Murdering Voldemort (was: What would you think if.....)

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 92893

Jim Ferer wrote:

> Murder is "The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially
> with premeditated malice."
> 
> Killing Voldemort cannot be murder no matter how Harry does it.  If
> Harry could kill Voldemort with an AK, it would be the only right
> thing to do to save lives.  

I'm not convinced of the value of the above definition, unless 
the 'lawful' part can be explained - even if a court has condemned 
someone to death, for example, that doesn't make it lawful for the 
ordinary citizen to kill them if they escape.  Also the 
word 'especially' sits uneasily in a definition: if an unlawful 
killing happens without premeditated malice, is that murder or not?  
Suppose it premeditated but not malicious (mercy killing?), or 
malicious but not premeditated, and so on?

Anyway, those are matters for OT-Chatter.  The reason for this post 
is that, whatever one's RL definition of murder, I'm pretty sure 
that for Harry to kill Voldemort in any situation other than 
immediate self-defence *would* be regarded as murder by Harry, and, 
I think, by the narrative voice of the story.  I base this on the 
Shrieking Shack scene, where it has been established more or less 
that what Pettigrew has done does deserve death in the eyes of the 
group there, but Harry spares him because he doesn't want his 
father's friends to become murderers.

For myself, I think that's one of Harry's finest moments, because he 
recognises that the important consequences of an act are those that 
follow for the perpetrator: to quote a different canon, "it is not 
what goes into the mouth that defiles a man".

David