OoP -- Not all shades of gray are the same

[darrin_burnett]

No: HPFGUIDX 65737

I no sooner get done trying to process the idea of Hermione being as 
bad as a junior Death Eater than I read a post saying the Order, by 
and large, is just as bad as the Death Eaters.

Time out.

As I understand it, the knock on Hermione is that she led Dolores 
Umbridge, a sadistic, evil woman who turned Death Eaters on Harry AND 
who was holding a room full of students hostage at the time, into the 
Forest.

It's called survival. Or do you honestly believe the Dolores was 
going to hold the students for a fair interrogation (complete with 
parents and guardians present, of course) and was only interested in 
finding out the truth?

Now, because Mundungus is a thief, Sirius was a bully as 15-year-old 
and Lupin was, as a 15-year-old, not fully confident enough to stand 
up to his friends, the Order is, by and large, as bad as the Death 
Eaters. (You know, the ones who use Crucio for giggles, manipulate an 
11-year-old girl to bring back Tom Riddle, snuff out lives without a 
moment's hesitation, and generally want to wipe out an entire race of 
wizards and witches.)

Look, I'm all for searching for the gray in every character, even 
Voldemort, but there is a difference between explaining what a 
character does and justifying what that character does.

To wit, Sirius and James might have only kept Wormtail around in 
order to have a cheering section and Wormtail either resented it, or 
was so stunted in the personal growth department that he was easy 
prey for Voldemort.

That's one explanation for his character, a nice little bit of gray.

BUT... he turned on his friends, let an innocent man rot in Azkaban 
for a dozen years, and then snuffed out the life of an innocent kid.

Nothing James and/or Sirius did justifies that.

But on the other hand, Hermione, a basically kind person, comes up 
with a plan to get Dolores away from her fellow students (and 
incidentally, try to get free to save Sirius) and she's labeled as a 
junior death eater. She saved lives doing what she did, and 
incidentally, she probably saved Snape's cover and the Order cause, 
because, left alone, Dolores would likely have gotten what she needed 
out of the students.

Not everything is gray. There is black and white in this world. There 
is also light gray and dark gray.

Darrin
-- I love the 80s moment: "There was a lot of high drama in Wheel of 
Fortune. And a lot of ceramic lobsters."