Bang! You're dead.

[B Arrowsmith]

No: HPFGUIDX 86309

I started contributing to this thread a few days ago when I suspected a 
dearth of contrary views being expressed. The thread seemed to be 
formed by posters who were anti-killing as a matter of principle, or 
considered that Harry should not kill, or that he could kill, but not 
with an AK since this would make him as bad as Voldemort. There didn't 
seem to be anyone of the FEATHERBOA persuasion happy in indulge in 
mayhem, scattering bodies hither and yon and not giving a damn who did 
the dirty just so long as it was a satisfying conclusion.

Things seem to have moved on a bit since then. We're now seeing a bit 
less morality and a bit more canon. There also seems to be a consensus 
view being formed, though with some notable exceptions. I find this 
deeply disturbing.

As a natural contrarian a consensus is the last thing I  want; it's a 
very depressing development. And if you don't all buck your ideas up 
and start disagreeing  I shall have to take drastic steps and dig into 
my stock of contentious issues for something else to provoke the fans 
with and hopefully to cause outrage and raised blood pressure.

Be warned; Kneasy is only happy when he causes other fans to fly to 
their keyboards in a "We'll soon see about that!" frame of mind.

Hopefully, this thread is not yet exhausted. I may yet be able to 
salvage some perverse satisfaction by contradicting the accepted canon 
or beliefs of well-meaning posters.

This is going to be a long post, an attempt to respond to those that 
have been  made over the past 24 hours. It may be unwieldly, but  it's 
marginally better  than responding to each individually and things 
getting lost in the shuffle.

(clips to  all  quotes)

First up:

Nora:
Because means matter. In several ethical systems one might apply
(from the real world, gasp!), but also the comments from canon
discussed previously. It's notable that the Aurors were authorized
to use these curses because they normally would not have been; one
can view it not as saying 'Oh, but it's actually alright now', but as
a concession to necessity that doesn't ameliorate their wrongness. I
like Moody. He's interesting, and a good foil. He certainly has blood
on his hands. But he also is described as being one of the ones who
tried to capture and not to kill--a distinction worth noting. I
think JKR has written in, and is examining, moral concepts--and I
think she's made it pretty clear that both means and intention
*matter*.

Kneasy:
I don't subscribe to "the ends justify the means" school either. Or not 
often -  it all depends on the ends that are envisaged and what means 
are either available or likely to be efficacious. If that  sounds like 
a cop out it's probably because I approach the problem from a slightly 
different angle.

The key question to Harry IMO is 'Are you willing to kill in whatever 
the prevailing circumstances are at the time?' That is the crunch 
question. If the answer is 'yes' then the moral and ethical criteria 
have been dealt with from Harry's point of view; what's  left are the 
practicalities. Once he decides that he can willingly encompass the 
destruction of Voldemort all  else fades in comparison. Intention is 
everything, means are a detail. Whatever means he uses will make no 
difference from Voldemorts viewpoint - and he'll be the injured (or 
mortified) party. He'd be equally pissed off no  matter which method 
Harry used.

I've had discussions off site where I've pointed out that killing may 
be an ethical question but murder is interpreted by legal means. It is 
a socially
defined crime. The Aurors were told that the definition did not apply 
to their actions in certain circumstances. Such exclusions are made in 
the real world too and so long as the circumstances are as envisaged I 
have no objections. Moody  obviously tried to maintain the spirit as 
well as the letter of the law; he didn't kill gratuitously. What more 
could one ask for?

JKR does seem to have a moral viewpoint (though many of the questions 
exercising posters are yet to  be resolved or even clarified), but she 
is not writing about the real world; this is a very different world and 
it wouldn't surprise me if some of the answers were a bit different too.

Nora:
I also think it's notable that Harry's Crucio didn't work
particularly well. Lack of practice perhaps, but also a lack of true
will/intention; he wanted to hurt her on one level, but on another, I
think he didn't have it in him to truly hurt another human being like
that.
(Carol  voices this opinion, too.)

Kneasy:
Sorry. According to canon it's a life sentence for "using any one of 
them on a fellow human being" -  being  bad at it doesn't seem to be a 
mitigating circumstance. And  I think Harry would use them in certain 
circumstances; I don't seem to be the only one either. The first thing 
Lupin did on entering the Shrieking Shack was to disarm Harry. If Harry 
had known about the Unforgivables at the time, who knows what might 
have happened?

