The Unforgivable Curses on animals?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 95095

Ffred wrote:
> > Not so. If it's entirely acceptable if used in the butchery field, 
> it means that pretty much every young wizard or witch who enters the 
> butchers' or one of the farming guilds learns AK as part of their
training, and uses it regularly in their work. It's a routine
agricultural spell, not something whose name is only whispered in an
undertone.
> > 
> > Probably explains the young Snape swatting flies in his bedroom.
He found the spell in an old copy of the Farmer's Manual!
> 
> 
> Potioncat:
> Well, it's possible that AK is used in this way. It would seem 
> reasonable, unless there is some Magic that makes it dangerous to
the caster of the spell. We really don't know.
> 
> However, we don't know that is the spell Severus uses on the flies.  
> BTW, I once saw a  post that thought this was cruelty on his part.  
> As someone who grew up in South Carolina where windows were kept 
> open, I don't see a bit of cruelty in it.
> 
> Potioncat

Carol:
I've already given numerous opinions on the Unforgiveable curses and
don't want to repeat them here, but I *don't* think that AK is an easy
spell that WW farmers (if such people exist) would use to kill
animals. I've already commented on MacNair's personal preference for
using an axe, but the fact that axes are still available in the WW
suggests that he's not the only one who uses them. Either a spell for
killing animals is not common knowledge among wizard farmers (who
probably aren't good at spells or they'd have a different job), or,  
    given the WW's apparent tolerance for pain and its treatment of
house-elves, centaurs, etc., a humane method of killing animals is not
high on their list of priorites, nor do I think it would occur to them
to think of an Unforgiveable Curse as humane, however it may appear to
us from our Muggle perspective. (Maybe they leave the farming to the
Squibs, anyway?) 

At any rate, given the potential for use of such a dangerous spell on
humans, I very much doubt that the details of any Unforgiveable Curse
would be available in a farmer's manual or any other book intended for
the general WW public. Also, as Hermione points out, there's a point
beyond which you can't learn magic from books. Even a summoning charm
has to be learned through practice and concentration. No book can tell
you how to do it. The same would apply ten times over to a complex and
difficult spell like the Unforgiveable Curses. And if the WW in
general is afraid to say the name "Voldemort," wouldn't they be afraid
to say the words "Avada Kedavra" even to a cow?

As for young Severus shooting down flies, it's possible that he's only
stunning them, as Ron stuns a wasp in OoP (I think). At any rate,
despite his precocious mastery of curses, I doubt that AK was among
them. (He certainly had not been taught it at Hogwarts with Dumbledore
as headmaster.) Flies, however, are as much a household pest as
doxies, for which the WW has doxycide, and I see no reason why the WW
wouldn't have a fly-killing curse that every kid who slept with open
windows in summer would want to learn (unless he wanted to resort to
the Muggle method of "murdering" flies with a fly swatter).

Anyway, I think that the scene with Severus alone in his bedroom
shooting flies indicates that he's bored and lonely, with nothing
better to do, or possibly that he's being kept in his room as a
punishment, as Harry sometimes is. It's meant (IMO) to arouse our
sympathy, not to demonstrate either cruelty *or* humanity toward
flies. Or at least that's how I read it.

Carol, who is not a Vegan or a member of PETA and has no personal
stake in this issue