Killing Pettigrew: Yea or Nay?

[ericoppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 116127


As usual, I have my own individual take on what the right thing to do 
in the Shrieking Shack was.  I'd have spared Pettigrew...but purely 
because _alive,_ he could testify and serve as living proof of 
Sirius' innocence.  He could always be made dead _later._  As long as 
he's alive, though, I'd imagine that Dumbledore (or Real-Moody) would 
be able to get the truth out of him...albeit without all those bad 
war-movie schticks I so love:  "You haff maybe relativezz livink in 
Hogsmeade?"

I think that approach could also have been used to get Snape on-
side:  "Look, Professor, _this_ way you can be a Big Hero.  You and I 
bring in Pettigrew---to whom you do owe some payback, I believe---and 
not only do _you_ get the Order of Merlin once everything's out in 
the open, but once Sirius Black's exonerated, _he'll know he owes it 
all to you,_ which, if I read him right (and I bet I do) will heap 
coals of fire on his head every day of his life!"  

One thing that a lot of people who've posted on this subject seem to 
forget, IMO, is that the Wizard World is _tough_ in a way we've 
mostly forgotten how to be.  They'd be utterly amazed at our aversion 
to risk..."Of course Quidditch is risky!  That's half the fun!  And 
dragons are perfectly safe if you know what you're doing!"  In the 
old days, public executions were popular spectator sights, and 
corporal punishment was the norm in schools, the armed services, and 
(on an informal basis) on the job---mouth off to your supervisor in 
the factory and you'd be spitting out teeth, no error.  In their 
cultural isolation, the poor Wizards have not realized that Risk is 
Wrong, nor that Revenge is Always Wrong---they're still in the "eye 
for an eye, tooth for a tooth" stage of things.  

--Eric, who'd post more often if his OE was working better, and who 
can always be swayed by practical, pragmatic arguments where abstract 
morality leaves him cold.