Nora:
How about: I may be wrong, and I may be uncertain, but I know what
I'm uncertain about and why?

-Nora slides a peace offering beer down the bar to Kneasy, and hopes
that all this talk of 'morality' isn't excessively offensive

Kneasy:
Ooooh! Uncertain? Never! Wash your mouth out (with beer for preference).
Whatever happens I shall go down with the ship. (But not SHIP; can't 
stand 'em.)



Berit replies:

But are there any canon evidence to suggest that the majority of WW
accepted that it was a necessary "evil" that the Aurors used the
unforgivables (I can believe this though; the majority very often go
with the flow...)? Any canon to suggest that the old Order found it
okay?

(GoF p. 457 UK edition):

"Terror everywhere.... panic.... confusion... that's how it used to
be. Well, things like that bring out the best in some people and the
worst in others. Crouch's principles might've been good in the
beginning - I wouldn't know. He rose quickly through the Ministry
and he started ordering very harsh measures against Voldemort's
supporters. 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 authorised the use of the Unforgiveable
Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel
as many on the Dark side."

And:
"I'll say this for Moody, though, he never killed if he could help.
Always brought people in alive where possible. He was tough but he
never descended to the level of the Death Eaters." (GoF p.462)

When a rash and potentially violent character like Sirius saw the
problems of Crouch's decision, forcing his Aurors to "descend to the
level of Death Eaters", do you really think Dumbledore didn't object?
If so I want to know when, according to canon, Dumbledore started to
become more "blood-thirsty" than Sirius :-))



Kneasy:
Circumstantial evidence maybe. But some circumstantial evidence, like a 
trout in the milk, is very compelling.

There is no canon that I can find that mentions a counter-faction to  
Crouch's measures. When discussing the subject with Harry, don't you 
think Sirius would have mentioned one, if it existed?

If Dumbledore did have objections, then he has gone down in my 
estimation. Not for objecting, but for not going public and causing a 
fuss. (If he had done so I'm sure we would have heard of it by now.) To 
my mind he would have been trying to have his cake and eating it too, 
if that was his stance. Has he no principles that he will publicly 
stand up for? Deploring methods in private, taking advantage of them in 
public seems a bit hypocritical.

Just what did the old  Order achieve? Anything?
We hear of no successes at all, just a string of dead members. I'll bet 
that the other  members were quite relieved that *somebody* was 
knocking off the opposition - it was the members that were in the 
firing line after all. Where was DD in all this? Did he put his own 
neck on the line?

Sirius. What can I say? If he had  been an Auror would he have killed? 
Probably; and then agonised and demanded sympathy for his lacerated 
conscience ever after. Certainly he'd  have killed Peter, I think. 
Perhaps he should think himself lucky that he was taken alive and not 
zapped down in the street. Though that would have curtailed the tale 
somewhat.


Geoff takes a more pragmatic view, based on real events in the real 
world:

The suggestion from Sirius was that Crouch was prepared to indulge in
the use of the Unforgiveables as a matter of course and appeared to
enjoy it. He was also responsible for sending folk to Azkaban without
a trial, knowing what that particualr hellhole was like - (reminds me
of some of the internment problems in Northern Ireland a decade ro so
ago).


Kneasy:
I can understand this view very easily (particularly as I was on duty 
in a Birmingham hospital the night of the '74 pub bombings.) The public 
demands that something be done - *now*. Civil rights go out of the 
window and Draconian measures are passed with a will, none daring to 
say nay. In hindsight it's easy to decry the actions and the attitudes, 
but when you're  fighting a terrorist war and the pile of innocent dead 
mounts  ever higher with no end in sight.... This, I imagine is how the 
WW was. This was not a chivalrous conflict with rules of engagement 
that everyone understood, Voldy and his gang was out there, killing, 
subverting, destroying society; no one was safe.

Geoff:
Moody is like many people in a war situation; the implication is that
he /did/ kill but only as a last resort. I can understand that. I can
agree with Christians in the Confessing Church in Germany who were
prepared to join in the 1944 conspiracy against Hitler because it
seemed to be the only thing to stop the Nazis going into oblivion and
pulling the whole country down with them. But there is a difference
between those folk who allow themselves to be drawn in the direction
of the evil which they fight and replace one form of oppression with
another - Communist Russia for example - with those who reluctantly
take that path because they echo Luther's words "Here I stand, I can
do no other".

