I HAD A DREAM OR HOW I REALIZED THAT I MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG./ PART 2 sort of

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 167082

> Magpie:
> <SNIP>
> 
>  But it's dramatic because what AK is is just the wish for 
> > someone else to be dead spoken aloud. That's powerful--and I 
think 
> > there's a reason that Crucio (the desire to cause someone else 
pain 
> > in some way) can be something JKR has Harry and try at and fail 
> > while she doesn't have Draco even try AK. But I don't really get 
> the 
> > feeling that AK as a spell stands alone from other spells or 
from 
> > other ways to kill. I think it's just that the intent to kill is 
a 
> > big deal; using it has effects on you and using it a lot has 
severe 
> > effects. I think the big deal is that Snape is killing, and the 
AK 
> > symbolizes that intent itself, which is more formidable than any 
of 
> > the almost-murders throughout the books.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Well, I agree that intent to kill is a big deal, and that is why 
AK 
> is a big deal IMO. Does it make sense? Of course AK is not a bad 
> spell just because it is called so?
> 
> I am not sure what we are disagreeing over here. I agree that AK 
> personifies intent to kill, I do not think that there are any 
other 
> spells that do so, and that is why IMO this is one of the very 
worst 
> sins of Potterverse to use it, because you have to have an intent 
to 
> do so.

Magpie:
I guess what I'm saying is that I do think AK is a big deal, but not 
in the sense that it's like a demonic thing that a good person can't 
use. It's just a big deal because it's the desire to end a life. So 
if there's some justified reason for ending a life-and don't ask me 
what that is, but I'm speaking hypothetically-then it's a big deal 
for the "good" person to do it, but they still might do it. I 
wouldn't be shocked to learn that those times when Moody tried to 
take people in alive and couldn't he used the AK. So it's kind of, 
to me, that the real question is "Would DD ever kill or kill someone 
as part of his strategy?" and there I think maybe he would, and if 
he were going to do that AK wouldn't necessarily be the worst way--
it might just be the most honest.

Like, if someone needed to be put out of their misery because they 
were being slowly killed by poison (not saying that's DD in the 
scene--just creating a hypothetical) so taht it was truly a mercy 
killing, I think a good person might use an AK and not feel they had 
to kill the person by some other means. But I could be wrong about 
that in canon. 

One reason, btw, that I think this is that it doesn't seem like 
JKR's style to go that way, with the emphasis being on the magic 
rather than what the magic is symbolizing. 

Magpie:
> Actually, even acknowledging that's true, I don't know if it's
really that bad. I mean, Crucio seems like it should be pretty bad
too, but Harry almost uses it. Granted, I think there is a difference
between what Harry (and imo Draco) are throwing at their enemies and
the true use of Crucio, which is why Harry's doesn't work.

Carol responds:
I think it's clear that the Cruciatus Curse *is* Dark. Bellatrix, an
expert on the subject, says that to cast it successfully, you have to
enjoy causing pain, which is why Harry's righteous anger resulted in 
a
failed curse. And he *wanted* to hurt Bellatrix, to punish her for
killing Sirius Black, just as he *wants* to hurt Snape (but doesn't
get the opportunity because Snape deflects the curse). Much as he
hates Snape and wants revenge on him, I don't think he would have
succeeded in Crucioing him because, unlike Bellatrix and Voldemort 
and
the DE who cast the Crucio that Snape stopped, he doesn't *enjoy*
inflicting pain. It's a sadist's weapon, altogether evil (IMO), which
can have no good uses that I can think of. 

Magpie:
Yes, that's basically what I mean. I think that Harry *thinks* he 
wants to throw a Crucio, but that's because he doesn't really 
understand what it is to be a sadist on Bellatrix's level. What 
Harry wants to do is throw his pain at somebody else. Basically, 
he's doing just what he wants to do to Malfoy on the Quidditch pitch 
where he's only thinking about "hurting" him and punching every inch 
he can reach. It's very different than someone actually torturing 
someone.

Crucio is Dark Magic, definitely, but Harry's trying to cast it 
doesn't seem to me to have been a red flag in the same way it might 
have been in, say, Star Wars where we'd take it as a sign that he 
was going over to the Dark Side. I do think Harry needs to get 
beyond the temptation to use it--there's nothing good about trying 
to use it that I can see. But it wasn't taken as being as 
significant as I thought it might be when I read OotP.

With AK I feel like it technically works the same way. As Moody 
says, all the kids could throw AKs at him at once without giving him 
as much of a nose bleed if they don't mean it. But unlike Crucio, 
JKR doesn't seem to use it that way, with Harry hurling it at 
someone without really meaning it. We have seen a failed Crucio, and 
I suspect would have seen more if there were more actually 
completed, but we've never seen a failed AK. It seems like she saved 
that for people who know what they're doing, maybe because with AK 
people do have an inherent understanding of when they do or don't 
mean it, even if they don't really understand death. 

