Motivations for Joining DEs (Was: Bullying)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 141157

Hells provided possible examples of a justifiable Imperius Curse:
> > 
> > Making a child who is about to run into a road stand still.
> > 
> > Making a Death Eater who is about to AK someone lower his wand.
> >
> 
Geoff responded:
> My take on this is that you would have to first cast an Imperius 
> spell and then give an instruction, which might not allow enough time 
> to stop the action involved because outside the specific orders of an 
> Imperius, the victim would continue doing things normally.
> 
> I think a quick "Expelliarmus" would deal with the second case and 
> a "Petrificus Totalus" the first. After all, both Neville and Harry 
> have certainly been stopped short in their tracks in this way in the 
> past.

Carol adds:
I agree with Geoff, but I think there's more to it than neutral spells
that can accomplish the same effect. The Imperius Curse is labeled
Unforgiveable and a single Imperio means a life sentence in Azkaban.
In other words, the Imperius Curse is dark and dangerous. Not only
does it violate the victim's subjectivity (as Nora and others have
pointed out), making one person subject to the will of another, a
successful Imperio almost certainly requires the desire of one person
to dominate another (which IMO is why Crouch!Moody so easily Imperios
the students in Harry's class and possibly all the kids in the school
from the fourth year up--he has been under the Imperius Curse himself
for eleven years and his desire to control others as he himself was
controlled leads to his mastery of the curse).

Not only is the will to control others evil in itself, it can be
terribly abused, as it was in VW1 when Mulciber, the Imperius expert,
"forced countless people to do horrific things" (as Karkaroff says in
the Pensieve scene in GoF, Am. ed. 590). It's used in HBP to make the
 harmless Madam Rosmerta into an accessory to (attempted murder) and
to make a nine-year-old boy attempt to murder his grandparents. 

For these reasons (the necessary desire to control other people and
the abuse to which the curse is susceptible), it is not taught at
Hogwarts even to seventh years and it is punishable by the same
sentence as Crucio and Avada Kedavra. I also think that the use of
Imperio is addictive and leads to the ruthless desire to dominate
others. Look what happened to the Crouches.

Granted, a number of spells (notably "Obliviate!") are also subject to
abuse, but they also have other uses (the MoM protecting itself from
notice by Muggles or protecting Muggles from their own traumatic
memories). I'm not justifying the use of "Obliviate," which I
personally think is as much a violation of subjectivity as Imperio;
I'm just saying that there are excellent reasons why Imperio, like
Crucio, should never be used. 

As Geoff says, there are other spells that can be used when it's
necessary to stop someone from doing something dangerous to himself or
others, spells that don't involve the subjecting of another person to
the wizard's will through the violation of his mind. 

Carol