Good Writing (was Why now?)

[dcgmck]

No: HPFGUIDX 110781

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
[snip] 
> dcmck:
> > What I don't agree with is that his refusal to free Kreacher 
> made his death inevitable.  In fact, didn't Sirius want to send 
> Kreacher  forever from GP, along with all the other memorabilia 
> of his  ancestors?  It was, in fact, Dumbledore who said that 
> Kreacher could  not be released because he knew too much.<
> 
> Pippin:
> Did Dumbledore say that? I only remember Sirius saying it:
>  
> "If you could just set him free," said Hermione hopefully, 
> "maybe--"
> 
> "We can't set him free, he knows too much about the Order," 
> said Sirius curtly. "And anyway, the shock would kill him. You 
> suggest to him that he leave this house, see how he takes it."  -- 
> OOP ch6
> 
> How Kreacher was supposed to betray anybody if he was dead 
> of shock, Sirius didn't explain. You can see he didn't really put 
> much thought into it...typical Sirius, I must say.
> 
> and later..
> "[Hermione] was quite right, Harry," said Dumbledore. "I warned 
> Sirius when we adopted twelve Grimmauld Place as our 
> headquarters that Kreacher must be treated with kindness and 
> respect. I also told him that Kreacher could be dangerous to us.  
> I do not think that Sirius took me very seriously, or that he ever 
> saw Kreacher as a being with feelings as acute as a human's--"
> [...]
> "Sirius did not hate Kreacher," said Dumbledore. "He regarded 
> him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. 
> Indifference and neglect often do more damage than outright 
> dislike."
> 
> --OOP ch 37
> 
> Maybe no amount of kindness and respect would have made 
> any difference to Kreacher, but we don't know, because Sirius 
> never gave him the choice. It's horribly ironic that Sirius, who of 
> all people ought to feel some empathy with a captive, wasn't able 
> to do so.
> 
> Pippin

Ouch!  Touche...

OK... so Dumbledore never actually said that Kreacher couldn't be set 
free or dismissed, but it still seems that that would have been a 
difficult thing to accomplish, unless Sirius had had the forethought 
to do so prior to opening the house to the Order.  Even then, would 
Kreacher actually have left once he was free to do so?  Freedom, 
after all, means that one also has the choice to stay...

I do like the observation that Sirius' inability to empathize with 
Kreacher as a captive is ironic.  On the other hand, Kreacher doesn't 
seem to have felt particularly trapped, just intruded upon...

Still, it is Harry who has the empathetic breakthrough in recognizing 
the similarity between his situation and Sirius' in being housebound 
and excluded.  It's kinda cool that JKR is able to reflect both 
awareness and obtuseness through use of the same characters, almost 
in the same breath.  I guess that goes back to our subject line 
of "good writing".  :-)