Whom did Dumbledore torture and killed? WAS: Re: re:Scrimgeour/WerewolfBites

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 179744

> Alla:
> 
> I understand what you are saying but I disagree. To me it may mean 
> the IF that Dumbledore indeed always tried to avoid it, but found 
it 
> very hard to do so ( but did so in any event)
> 
> 
> It is like if somebody would tell me - you never smoke if you could 
> avoid it. I would find it perfectly reasonable to respond with 
true, 
> true.
> 
> For the record, I never smoked, BUT sometimes I find it incredibly 
> hard to avoid second hand smoke as in I may feel awkward to tell 
> somebody not to smoke in presence or something.


Magpie:
This is an important conversation and there's nothing to be gained by 
them talking in torturous loopholes. If somebody asks you if you 
smoke and you say "Only when I can't avoid it" referring to second 
hand smoke, they get that you're referring to second hand smoke and 
your dislike of it. You're actually telling them that you don't smoke 
but people smoke near you. (If they didn't get that you were 
expressing your opinion on second hand smoke they would probably ask 
what you meant by being unable to avoid smoking). With smoking you're 
talking about the act of breathing in smoke; killing requires a bit 
more than that. There's no equivalent of that here. Harry's supposed 
to be reassuring Dumbledore that he's not the same as Voldemort so 
obviously he's going to make him as least like Voldemort as he can.

Apparently, he can't just say "you've never killed anyone" because 
Dumbledore has been responsible for deaths, they both feel. I see no 
believable reason whatsover for either the characters or the author 
to choose to have them say that Dumbledore did kill if they mean he 
avoided the temptation to kill (Harry would be the first to defend 
Dumbledore if that were the case). Not only is that intentionally 
saying something other than the characters or the author mean, but it 
is imo not how any normal human being would talk. 

If Dumbledore tried "really hard" to avoid it but still did it, 
that's exactly what they just said. The trying to avoid it is already 
part of what they're saying. And if he succeeded in avoiding it 
that's something to emphasize. Obviously they both believe that he 
caused the deaths of others, or else there is no reason for either of 
them to bring up that exception to his "no kill" record. We know they 
both agree that Dumbledore caused the deaths of others even if they 
don't go over exactly what deaths they're counting as caused by 
Dumbledore and what deaths they aren't counting. 

Alla:
> Same way here, I think it is reasonable to say if Dumbledore never 
> killed that he never killed if he could avoid it, because it was 
> hard for him to do so. Like he knew he was tempted to kill, but 
> never did, etc.

> interpretation, but surely you would agree that it is nothing 
> **more** but interpretation?

Magpie:
No, I don't really get it. Sure I get how you can easily find a 
loophole in the phrase "if you could avoid it." If you had never read 
the series and were asking about Dumbledore's philosophy and I 
said, "Dumbledore doesn't believe in killing if he can avoid it" that 
wouldn't mean that Dumbledore actually killed anybody, just his views 
on killing. But in a scene where people are talking about one 
person's past behavior, which is known to both of them, if they say 
somebody never did something and added an exception to that rule, 
they do it to pre-emptively head-off the obvious objection to saying 
he "never did it" at all.

Imagine if Harry had been sorely tempted to have sex with Hermione 
when they were alone in the woods but didn't. Ron comes back all 
insecure about Hermione liking him. Harry's hardly going to reassure 
him by sticking in an exception to his claim that he never got 
together with her like: "We never fooled around if we could avoid 
it!" Of course not, because he just told Ron that he did fool around 
with her. In this situation it would be even weirder, since being 
tempted to kill isn't really any more part of Dumbledore's character 
than wanting to sleep with Hermione is part of Harry's.

-m