[HPforGrownups] Re: Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables

[Lee Kaiwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 174829

Dennis Grant blessed us with this gem On 08/08/2007 20:48:

LK> First, Harry himself made his purpose crystal clear. "Whaddya know.
LK> You really DO have to mean it!" Mean what? "I torture." His purpose
LK> was torture.

DG> No, his purpose was to *inflict pain with intent to incapacitate*

No, I'm sorry Dennis, it was not. Incapacitation was the result, but it 
was not his purpose. Not, at least, according to Harry.

I'll try once more: Harry TELLS us what his purpose is. Period. It works 
like this:

Harry steps out from under the cloak, raises his wand, says, "I 
torture," and then, when he's finished, announces in mock surprise, 
"Well, you really do have to mean it." What "it" do you need to mean? 
Harry is, of course, harking back to Bellatrix's words in OotP, where, 
after he fails to Cruciate Bellatrix, she chastises him as follows:

"You need to mean them, Potter! ... You need to really want to cause 
pain - to enjoy it."

Nothing there about incapacitation. What drives the Cruciatus is the 
intense desire to cause pain, and to enjoy causing pain. That's canon. 
Yes, I'm taking a DE's word for it, because Harry confirms it: "Well, 
well, she was right. You really do need to mean it."

There simply is no other way to read the text. Harry's PURPOSE was to 
cause pain. Incapacitation was merely the result.

Now, we can believe Harry, or we can believe you. Tough choice.

LK> Since you assert it, please tell us how many "legal definitions"
LK> of torture there are.

DG> From the United States Criminal Code:

No, Dennis, that's not what I asked for. You stated there are many 
definitions of murder, as if that had something to do with torture. I 
asked you HOW MANY legal definitions of torture there were, but what you 
gave me is a single definition of torture, and one which, at that, is 
really more concerned with defining the conditions under which torture 
can occur than it is with defining the act itself.

But since you've introduced it, let's take a look. Filtering out the 
bits defining the conditions, we find the US Code defines torture as

"an act committed by a person ... specifically intended to inflict 
severe physical or mental pain or suffering ... upon another person...."

Begins to sound a lot like Cruciatus to me.

LK> Ah. The end justifies the means. What happened to Stupefy?

DG> Who knows?

Bingo. YOU DON'T KNOW. You're engaged in pure speculation. Your argument 
boils down to, "the text doesn't say it isn't true, therefore I assert 
it is."

> There is nothing in the canon that suggests Stupify is
> unblockable

Ditto for Cruciatus, with the added bonus that Harry has never 
successfully Cruciated. Conversely, he is by this point an expert on 
Stupefy. Now, if in the "heat of battle" you've got an enemy to 
incapacitate quickly, it makes absolutely no sense at all to suddenly 
abandon Ole Reliable for a weapon you've never successfully fired. No. 
Sense. At. All.

And, please. No more "We don't know - there MAY have been something...." 
Give us canon.

LW> There WAS no "heat of battle".

DG> Harry is in the presence of Carrow, a known enemy.

Nobody fired a shot. Nobody threatened to fire a shot. Carrow didn't 
even know Harry was there. I can't imagine anything LESS like a battle. 
Until Harry started firing, at least. Even then, it looked more like an 
ambush than a real fight.

Let's take a closer look at the scene, shall we?

Harry and Luna are in the Ravenclaw Common Room, hidden under the Cloak. 
Alecto is there, whom Luna stuns from hiding. Then Amycus appears 
outside the door and starts pounding on it, calling for his sister, who 
doesn't answer. The Ravenclaws are terrified, and we find Harry 
pondering whether to blast open the door and Cruciate -- oops, no, 
sorry, Stun -- Amycus. But he does nothing, because McGonagall appears 
on the scene.

As soon as McGonagall opens the door, Amycus charges in, wand at the 
ready. Now THAT'S pretty threatening. Time to take baddie down, right? 
Hmm ... Guess Harry's not too concerned.

Amycus finds Alecto on the floor, Stunned, and threatens to Cruciate the 
entire Ravenclaw population. Now, Harry, do it NOW! He's making horrific 
threats against the students. TAKE HIM OUT NOW!

Umm, nope. Still nothing.

Then follows a long dialog between Amycus and McGonagall, during which 
Harry has ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to incapacitate the guy, using any 
spell he darn well pleases. But he just stands there, twiddling his 
proverbial thumbs, until...

"And he spat in her face."

Oooh, now THAT did it.

"Harry pulled the Cloak off himself, raised his wand, and said, 'You 
shouldn't have done that.' As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, 'Crucio!'"

It wasn't the brandished wand that set Harry off. It wasn't Carrow's 
threats against the students that alarmed Harry. It was the SPITTING 
that pushed his button. Rammed it so hard, in fact, that it's apparently 
at this point that he abandons the Stunning Spell he was earlier 
contemplating in favor of his first-ever UC.

 > Harry knows he is going to fight Carrow, somehow.

Sorry. Where is THAT in the text, again?

LW> Stupefy, Dennis. Stupefy. It ALWAYS works.

DG> Where in canon is this stated?

There isn't a single instance in canon in which Stupefy, having 
connected with its target, has failed. Nor is there anything in canon to 
cast doubt on its absolute reliability. Once cast, there are only two 
reasons it might fail: the caster might miss his target, or it might get 
blocked. But since both are also possible with Cruciatus, we're back to 
square one: there is absolutely nothing in the text to indicate why 
Harry would suddenly abandon Stupefy -- a spell that had NEVER failed 
him -- for a curse he had never successfully performed.

Well, apart from the obvious, that is.

> If I have to take down Mike Tyson, 

'Scuse me? Where IN THE TEXT does it ever say Amycus Carrow is Mike 
Tyson? He is described as "lumpy" at least twice, and the few times he 
speaks he actually comes off sounding rather on the low side of the 
intelligence curve (well, OK, so does Tyson). And, don't forget, this is 
not the first time Harry has faced Carrow in battle. He dispatched him 
in HBP, "Flight of the Prince", with a simple Impedimenta. And yet you 
ask us to believe Harry, who has survived multiple duels with LV 
himself, who has already gotten the better of Carrow once, is suddenly 
so desparately threatened by him that he panics into using Cruciatus? 
Hmmm ... let me think about that....

Nope.

Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan