[HPforGrownups] OOP: The Unforgivable Curses

[Lark Austin-Black]

No: HPFGUIDX 67654

Nick Angiolillo wrote:

I was wondering what you all might think about this.

In OOP, I think one of the most interesting parts of the novel was 
Harry attempting to use the Cruciatus Curse on Bellatrix.  We soon 
learn that one cannot successfully cast this spell without feeling 
an intense amount of anger.

This got me thinking, though, whether it's not just anger that is 
needed to cast one of the unforgivable curses (aside from tremendous 
magic ability).  I think that to successfully use the curse, you 
must have true evil in your heart.

Would Harry even be able to successfully cast the curse given that 
we know he is not evil, and is likely not capable of evil?  At first 
I thought he screwed up the curse on Bellatrix because he either 
wasn't mad enough at her (which I doubt, considering what just 
happened to Sirius), because he does not have enough magic power 
(again, unlikely because we've seen what this kid can do at times 
like these), or because he really just CAN'T!

I guess this makes me wonder if even *Dumbledore* could pull off 
Crucio, Avada Kedavra, etc.  Not that he would ever need to or want 
to, I'm just wondering if he even CAN do it.

Any thoughts?

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I don't think it would be fair to say that Harry is not capable of evil, he is human afterall, even though he *is* a wizard.  Everyone has a balance of evil and good, although, often times in children's books there are characters that are all good or all evil.  I think JKR does a great job in making her characters 3 dimensional and showing everyone is a shade of grey.
 
As to the curses, specifically, I thought Harry messed up on the curse because he was too emotionally distraught and that often clouds the mind, so he did not have the level-headed concentration he needed to in order to cast the spell, especially because you must be a powerful magically to cast one of the unforgivable curses.  You made a good point that anger could be part of the power behind it, but something tells me no, emotions can be powerful (hence why Voldemort has troubles w/ Harry having too much "heart), but I don't think that they alone can fuel the power for an unforgivable curse.
 
On a final thought, however, there may be a part of him that doesn't want him to kill her, that he doesn't want to be a murderer like Voldemort, so it may have been his subconcious stepping in over his emotional hatred for what she did, and not allowing himself to truely cast the spell...
 
and for the record, yes, I feel like Dumbledore could cast one of the unforgivable curses was he driven to do so...however, he seems to have a good sense of, shall I say "creative problem solving"
 
~ Lark Austin-Black