Harry's revenge on Snape?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 90555

-Carol:
> > I do wonder how Harry is going to destroy Voldemort without 
> resorting
> > to murder (his only alternative from his current perspective), but 
> I
> > don't think he's going to ready himself for the final battle by
> > practicing Unforgiveable Curses on his least favorite teacher.
> > 
> > Carol
> 
> Karen:
> Is it really murder to defend oneself against an attack? Or is it 
> murder when both people are involved in a battle? I think that one 
> of the reasons for Harry's anger in OOP is to set up the anger he 
> will have to channel against Voldemort. I expect in the 6th book we 
> will see Harry working hard to prepare himself against a coming 
> battle. His pain at losing Sirius will be refocused on Voldemort. He 
> will still be angry with Snape, but somewhere along the line, they 
> will have to come to terms. My expectation is that he will still be 
> consumed with anger, but Voldemort (and by extension, Bellatrix) 
> will be his target. Harry's suspicions of Snape may keep him 
> misdirected, but eventually, he will understand Dumbledore's 
> confidence in Snape.


Carol again:
I that killing in self-defense or in battle doesn't constitute murder,
but my point is, first, that Harry doesn't see it that way. From his
present perspective, it's "murder or be murdered." He didn't want
Sirius and Remus to become murderers and he doesn't want to become one
himself. However, I think that, as usual, he's oversimplifying things
and jumping to conclusions, and he doesn't yet see that it may be
possible to destroy Voldemort without committing deliberate
premeditated murder (just as he's already done with Quirrell).

But there's another point that concerns me (already discussed at
length on this list more than once): The only killing spell that Harry
knows is an Unforgiveable Curse that requires either intense hatred or
a cold indifference to murder to make it work. Either use will corrupt
the soul. Tom Riddle, having committed one murder using a basilisk,
coolly murdered his father and grandparents using Avada Kedavra and in
so doing placed himself beyond redemption at the age of seventeen.
Harry, IMO, must not learn to use the Unforgiveable Curses, which are
the weapons of the enemy. They are not only illegal (unless the
Ministry of Magic gives him special permission to use them and that
seems most unlikely), they are Unforgiveable. They require the user to
be indifferent to (or to desire) the death, pain, or loss of will of
the victim, and that is not a direction I want to see Harry go.

He needs (as Snape has told him), to control his emotions, to think
and interpret what he sees without allowing it to be colored by anger
or the desire for revenge. If he can't do so, he will become
Voldemort's puppet. And if he kills Voldemort in the violence of his
anger--or worse, in cold blood--he will have become another Tom
Riddle, his own worst enemy.

There is--there must be--another way, which neither Harry nor the
reader sees. But if JKR allows Harry to use an Unforgiveable Curse on
anyone (not counting the failed Crucio on Bellatrix which should be a
mistake that he learns from), I will feel that JKR has betrayed me by
failing to maintain her own distinction between good and evil.

Carol