Compassionate hero (WAS Re: Appeal of the story to the reader)

[muscatel1988]

No: HPFGUIDX 175959

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "nrenka" <nrenka at ...> wrote:
> She did?  I guess I did miss the memo where the three 
Unforgiveables
> were explicitly labeled as the Dark Arts. 

Mus digs out GoF and finds Moody saying:

"Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you 
counter-curses and leave it at that.  I'm not supposed to show you 
what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year." 
[GoF, UK PB, 187]

He goes on to say that Dumbledore approves of his curriculum 
revision, and then demonstrates the three UCs.  To this reader, it 
sounds as if they are being described as Dark.  Admittedly, we hear 
later that the Ministry had authorised Aurors to use them in the 
first war, but that doesn't contradict BetsyHP's point about the 
hypocrisy, merely that it goes further back, since "Dark" can't mean 
what it appeared to.  "Offensive" might a better term, but it 
doesn't have the same sort of occult resonance.  (And neither do the 
UCs, now.)

I have another, technical issue with Harry's use of the UCs.  It's 
been explicit throughout that magic isn't a matter of waving your 
wand in a vague manner and thinking about what you want to happen - 
if it were, we wouldn't have been privy to mispronounced 
incantations and incorrect wand movement, and Scabbers would have 
turned yellow.  Where has Harry *learned* to cast Imperio and Crucio?

Mus