OOP: Nature of AK (was SPOILERS! My defense of Harry )

[Hollydaze]

No: HPFGUIDX 62197

I seemed to be slightly obsessed with this spell today which is kinda worrying.
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Sorry if this has been posted by someone else, I'm finding it difficult 
to keep up with all the posts.

Jenny from Ravenclaw asked: 
>2. What do you think of Harry using Crucio on Bellatrix?  This was a 
big shock to me.

Richelle responded: 
I expected it.  Actually, I kind of expected him to try Avada 
Kedavra.  Just because.  But I think he tried the worst thing he could 
think of--pain.  But as you'll notice, even though he was horribly 
angry, wanted her to suffer, he must not have truly wanted to inflict 
pain, or at least he couldn't enjoy inflicting pain, because it didn't 
work so well.  I told my mom about it, and she thought nothing of it.  
"Well, he was really upset."

Jenny from Ravenclaw again:
You know, it really bothered me.  I understand Harry's loss of control 
here, as he was literally fighting for his life, but I did squirm when 
he chose to try an Unforgivable Curse.  I suppose it is also setting 
us up for future encounters when Harry might try an Unforgivable 
again, where he'll know how to focus his hatred and anger for a 
successful Curse.  Harry learning how to focus his emotions was a 
definite theme in OoP.  

Hollydaze:
This got me thinking, if to cast Crucio you really have to want to cause pain, even under any emotional pain and suffering you really need to want to inflict pain, it mustn't just be an emotional response then would the same idea be applied to AK, you really need to want to kill someone? This struck me in two ways. 

Firstly Pettigrew casting the AK at Cedric at the end of GoF For some reason that now seems about a hundred times worse for me, that he wasn't just following orders from LV but actually had the ability to so believe and WANT to kill that he could kill someone he didn't even know. I can believe that LV would have the ability to WANT and even enjoy killing but for Pettigrew to do that just seems really terrifying. It all of a sudden seems so much harder to believe this guy was ever friends with James, Lupin and Sirius. How on earth did he end up twisted enough to want to kill people?

Secondly, it made me wonder about this prophecy that either Harry must kill LV or vice verca. If AK works in a similar way as Crucio then for Harry to be able to use AK again LV he would surely have to be able to ignore all his emotions toward LV (which are likely to be even more heightened if all the clues about further deaths are the case) and actually be able to truly wish LV dead. If Harry can't bring himself to truly want to inflict pain on a person, how on earth is he going to manage to truly want to kill a person, which he will have to do if he is going to kill LV? So will he be at a disadvantage because LV with have AK open to him as weapon and Harry won't or will he have some other advantage, perhaps due to the "power the dark lord knows not". This leads to some interesting questions about the end of the books especially when coupled with the idea that they can't use their own wands against one another.

HOLLYDAZE!!!


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