[HPforGrownups] Re: Voldemort's warning to Lily

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 45692

At 04:50 20/10/02 +0000, Becky wrote:

<snip>

>There's also a statement by Hagrid made in PS/SS that seems to be
>slightly puzzling if you think of LV as a complete psycho murderer.
>He says: "An then - an' this is the real myst'ry of the thing - he
>tried to kill you, too. Wanted to make a clean job of it, I suppose,
>or maybe he just liked killin' by then."

<more snippage>

Whilst I agree with you that Voldemort isn't entirely psychopathic, he 
doesn't value other people's lives very highly. I wouldn't describe 
Voldemort as getting any kind of pleasure out of killing people, and I 
might even go as far as to say that he probably doesn't actually relish the 
thought of murdering. The issue is that he simply thinks nothing of 
removing obstacles by way of murder. For him, it is, I suppose, a 
"necessary evil" rather than an act which gives him any huge rush in 
itself. Voldemort is far from stupid. What's the point of being an Evil 
Overlord if there's nobody to lord over because he's killed them all?

So it is in that context in which I personally set his willingness to spare 
Lily against "kill the spare": killing people is not his first instinct, 
but asking them to stand aside while he murders someone else isn't either. 
He kills when it's "necessary", and he should have realised that killing 
Lily *was* "necessary" to get at Harry.

Or, to turn the issue around, if he was willing to spare Lily, why was he 
not prepared to let Cedric live?

All of the above is incidental to why I started this post anyway. :-)

There's something else in that quote which has always intrigued me: "make a 
clean job of it": a clean job of *what*, exactly?

The only thing which springs to my mind (and this is *far* from an original 
thought; it's expressed here on almost a daily basis, in some form or 
another) :-) is "killing anyone in the Potter line". I can't see any 
category which would fit Voldemort's willingness to spare Lily yet not 
Harry, to spare other babies yet not Harry.

Furthermore (and this is just a thought, not really leading to any 
conclusion), the quote indicates that Hagrid was not aware that Voldemort 
was going specifically for Harry. Whilst we don't yet know for a fact that 
Harry was a specific target, it's heavily implied. Yet after all that time 
working for Dumbledore, Hagrid doesn't know that, as he considers 
Voldemort's attack on Harry to be an afterthought, "to make a clean job of 
it"...

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who is still trying to catch up, and would be grateful 
if nobody would post anything for the next couple of days at least. :-)