Harry, Draco and bathroom/ A couple of theories - Snape

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 162450

> > Magpie:
> > A lot of decent guys would have felt even worse.
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> About successfully, if hamhandedly, defending himself against 
someone
> he is sure has colluded in at least two murder attempts?  Someone 
who
> has threatened to kill him?  Someone whose allies are out there 
right
> now murdering people?
> 
> You don't think any of that should mitigate Harry's feelings of 
guilt?
 
> I mean, yeah, if an altercation with, say, Justin Finch-Fletchley 
had
> gotten out of hand that way, Harry should certainly feel ashamed of
> himself, but this isn't a casual acquaintance, this is a wannabe
> murderer who has promised Harry death more than once.

Magpie:
And you and Eggplant have made clear that that's your view on it, 
that injuring this person is fundamentally more different than 
injuring a better person in ways that I don't agree. I think it's 
serious to almost take the life of another person, no matter who 
they are, and that this is becoming more clear to Harry and not less 
in this book so his niggling conscience is important beyond just his 
being great for caring at all about something that he doesn't owe it 
to anyone to think about. Besides having a different reaction to the 
scene as written personally, I think the book is indicating a 
completely opposite approach. If the author's going to write 
something about killing, I can see why she chose to use characters 
that make everything harder, raising the bar a little higher than 
not killing people who are nice to you.  I'd hope a bildungsroman of 
this length would go beyond just justifying the right people.

> > Magpie:
> > Just as it's not Draco's fault if Harry chose poorly...
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> Why is it not Draco's fault?  Draco is the aggressor here, Draco is
> the one who has given Harry the choice of reacting or of being
> subjected to Cruciatus by someone who has taken summer lessons from
> Bellatrix Lestrange, Draco is the one who decided to escalate 
things
> to the Unforgivable level.
> 
> How do you so easily absolve him?

Magpie:
I didn't absolve him--I think that's creating a false dilemma.  
 
> > Magpie
> >... I think the fact that it was actually written as horrific
> > means it's not something Harry should respond by strutting out
> > confident that that's just what happens when you mess with him. 
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> I missed the strutting scene, could you point it out for me?

Magpie:
It's not in the books, is my point.  It's not Harry's response and 
it shouldn't be.

> > > Amiable Dorsai:
> > > Why would it stop?  If Draco manages to get off a Cruciatus on 
> > > Harry, Draco's life essentially ends at that point. 
> > 
> > Magpie:
> > I don't think it does. Especially given that Harry opened up
> > Draco on the bathroom floor and got detention.  
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> For acting in self-defense without using an Unforgivable.

Magpie:
Actually, he gets detention for being a cheat according to Snape.  
But regardless, Harry's detention with Snape has no bearing on this 
question. I only brought up Harry's detention to show that Harry's 
life wasn't over when Snape (pre-disposed to be unfair to Harry and 
punish him harshly) comes upon him after he uses a violent curse 
that's almost killed someone.   


> Amiable Dorsai:
> 
> Suppose you're right though, suppose Draco would have somehow 
gotten
> away with using an Unforgivable, how is Draco to know that?  

Magpie:
Because in canon Harry himself uses Crucio regardless of what he's 
learned about the law, and doesn't even afterwards think of that 
risk, so I don't take this attitude towards Unforgivables as a given 
in canon. Even if Draco did think throwing a Crucio was so serious, 
it doesn't follow that therefore he would have Crucio'd Harry into 
insanity and killed him. 

> > Magpie:
> > Draco's entire storyline in HBP is about not being a killer
> > even when he wants to be and has to be.
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> Not being able, in cold blood, to kill a helpless old man who is 
only
> a theoretical enemy is quite different from not being able to kill 
a
> hated real enemy in the heat of battle.  

Magpie:
A familiar idea, but since Draco didn't kill anybody in the heat of 
the battle (few people in canon ever have) and never has it doesn't 
prove that this was the inevitable outcome of the fight in the 
bathroom had Harry not been the one to almost kill his hated enemy 
in the heat of battle.  That brings us back to the same issue again--
you see killing another person as a much easier and less big of a 
deal in canon than I do.

> > Magpie:
> > Not unable to stop himself offing a 
> > peer in the bathroom after reaching champion sadist ability with 
> > torture spells that seem to require even more nerve to manage 
(Harry 
> > himself couldn't sustain one). 
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> Harry hasn't taken summer lessons from Bellatrix Lestrange.  Harry
> does not, as Draco most certainly does, take pleasure from other
> people's pain.

Magpie:
All we know about any lessons from Bellatrix is that she's been 
teaching Draco Occlumency. I don't think you can use that as proof 
that Draco has become a master at Crucio.  Harry takes pleasure from 
other peoples' pain too. He does it a particular lot in OotP, yet 
still can't sustain a Crucio, because there is an established 
difference between his impulse and Bellatrix's more advanced 
sadism.  Ironically Draco often seems to me depicted as more 
squeamish than Harry, not less.
 
> > Magpie:
> >  I don't think there's anything in the 
> > scene that indicates for a second that Harry would be facing 
that 
> > kind of longterm fate or that it ever enters Harry mind before 
or 
> > after. 
> 
> Amiable Dorsai:
> Because Harry has, of course, forgotten that he's facing a two-time
> attempted murderer who has threatened to kill him.

Magpie:
I don't think he's forgotten that he didn't consider Draco's threat 
to kill him realistic.  He does think (correctly) that Draco is 
behind the long-distance murder attempts but I don't recall any 
hints that Draco has become personally frightening to Harry in this 
way. The stakes are raised in this fight, and that's clear, but I 
think if I'm supposed to think that Harry thought he barely got out 
with his life in the way you describe it would be there in the text 
instead of what is there, which is, "And then he was going to hit me 
with a Crucio, so I zapped him!"  

-m