Molly's "revenge" Re: Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 174873

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "guzuguzu" <guzuguzu at ...> wrote:
> At the risk of offending you again, let me ask you to clarify your 
> position. Are you saying that it is offensive to assume that a 
> housewife (or a househusband or a lawyer or a baker or a 
candlestick 
> maker of either gender) would not be as skilled in battle as a 
> soldier or a policeman? That in a battle with a psycho killer a 
> person (male or female) with little to no experience in battle 
would 
> have the same probability of success as someone with experience and 
> training? Do you think the hundreds of people watching Bellatrix 
and 
> Molly duel should have assumed that Molly would win? If that's true 
> for you, then we must agree to disagree here.
>

va32h:

Well one thing I'm saying right now is that, IMO, it's pretty silly 
to complain that hundreds of people just stood around watching Molly 
and Bella. The same people stood around watching Voldemort duel 
McGonnagal, Kingsley, and Slughorn and the same people stood around 
watching Harry and Voldemort walk around in circles and chit-chat. 
Why aren't you asking why Kingsley Shacklebolt didn't curse Voldemort 
from behind or why Hagrid didn't tackle Voldemort? Harry may be 
Harry - but as every single adult character likes to point out - he 
is a barely qualified teenage wizard. It's perfectly reasonable to 
assume that highly trained Aurors like Kingsley or very experienced 
professors like McGonnagal are more capable of killing Voldemort than 
a 17 year old kid. 

And yet this is how the story goes, because Deathly Hallows isn't a 
tactical manual, it's a novel and the set piece of "crowd watches in 
shocked silence while two characters duke it out" is very commonly 
used in works of fiction.  

There are plenty of people engaged in the Battle of Hogwarts who are 
neither soliders or policemen. There are students, teachers, 
shopkeepers, the residents of Hogsmeade, government workers. Since 
only 50 or so of them died, I think it's safe to conclude that they 
handled themselves pretty well. Percy Weasley seems to be doing quite 
well in battle, for someone whose job consists of fretting over the 
thickness of cauldron bottoms. 

In the magical world, there is no indication that one's skills as a 
witch or wizard are entirely determined by one's occupation. Bill 
Weasley is a banker, Arthur Weasley is in administration, Fred and 
George own a joke shop (and it wasn't a DE that killed Fred, it was a 
collapsing wall). 

I think you also give too much credit to Bellatrix. She's Voldemort's 
best lieutenant, but that doesn't make her the be-all and end-all of 
evil magical ability. We've seen her in battle one other time, at the 
Ministry, where she managed to kill one person. And this is the basis 
for her characterization as an unbeatable master duellist?

If you are going to question why "just a housewife" could win a duel 
with a Death Eater, then you are going to have to question why the 
Death Eaters lost at all. The "Hogwartians", as they are so 
interestingly called in the book, were outclassed from the get go. 

But oh look - when your cause is just and your heart is in the right 
place, you can indeed triumph, even when the odds are against you. At 
least that's what the English thought at the Battle of Agincourt. 
(just to throw out the notion that unexpected victories need not only 
occur in novels).

va32h