We are not wizards - and it shows!

[Kenneth Clark]

No: HPFGUIDX 160621

Dear, oh dear, oh dear.  What a fankle some of us are getting
ourselves into. Dumbledore is a criminal.  Hermione is really
foolishly, dangerously, incoherently (even) wicked.  The Dursleys
are victims (and not of themselves).  We have even had Mrs Weasley
as a bad mother!

Wise up people!  Remember we are talking about wizards.  Remember
Hagrid happily accepting that putting so many witches and wizards in
one place is bound to be dangerous.  Remember a Triwizard tournament
that regularly in the past produced fatalities and even today had a
contest with a dragon for starters. Remember the sheer power that
each of these magical people has at their disposal, the bat bogie
hex etc etc.  These are different people in a different situation
whose acceptance of danger is at a wholly different level from
ours.  A culture whose acceptance of "law" is wholly different from
yours.

Trying to take the morality of Mrs Smith from Omaha or South
Croydon and judging the activities of the magical culture in the
Potterverse against that standard is simply a waste of time.  They
are different people from an utterly different culture with a very
different history.  In a sense you are being culturally imperialist
to ascribe plusses and minuses to their behaviour by holding it up
to a mirror of your own.  Too much like what is happening in the
real world for my liking.

Kenneth Clark