Being Good and Evil (was:Re: Harry's arrogance (was Evil Snape)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 154604

Tim wrote:

It is only a facial blemish after all. And although it was backhanded
and conniving I wouldn't call it evil.

Carol notes:
houyhnhnm answered this point beautifully and canonically in her
response to Alla:
> 
> Marietta's nose and cheeks were "horribly disfigured by a 
> series of close-set purple pustules".  Close-set--the Muggle 
> medical term is coalesced.  Purple pustules.  We're not talking 
> about ordinary teenage zits here.  I'm tempted to insert a 
> link, but I won't.  Just do an image search on "facial impetigo".
> 
> More than four months later she still had them.  So yes, I 
> would say that without some kind of extraordinary magical 
> intervention yet to occur, her face is disfigured for life.

Carol again:
Harry is stared at merely for a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.
And note the way that everyone talks about Eloise Midgen's acne. She's
a "Troll" that no boy would consider taking to the Yule Ball.
Marietta's "purple pustules" are worse. She's "horribly disfigured,"
so disfigured that she hides behind a balaclava like a hag in a pub.
Imagine the stares and whispered insults that Marietta must endure,
and she can't even remember her "crime" because Kingsley Shacklebolt
Obliterated the memory of it.

Marietta is a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, who is trying to follow the
rules and obey her mother, a Ministry official. She has no reason to
believe that Voldemort is really back; Harry has angrily refused to
reveal what happened in the graveyard. As far as she knows, the Daily
Prophet's stories that he's mentally unstable are true. (She sees him
display his temper at the meeting in the Hog's Head.) Umbridge
believes he's a liar, and Marietta probably believes it, too.

I doubt that she believed that everyone in the group would be
expelled; probably only Harry, the leader, and Hermione, the
originator. No doubt the SNEAK jinx would have deterred her if she had
known about it, but she didn't. So she had to choose between going to
the new headmistress, who had announced to the school that she was
trying to help them, and the Boy Who Told Lies and his illegal
organization. We know in hindsight that she was wrong, but she had no
way of knowing that she was not doing the right thing.

Marietta is not a Death Eater. She's a Ministry supporter, and she
believes (wrongly) that the Ministry is looking out for the best
interests of the Hogwarts students and the WW.

She's not a criminal. She isn't Bellatrix, the torturer of the
Longbottoms and LV's faithful servant. She's a teenage girl who made a
mistake. Dumbledore, the giver of second chances, protects her from
Umbridge's anger. Almost certainly if he had remained at Hogwarts and
she had come to him for help, he would have given it to her.

Forgive us our trespasses. That's what Christianity is all about, and
JKR is a Christian. Second chances and forgiveness and mercy. That's
what Dumbledore is all about, and Dumbledore is "the epitome of goodness."

For that reason, I can't understand why JKR hasn't had someone remove
Marietta's disfigurement. It's too late for Dumbledore to do it now,
and Madam Pomfrey failed in her attempt--as, presumably, did St.
Mungo's. A few weeks would have sufficed as punishment for her wrong
choice. Four months is much too long. A lifetime is unconscionable.

Carol, hoping that Healer!Snape will restore Marietta's complexion in
the Epilogue since Hermione seems unable or unwilling to help her