[HPforGrownups] AK and Power

[Kathryn Cawte]

No: HPFGUIDX 86489




> Laura, emerging from the avalanche of leftovers and holiday visitors,
said:
> >
> > This business of the Unforgivables intrigues me.  Why these three?
> > There are lots of ways to hurt people and kill them.  You don't even
> > have to make it look like an accident the way one recent post
> > suggested (i.e., Accio'ing something sharp into the victim's back-
> > nice one!).  And when you think about it, AK is inconsistent with
> > the other 2 Unforgivables in that it's quick, painless and dignified
> > (as it were).  The person is alive one moment and dead the next-no
> > muss, no fuss.
>
> now Liz:
>
> I think that your quote 'The person is alive one moment and dead the
next-no
> muss, no fuss' shows exactly why the AK is so awful and therefore
classified
> as Unforgivable. ... It's so EASY to just snuff someone
out with it, one flick of the wrist and the person is gone forever.

K

I wonder though - is the AK as easy and simple as people are making out.
Cruciatus after all turns out not to have been. To cast that you apparently
have to have a strong desire to want someone to suffer. Perhaps for AK to
work you have to have a real and strong desire for your victim to die - not
the kind of brief, 'drop dead, you *&$%' thoughts that cross your head when
you're cut up by some idiot in a white van or when your battling the crowds
at Christmas in a shopping centre (although if I could turn them all into
flobberworms that'd be great) but a real, deep-down desire to have your
victim die (possibly this is linked to the 'seeing death' thing, after all
if you don't fully understand the implications of it maybe it wouldn't
work). Anyway my point being - perhaps most of our heroes couldn't use it
anyway and those who could due to circumstances (I fully believe Sirius
*and* Remus could have AK'd Peter - I suspect they'd have felt guilty about
it later, which is what separates them from the bad guys) *shouldn't*
because it would give them a brief taste of the power and corruption of Dark
Magic and lead to their eventual downfall. I think power (be it magical,
political or whatever) and its ability to corrupt are a strong theme in the
books - Malfoy uses his wealth and political influence to put himself above
the law, Dumbledore turned down a Political appointment but the person who
took it (Fudge) is more concerned with keeping that power than telling the
WW an uncomfortable truth, I don't think I have to explain Umbridge as part
of this theme - it's somewhat self-evident, Percy (possibly, if he's not the
dashing undercover hero we all know he really is <g>) wants to use his
career to drag himself out of the gutter and make himself someone people
look up to (I know the Weasleys aren't actually gutterrats but that's
probably how he sees them a lot of the time), Peter, alright he says he
joined Voldemort out of fear, but I don't entirely believe that (he did
spend over a year spying on the Potters), I think part of it was that he was
shown that instead of being the tagalong, clinging to the coattails of his
smarter, richer, more charismatic friends he could be *someone* in the DEs,
people would fear *him* (see how *well* that worked out for him(.

K

"The Loudest Noise Comes From The Electric Minerva."