Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 174634

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Dennis Grant" <trog at ...> 
wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "colebiancardi" <muellem@> 
wrote:
> 
> > colebiancardi:
> > 
> > Well, I call it torture. 
>  
> > words like writhed, drowning, thrashing, howling in pain, 
crumpled,
> > insensible -  JKR picked those words and it certainly sounds like
> > torture to me.

Dennis Grant:
> 
> No, that's PAIN. Inflicting pain is not, in of itself, torture.
> Torture is the act of inflicting prolonged pain, either as a form 
of
> coercion, or for the sheer enjoyment of inflicting pain.
> No matter what the spell itself is called, its effect is to inflict
> pain. That's not enough to qualify as torture de facto - it 
depends on
> how it is used.
> 
> Harry uses it to immobilize - in which, per canon, it is 
effective -
> and he switches it off as soon as his target is down. That is not 
torture.
> 
> DG


Leah:

Concise Oxford Dictionary: n. 1. the infliction of severe bodily 
pain esp. as a punishment or a means of persuasion. 2. severe 
physical or mental suffering  

Nothing there about the pain having to be prolonged. If I was put on 
the rack and gave up everything the torturers wanted to hear after 
the first stretch, I would still have been tortured, just as someone 
who was racked for an hour would have been tortured. 

Carrow is drowning, writhing,howling, thrashing in pain.  Harry has 
inflicted severe bodily pain upon him.  Harry could have immobilised 
Carrow with Stupefy!.  He chose to use Crucio as a punishment.

It may be that Carrow is scum, that Harry is justified, that he 
doesn't prolong the act.  All of those things may extenuate what 
Harry did.  They don't make it not torture.

Leah