Whose side are we on?? :was: Arthur right or not?

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 156009

Lupinlore:
> And who is supposed to provide the bad guys with their comeuppance 
if not the heroes?  And how are they supposed to do so without 
engaging in questionable behavior?  Rely on the adults around them?  
That's a rip, snort, and laugh in the Potterverse, populated as it is 
by contemptible and morally deaf adults, most of whom aren't 
competent to run a lemonade stand.  Note for instance that Harry is 
physically tortured by Umbridge, a fact that seems to be common 
knowledge and that he even deliberately exhibits at the Weasleys in 
his confrontation with Scrimgeour, but not one of the adults can be 
bothered to say so much as a word to him about it.  Why?  Are their 
tongues tied?  Are they really that incompetent and morally deaf (I'd 
say the answer is yes).  So that means the heroes have to take 
matters in their own hands, and the adults around them would be 
contemptible hypocrites to suddenly try to exert whatever vestige of 
pseudo-parental authority they have left considering their manifest 
failures over the last few years.

Ceridwen:
I'm seeing the WW as more complacent with things, and even perhaps as 
having outmoded, by our standards, laws and practices which, while 
deploring Umbridge's methods, provide no recourse for dealing with 
her excesses.

But that's an argument between adults, like we do here on the list.  
My point in the quote I snipped is that kids see things in black and 
white rather than in varying shades as adults do.  And, kids see 
punishments meted out to them in the Real World as sometimes being 
unfair to them, and overly excessive, where adults do not.  Detention 
used to be a big thing for that when I was back in school, it 
was 'mean' to deprive kids of their after-school time.  And, for 
what?  Just playing hookey?  Once?  Horrid, nasty teachers!  
Certainly little to no difference between Mrs Smith's detentions and 
Umbridge's blood quill!

I'm concerned about the message kids are getting from the Good Guys 
doing bad things and not learning a Valuable Life Lesson from them.  
If it's valid for people to be concerned over the message which might 
be sent out if Harry kills himself to deliver the WW, or kills 
Voldemort, then it's just as valid to be worried over the message 
being sent out to kids when the twins or Hermione mete out justice 
arbitrarily, without any sort of trial by peers or anything other 
than their own opinion.  This is not good Real Life behavior, IMO.

We can certainly disagree on the topic.  We've disagreed on other 
things before.  I think the comeuppance will occur in book 7, for 
everyone who needs it, through a more impartial universal agent, and 
will be obvious for being what it is.  That's just me, but since no 
comeuppance has happened for several characters yet, the only place 
where it will happen now is in book 7.

And I'm waiting almost rabidly for Umbridge to get hers!

Ceridwen.