Kneasy:
Well put.
And I'll add a quote that was made by one of the enemy:
"It might or might not be right to kill, but sometimes it is necessary."
Gerry Adams PIRA.
Sauce for the goose...



Carol:
Notice that Mad Eye Moody did NOT use them (except possibly against
Rosier in self-defence after hed had lost a piece of his nose), and
that Dumbledore approves of that choice. There were other ways to
bring the DEs to justice. As for Old Barty, he's not exactly the
person to use as a moral example, is he?

Kneasy:
Well, Moody did use the AK. At least, Sirius says so. But only when 
necessary, so that's all right, isn't it?
I doubt Barty was trying to set a moral example. A judge is  not there 
to pronounce on morals but on actions against the common good. Trying 
to save a society and destroy a pestilence by means that may not be 
acceptable in normal times is a justifiable moral stance so far as the 
majority at risk are concerned, I doubt that the 'rights' of the DEs 
were considered by anyone.


Carol:

Imposter!Moody (who of course has no conscience whatever) uses all
three unforgiveable curses on spiders and the Imperius curse on his
students, the second hint that he's evil (the first is turning Draco
into a ferret). (Note his indifference not only to the suffering of
the spiders but to the psychological pain he was inflicting on
Neville.) Imposter!Moody claims that he has Dumbledore's permission to
do demonstrate the curses and no one questions him, but I think this
statement was a lie given Dumbledore's view of the curses and
McGonagall's earlier warning to Moody that teachers were not allowed
to perform transfiguration on students (GoF, 206 Am. ed.). If teachers
can't perform transfiguration on students, then certainly they can't
perfom an illegal curse on them, either.

Kneasy:
I prefer to believe that DD did know about it, and approved. How else 
could he get Harry protected against the Imperio! curse? No way could 
such a lesson be  kept secret from the rest of the school; it'd be all 
round the common-rooms by that evening.

Besides, Crouch!Moody states that he's not supposed to *show* (my 
emphasis) them what illegal Dark curses are like until the sixth year. 
So demonstrations are part of the DADA course, it seems. He was just 
premature.

And McGonagall says that students are not transfigured *as a 
punishment*, not that they must never be transfigured. Though I rather 
like the idea, turn Slytherin into lemmings and organise a day trip to 
the beach.

Do spiders feel pain? Not much, if at all. Certainly some male spiders 
get their heads chewed off without protest.

Carol again:
I like that little admission. Nice touch. :-) As for Dumbledore not
taking an immovable moral stand, I suppose he feels that he needs to
make compromises when Hogwarts and the WW are in danger. I'll have to
think about that some more and come up with more quotes.


Kneasy:
Oho! Cracks in the facade of the great incorruptible?


 > Kneasy:
 > Fine. But doesn't canon state that there is no defence against an AK?
 > No blocking it, no counter-curse.

Carol again:
But Harry DID block it, effortlessly, as an infant of fifteen months,
much as he instinctively blocked Snape's attempt to read his most
private thoughts with a shield charm. Maybe what is true for other
wizards isn't true for him because he's Voldemort's equal.

Kneasy:
Something blocked it. But I notice Harry  would rather not have to rely 
on it happening again; in the graveyard he's ducking and diving all 
over the place. Voldy seems to think it'll work this time, too. Maybe  
it's like a "Get out of goal free" card: you can only use it once.
Besides, my  response was to a comment you made about Voldy attacking 
Harry *or a friend*. I was just pointing out that it doesn't seem 
possible to protect against an AK.


Carol: Yes, because it didn't succeed. (The Crucio! curse) It was not 
only a failed tactic but a moral mistake and I'm sure Dumbledore will 
make that quite clear to him in future books. JKR has already made it 
clear that it would have been wrong to murder Peter Pettigrew, at least 
in his human form
(Padfoot and Crookshanks eating him might be another matter). If so,
it's equally wrong to Crucio Bellatrix, however much she deserves a
taste of her own medicine. (Let Voldemort do it.)

