Back to Slytherin House - Choosing

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 176192

lizzyben wrote:
> > 
> > It sure does. People (including me) have complained that Harry 
never faced an internal battle between good & evil, but he actually 
did - he faced the choice between good & evil at eleven years old, and
chose good. Everything else was just gravy.
 
Jen replied: 
> Why is that a complaint, btw?  I predicted prior to DH that Harry
might face a decision about Snape such as Voldemort luring Harry to
him using Snape as the temptation, and Harry would have to choose at a
pivotal moment: revenge on Snape vs. some higher calling.  So I was
also a reader expecting a big good vs. evil battle prior to DH.  Since
it turned out he had evil inside him already with a soul piece, that
wasn't the story and instead Harry's biggest choice was life vs.
death.  Why then is the internal battle between good and evil still
necessary?  It wasn't the crisis of conscience Harry was meant to face
apparently.  <snip>

Carol responds:
On one level, having a soul bit inside himself could tempt Harry to
evil, for example, the desire for revenge against Snape, the use of a
Crucio on Carrow, the temptation to become Master of Death. But I
think that Harry would have faced these temptations anyway, and,
except for the Crucio, he rejected the temptations and accepted the
necessity to sacrifice himself after viewing Snape's memories and
calling his beloved dead to give him the courage to join them (as he
thought).

But I think it's possible that the central conflict, particularly the
conflict within Harry, is not good vs. evil but what is right vs. what
is easy. (Voldemort has already rejected the concept to good and evil,
believing that there is only power and those too weak to use it, as
Quirrel says in SS/PS.) There is nothing easy in Harry's decision to
face death without fighting back, as I've shown in other posts.
Choosing Horcruxes over Hallows is also choosing right over easy.

Snape, too, faces this conflict, choosing what is easy (his Slytherin
friends over Lily; becoming a DE; revealing the Prophecy) and pays the
price for that choice when Lily dies. He spends the rest of his life,
particularly the last two years, making up for that wrong choice,
doing what is right rather than what is easy. And Lupin, weak
throughout the series but suddenly imbued with what looks like a
suicidal desire to kill and be killed, also makes the difficult but
right choice to go back to his wife and child.

In all cases, the characters' worst enemy seems to me to be not
Voldemort but himself.

Carol, admitting that Voldemort was never faced with that choice and
wishing that he had been