Magpie:
> But I don't think AK in itself is necessarily something the good
guys would just never use. JKR uses it sparingly in the narrative, 
but
I don't know whether that's because she's saying the good guys would
never use it. Iirc, Moody is described as always trying to take 
people
alive, so he didn't always do it, and while Barty's allowing them to
use Unforgivables led to bad things, I don't think it made Moody
necessarily bad.
>
Carol responds:
I agree regarding Moody, but the case with Mr. Crouch may be
different. He's the one who authorized the Aurors to use the weapons
of the Death Eaters against them and who kept his own son under the
Imperius Curse for years after helping him escape from Azkaban. And
that same son had used the Cruciatus Curse to help torture the
Longbottoms into insanity and later had no compunction at all about
demonstrating all three Unforgiveables to his student (torturing the
spider in front of Neville is an act of supreme cruelty, IMO),
Imperioing his own students, Imperioing Krum to make him Crucio
Cedric, and AKing his own father. The Crouches *seem* to illustrate
Alla's perspective that the Unforgiveables are altogether evil and
corrupt the soul. Certainly, 

Magpie:
I agree--I think the Crouchs in particular are showing that, 
particularly with the idea that Crouch's decision to use them to go 
after criminals, showed that he was turning into them. I just don't 
see it as being...how do I put it? Like a chemical magical process. 
Voldemort's use of Dark Magic warps his looks, the Crouch's are 
warped by their longterm use of them etc. But I think the lines a 
little blurry in terms of cause and effect and what's symbolic of 
what. So for instance, if Snape did AK Dumbledore flat-out and is 
DDM, I think he would still feel his soul had been torn because he 
had done something awful and knew it, something he didn't want to 
do. There's no time where killing a human being just means nothing 
at all. But I don't think it would necessarily mean that Snape had 
to be ESE because a good person would never use an AK any more than 
a good person could never kill another person. Moody, I think, could 
use an AK in self-defense and have it be different than Barty using 
it to kill a DE aggressively. And I also don't know if killing 
someone via poison would be considered any different than killing 
them via AK in terms of what it meant to the person's soul. I could 
be wrong that this is how it works in canon, though.



Magpie:
> It gets back to that question of Dark Magic again, what it is, what
it does to you. Is it like Star Wars where we should worry that Harry
tried to throw a Crucio? I thought it would be in OotP, and then in
HBP I thought oh no, it's not.

Carol responds:
I *do* worry about Harry throwing Crucios, not so much because 
they're
the weapon of the Dark side (cf. using the One Ring against Sauron,
which would be folly of the first order) but because of the sadistic
intent required to cast a successful Crucio and the clearly evil
nature of the successful casters (Voldemort, Bellatrix, Barty Jr.).

Magpie:
Me too--but I think if he grows beyond it it will be about Harry's 
maturing rather than the idea he has to fight being taken over by 
Dark Magic. One of the weird things in canon, of course, is the way 
Dumbledore talks about how Harry is so not tempted by Dark Magic 
when from what we see, he is! What does Dumbledore mean, exactly, 
when he says that? Sure Harry's not like young Snape--a kid who got 
a reputation for being into them. Harry and James both seem to feel 
they hate Snape and Draco for their obsession with the Dark Arts. 
But Harry's tried to throw Crucios, he was drawn to Sectumsempra 
that sounded dark, and he threw it again at an Inferi after he knew 
it was Dark. So what gives? Isn't Ron or Neville at this point far 
less tempted by the Dark Arts than Harry?

Magpie:
> Sectumsempra was a deadly curse the way Harry used it in HBP, yet a
few chapters later he's reaching for it again--granted, against the
Inferi, but if it's Dark Magic and it had horrific results should he
be using it at all? Yet it doesn't seem like it's a big deal that he 
did.

Carol:
I think using Sectumsempra against animated corpses is different from
using it on a living enemy.

Magpie:
I think so too--but the curse itself is identified as "Dark Magic" 
and Harry doesn't worry about using it as opposed to anything else. 
So it seems to me that whether a spell is labelled Dark or Light, 
the effects of that spell on the caster areless about the properties 
of the magic than they are about the real ethical implications of 
whatever you did. So if anyone kills someone using AK, the bad 
effects and soul-ripping come from having the intention to kill and 
doing it, not from using this particular curse to do it. To me it 
seems like Snape pushing Dumbledore off the Tower and killing him 
that way would not be different than him using an AK in terms of 
Snape's soul.


Magpie:
> So I don't know. I can imagine that Snape knows that in this
situation he ought to kill Dumbledore and that AK isn't any worse way
to do that than anything else.

Carol:
Not to mention that it's quick and efficient and doesn't require
preparation or administration as poisons do, and it's what the DEs
would expect, and, unlike Sectumsempra, it's apparently painless. 

Magpie:
Definitely seemed like the way to go to me. Painless, efficient. And 
honest, really. Snape just has to wish him dead. It's sort of 
killing in its most pure form. 

Magpie:
> <snip> But I don't really get the feeling that AK as a spell stands
alone from other spells or from other ways to kill. I think it's just
that the intent to kill is a big deal; using it has effects on you 
and
using it a lot has severe effects. I think the big deal is that Snape
is killing, and the AK symbolizes that intent itself, which is more
formidable than any of the almost-murders throughout the books.

Carol:
I don't entirely agree. I don't think that Snape intended to kill
Dumbledore (much less wanted to do so, though I know that's not what
you're implying). I think he had no choice, or rather, had only
Hobson's choice (he had to kill DD himself because not to do so would
have even more devastating consequences), and he chose the only spell
that would serve that terrible necessity without additional pain and
degradation for Dumbledore.

Magpie:
So what is the difference you're seeing, exactly? Because I do agree 
with your description of what's terrible for Snape, and that (imo) 
he didn't want to kill Dumbledore at all. I think he had the 
intention in the most basic sense because he had to do it--much as 
Harry didn't want to feed Dumbledore the Potion, but did it on 
purpose. So what is different in his using the AK here in your view? 
Are you saying that it's different because of the positive aspects 
of it, like that in that situation the way Snape chose to kill 
Dumbledore was the best way because it was quick and got him away 
from Fenrir etc.? 


-m