Kneasy:
Spoilsport! Peter  wasn't murdered because  he still has a key part to 
play (annoying how these authors can twist  things for their own ends).


Carol:
I agree that Harry (like everyone else in the book) has some serious
character flaws--partly the consequence of his age and background,
partly the result of the spell that backfired, partly just human
nature. The point, I think, is that he must overcome those flaws
(along with many other obstacles) before he can bring down Voldemort.

Kneasy:
Please! I can't see  Harry as a parfait gentle knight, spotless in 
thought, word and deed. I  suspect that his faults plus those bits of 
Voldy buried in there somewhere are  necessary for his eventual 
triumph, even though he  may not be around  to celebrate.


Carol again:
I can see your point here and I've revised my theory (above) to
include cold indifference regarding the AK. But the other two,
especially Crucio, are probably never justified in JKR's view. There
are plenty of other spells available to hinder an opponent, notably
shield charms, Expelliarmus and Stubefy (correctly pronounced). I
wouldn't mind seeing Harry hit LV with a combination of Expelliarmus
and Tarantellegra (if Harry's wand will work against its brother). But
Crucio is another matter altogether.

Kneasy:
Always dodgy to pre-empt an author. You're giving hostages to fortune.
But I agree  that Crucio! is probably never justified, except maybe in 
the field of research, perhaps. Like finding out if Bella really does 
have a nervous system. Which raises another point - now he is totally 
construct, why should Voldy react the same way to spells as a flesh and 
blood human?



Arcum:
While I think they'd probably wave the charges if Tom was
killed by AK, I feel it is more a matter of not stooping to
their level. A bit of dialogue I recall from PS/SS:

"You flatter me," said Dumbledore calmly. "Voldemort had
powers I will never have."

"Only because you're too -- well -- noble to use them."

I feel this would cover the unforgivables as well. You may
note that Harry has been called noble no less then 3 times
by Dobby, and was told he did a noble thing by Dumbledore
in PoA.

Kneasy:
Now that's an interesting quote; what if DD was speaking the literal 
truth? That Voldy does have extra powers. Isn't he always going on 
about how wonderful truth is, and note, he doesn't say *use* powers 
(which is how the reponder understands it), but *have* powers.


Arcum:
I'd like to point out that we have no canon of Moody having
used the unforgivable curses as of yet. While he didn't
manage to bring in all the DE's he fought alive, there are
many other ways he could have killed them. Keep in mind
that none of the unforgivables in GoF were done by Moody.
And I do think most of the Aurors using unforgivables were
bad ones. Keep in mind it wasn't limited to AK'ing. They
could also use Crucio and Imperio.

Kneasy:
Oh, dear. An Auror, wand in hand, facing a foaming at the mouth DE and 
he turns to alternative methods of killing? Do you really mean that?
I have this wonderful vision of Moody beating him to death with his 
wooden leg (yes, I know he probably didn't have it yet, but the image 
is irresistible).

Arcum:
Also, I don't really think the whole bit with Bella was a
red herring. What she said seemed both consistant with what
Crouch has said about the unforgivables, AK in particular:

"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic
behind it - you could all get your wands out now and point
them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much
as a nosebleed."

She hasn't really had time to come up with a clever lie,
IMHO. You'll notice that the moment when he casts Crucio is
when she drops the baby talk and starts taking him
seriously.

Kneasy:
Yes, I too  think you need to be a powerful wizard to get the spells to 
work and Harry isn't there yet. (So Harry is not Voldy's equal yet, 
either.)
I feel it goes against the grain to rely on someone like Bella, 
especially in those circumstances, for definitive canon. Yes, she 
probably believed that  Harry would not be able to produce one at all, 
the fact  that he can, although only a partial success, changed her 
view of Harry. He just might be able to do some damage after all, so  
get him to change his tactics, is the way I'd read it.

Arcum:
On another note, why does most of the information thus far
about unforgivables come from DEs?

Kneasy:
Hmm. Isn't that interesting. How is this to be read? That baddies lie 
and to expect alterations to the canon in later books? Usually it's the 
hero's friends or mentors that do the exposition of how plot devices 
work. Could it be that DD will come along and tell Harry he's got it 
all wrong? Is this cheating on the part of the author? Boo! Hiss! Not 
fair!

Thanks for taking the trouble to sort out the references; very useful.

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