to kill _rather than capture._" 
[emphasis mine]
>
>In other words, what Crouch authorized his aurors to do was not to 
kill in
>self-defense. It was not to kill in bloody magical shoot-outs. It was 
not to
>use lethal force when such was necessary to provide immediate 
protection to the
>innocent. And it was not to kill when capture was impossible. 
>
>What Crouch authorized his aurors to do was to kill *rather* than to 
capture.
>
>In other words, they were authorized to kill people who could instead 
have been
>apprehended. 
>
>That's serious. The Aurors are not judges, but investigators; their 
job is not
> to convict, but to investigate and to apprehend. As shoddy and as 
corrupt as
>the Wizarding World's justice system may be, it nonetheless does 
exist. There
> are courts, and there are trials, and people are sometimes acquitted 
of the
> charges against them. We are told that a good number of the DEs 
stood trial
>and were acquitted after Voldemort's fall. Presumably at least one or 
two genuinely
>innocent people have managed this as well. 
>
>So what Crouch authorized his aurors to do was to kill *suspects,* 
people
>against whom absolutely nothing had yet been proven in a court of 
law. He
>authorized them to kill on the basis of nothing more than suspicion 
-- or even
>their whim. 
>
>In short, he authorized them to kill anyone they damn well felt like, 
with
>little or no accountability to anyone for their actions.
>
>Very reassuring.
>
>The second thing I would like to point out here is that Sirius lists 
the
>aurors' license to kill as a *separate* issue from that of their 
license to use
>the Unforgivables. 
>
>First he mentions that the aurors were granted license to kill rather 
than to
>capture. Then he mentions that many people (other than he himself) 
were sent
>to prison without trial. And *then* he states that Crouch authorized 
the use
>of the Unforgiveables. Finally, he concludes that Crouch had become 
"as
>ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark Side."
>
>I have never assumed that the AK was the Unforgivable Curse to which 
Sirius was
>alluding here. He'd already covered that base when he cited the 
license to
>kill. No, I have always assumed that the Cruciatus -- and to a lesser 
extent,
>the Imperius -- were the relevant Unforgivables here.
>
>Eileen:
> > I'm beginning to suspect that Crouch authorized the use of the 
>> unforgiveable curses on people already taken into custody. 
>
>Yes. Or, for that matter, even on people who in the end were *never* 
taken
>into custody. That, at any rate, was my instinctive understanding of 
what that
>passage meant when I first read it.
>
>Now, I freely admit that my reading of this scene may have been 
biased by the
>fact that not only have I spent some time working for Amnesty 
International,
>but that I also knew full well while reading GoF that its author had 
as well. 
>Nonetheless, that was *precisely* how I interpreted Sirius' words in 
"Padfoot
>Returns." Crouch authorized his aurors to use torture and 
mind-control, and he
>authorized them to use these techniques even against people who had 
never been
>convicted (or even necessarily accused) of any crime. 
>
>Hence, "descended to the level of the Death Eaters."

>Again, very reassuring.

This seems a very sensible reading of a passage that has confused a 
whole lot of us. But really, I could kick myself for the misreading. 
The moment Sirius began to talk about Crouch Sr., I went all Alexandr 
Solzhenitsyn... I really did. And then I misread the passage. ARGGH. 

>No. I did not like that Crouch Sr. I did not like him at all.

Dead Sexy though he is?

You know why I really like Crouch Sr.? He has a redemption scene. And 
I'm a sucker for redemption scenes: successful or failures. 

Dave Witley wrote back in Message 38368:
"However, I would suggest that Crouch Sr's final attempts to reach 
Dumbledore are a textbook case of redemption. The word originally 
related to buying freedom from slavery, either for yourself or for 
another, and then came to be applied religiously. He has seen the 
error of his ways and strives to make restitution. He struggles 
against the bondage that his own actions have placed him in, and 
begins to break free. If this were a Christian allegory (I don't  
believe it is), the angels would be rejoicing in heaven."

It's become a commonplace here on the list that Real Wizards Don't 
Apologize. And yet, Crouch Sr., who seems to serve as the GoF 
personification of the Livian toughness espoused by this society, in 
the end says, "It's my fault... it's all my fault.." And goes to 
Dumbledore, the moral centre of the books, just as Snape went to 
Dumbledore years before. I can't help but cry at "The Madness of Mr. 
Crouch" and feel rather kindly towards him. 

>And I am *very* suspicious of that "very popular" martyr-auror Frank 
>Longbottom, too. 

I've always found it curious that JKR suddenly introduces another 
auror to the story. Frank Longbottom's importance to the story must be 
bound up with his position as an auror, and I've proposed a multitude 
of theories over this, but it also means that he's linked to the 
generally increasing ambience of the books, of which the aurors could 
almost stand as symbol. The aurors who brought in many of Lord 
Voldemort's servants, who killed innocent people, who were searching 
Europe for Voldemort, who were killing the giants, who were using the 
Unforgiveable curses, whom Hermione, Harry, and Ron almost come to 
idolize halfway through GoF. 

>Sirius is clearly no fan of the aurors, but even he
>acknowledges that Moody was all right. Moody was the Good Auror. 
Didn't kill
>if he could avoid it. Never descended to the level of the Death 
Eaters. So
>who *were* those other aurors? Who were those guys who were running 
around
>killing suspects rather than bothering to arrest them, practicing 
their
>Unforgivables on people who had never even stood trial?
>
>Could their zeal have made them "very popular?"
>
>It does rather beg the question, doesn't it? 

"I think so," says Eileen, rolling up her sleeves. "Shall we ask it 
together?"

I had written: 
> What about Wilkes?

