Is Peter evil? was Re: Is Percy A Spy?

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 111324

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at m...> 
wrote:
> Remember a couple of thousand of posts ago, or maybe more, the big 
> discussion was whether casting Unforgivables did something to the 
> one who cast them.  And along that line, what effect it had on 
Harry 
> that he tried to cast one, and what it said about him that he 
> couldn't.
> 
> Well, obviously Peter knew how to cast an Avada Kedavra, because I 
> doubt this was the first time.  And, assuming you  have to want to 
> kill the person, Peter must be pretty darned evil.  It didn't 
appear 
> that he was under Imperio at the time. We know he spied for LV, in 
> the past, I wonder what else he did?
> 
> I'm not arguing that a good or just not-evil person couldn't be 
> forced to kill someone, but that this type of  killing requires 
> certain skills.


Jen: Yeah, except I don't want to think of Lupin & Sirius as evil 
because they were willing and able to kill Peter in POA! If we use 
the logic that anyone who is willing to kill another is evil, then 
in a time of war that would pretty much include everyone. I'm sure 
Snape is intimately familiar with the AK curse, but I don't think of 
him as evil either.

I guess you could say the Cedric/Peter situation isn't a good 
analogy because Cedric was completely innocent and no threat to 
anyone when he was killed. Peter the betrayer was a different case. 
Even though unarmed (like Cedric), at the time Sirius/Lupin 
threatened him Peter was a *future* risk if left alive. Still, it 
bothered me just a little with how comfortable Sirius & Lupin were, 
casually rolling up their sleeves to off Peter. I know it's naive to 
think in a time of war people don't take matters into their own 
hands on occasion. But the war was over!! That was a personal war.

It's hard to sort out which characters are truly evil except for 
Voldemort, and only because JKR has told us he is irredeemably evil! 
Even about Wormtail she said, "there's always hope, of course."

Jen Reese