Of Sorting and Snape

[Bruce Alan Wilson]

No: HPFGUIDX 176381

"houyhnhnm:

> But some other things, I just don't know what to make of 
> them. Like the miserable creature in the train station 
> and the injunction not to pity or comfort it. Repeated 
> over and over. Once might not have been so bad, but it 
> was just hammered in.

Rowena:

"As I don't recall DD *EVER* saying not to pity the creature, only 
that it was beyond any comfort he or Harry could give - by its own 
actions I might add. Voldemort damned himself."


Anyone here ever read "The Divine Comedy"?  When Dante starts to feel sorry for
the tormented spirits in the Inferno, his guide, Virgil, tells him, "Here pity
or piety must die."  Or, to name a modern author, C.S. Lewis "Pilgrim's
Regress", where the Guide tells John that the fixed pains of Hell are "[God's]
last severe mercy for those who will let Him do nothing else for them."
And DD did not say that Harry 'must' or 'should' or 'may' not do anything for
the creature.  He says that Harry 'cannot' do anything.  Not that it is
ill-advised, or even forbidden, but that it is impossible. 


Bruce Alan Wilson

"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.  Other forms of
transport grow daily more nightmarish.  Only the bicycle remains pure in
heart."--Iris Murdoch



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