Elkins responded:
>Yes. What *about* Wilkes?
>
> It's about time that poor old Wilkes got some speculative attention, 
don't you
>think? I mean, the poor man! (Or woman. After all, the possibility 
still
>*does* exist that Wilkes might have been a girl named Florence who 
used to snog
>Snape behind the greenhouses...) A member of Snape's old gang, killed 
by
>aurors in the year before Voldemort's fall, and yet half the time 
s/he gets
>left *out* when people try to draw up a DE roll call. (Witness 
message #42806,
>for example.) No first name, no backstory, not even a *gender!* 
>
> And Karkaroff didn't even bother to try ratting him-or-her out to 
the Minstry.
>
>Yes, Wilkes is the Forgotten Death Eater, to be sure. S/he's even 
more
>neglected than dear old Nott, or than my boy Avery. 

Eileen gazes over the Bay at Avery, who is reorganizing the Viking 
Hats display. Avery can no longer plead neglect, can he?

But, I think Wilkes is a man. First of all, despite JKR's numbers, 
Harry has five boys in his dormitory, and I could very well see Snape, 
Wilkes, Rosier, Lestrange, and Avery fitting into the same pattern. 
And then we can have fun matching them all and doing 
cross-generational parallels. Instead of Harry as James, Ron as 
Sirius, Hermione as Lupin, and Neville as Pettigrew, we could have 
Harry as Snape, Ron as Lestrange, Hermione as Mrs. Lestrange, Neville 
as Avery, Seamus as Rosier, and Dean as Wilkes. The benefits of such 
an analysis should be clear to anyone drinking heavily of Cindy's 
brandy and those martinis we serve on the Fourth Man hovercraft. 

Seriously, women in the Potterverse tend to be graced with first 
names. It's Millicent Bullstrode and Pansy Parkinson, not Bullstrode 
and Parkinson. The only person who doesn't abide by the rule is Draco 
Malfoy with his "Granger," so if Wilkes does turn out to be a woman, I 
guess we could chalk that up under "Sirius Black is a bully."  ( JK)

>As Eileen knows full well, I have been plugging for "Wilkes dead at 
Frank
>Longbottom's hands" ever since my delurk. 

In fact, it's almost become canon. Newbies to the list must shake 
their heads and say, "Where was it that Frank Longbottom killed 
Wilkes?", that is, if they remember Wilkes at all. As Evan Rosier 
kindly pointed out to me, I've forgotten about him half the time too. 
On the other hand, he's virtually assured a reappearance. Sirius idley 
mentions five names, and within a few chapters, four of them make 
important appearances. And Wilkes is never mentioned at all. If she 
doesn't have something planned with Wilkes, why couldn't she have 
worked in a reference to him in the Pensieve scene, alongside Rosier 
and all the others? As it stands, it's bizarre. Introduced and then 
never mentioned again. 

>It would go a long way towards explaining the particularly excessive 
(and
>strangely impractical) savagery of the Lestranges' treatment of the
>Longbottoms. They were after information, yes. But they could also 
have been
>after payback.

I instinctively read revenge into the Longbottom affair. It seemed as 
if the objective was to make Frank and his wife suffer. This could 
further explain why the Pensieve four leave them alive. You once 
speculated that what the Longbottoms are going through is reliving 
again and again their torture. Even if Mrs. Lestrange is in Azkaban, I 
bet she's pretty satisfied with that.

About Neville and Snape:
>But it does occur to me that there might be something even more 
immediate going
>on there. Snape responds to Neville with uncharacteristic temper -- 
and
>uncharacteristic crudity, as well -- at his *very first potions 
class.* His
>verbal abuse of Harry
>and Hermione is calm, cold, deliberate, quite sophisticated. With 
Neville, all
>that he can manage is a snarl of pure rage. It is a rather striking 
loss of
>control for Snape, I've always thought, and it happens before he has 
really had
>much opportunity to observe Neville's behavior. It's only the first 
day of
>class. He has not in fact yet had much opportunity to learn what a 
chronic
>bungler Neville is, nor how timid, nor how weak. And yet he shows a 
striking
>lack of self-control when it comes to the boy.

Yes, it is striking, isn't it? "Idiot boy!" are his first words to 
Neville. On the other hand, to Harry: "Ah yes, Harry Potter. Our new - 
_celebrity_." I found it interesting how painful the terms are in 
which Rowling describes Neville's mishap with the potion. And, of 
course, Snape seems to enjoy seeing Neville in pain. 

>It does make you wonder, doesn't it? Sons in the Potterverse do have 
this
>strange tendency to take after their fathers physically. Who is Snape 
*really*
>seeing, every time that he looks at Neville in potions class? While 
Snape did
>eventually turn on his old Hogwarts classmates, there is some 
evidence to
>suggest that he's still not altogether comfortable dealing with the 
people who
>actually *killed* them. He is afraid of Moody.
>
>Finally, if Eileen is correct in her suspicion that there was 
something
>untoward about Wilkes' death, then that would finally provide us with 
a
>canonical illustration of the excesses of those rotten aurors. I do 
think that
>we may well be handed harder evidence ofthat one of these days. The 
series 
>is becoming more morally complex as it progresses, after all. 

I agree. 

But here, a problem presents itself. 

Could Frank Longbottom really have been all that rotten? Dumbledore 
seems to have liked the man. You noted this yourself many posts back, 
if I recall correctly. On the other hand, the books seem to be about 
skeletons in the family closet. So, can we posit a scenario with a 
likeable by Dumbledore Frank Longbottom AND something he did that was 
completely wrong? Talk about moral complexity,

Eileen, who is highly disappointed that "Who was the sexiest?" 
internet polls never include Crouch Sr.