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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 179756

 > 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.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> What? You do not see that Dumbledore killing Morphin and Hockey is 
> nothing more but intepretation?

Magpie:
No, I meant I do not see how "Dumbledore, you never killed" is a 
reasonable interpretation of "Dumbledore, you never killed anyone if 
you could avoid it" without an actual correction in the scene.  In 
When Harry Met Sally that's exactly what happens in one exchange, to 
comic effect:

Harry: No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. He 
always wants to have sex with her.

Sally: So you're saying a man can be friends with a woman he finds 
unattractive.

Harry: No, you pretty much want to nail them too.

The comedy coming from the fact that yes, he did say first that he 
couldn't be friends with women only if they were attractive. Then he 
exaggerates the problem even more by ruling out his own exception, 
which emphasizes just how incorrigible he is on this subject. There's 
no correction in the Harry/Dumbledore scene:

Harry: You never killed if you could avoid it.

Dumbledore: True, true.

Harry: So you did kill when you couldn't avoid it.

Dumbledore: Nope, didn't kill then either. (Of course leaving open 
how he avoided it if it was unavoidable.)


Alla:
> And it would be really helpful if you could specify what past 
> behaviour of Dumbledore is known to Harry. As in whom did he kill 
> that Harry knows?. Surely Ariana would not count as one he tried to 
> avoid to but could not?

Magpie:
I think it's the same behavior we all know about. I don't think Harry 
is accusing him of any particular murder, or of any murder at all. 
He's taking the long view of Dumbledore's actions throughout the 
years and they have led to some people dying. Dumbledore has never 
claimed to be opposed to any deaths in the fight against Voldemort. 
As far as I can see they're just making the same claim they made 
about Moody, that he tried to bring 'em back alive. But I suspect 
Rowling realized it would be unrealistic to act like Dumbledore ran 
his side of the war above such ugly realities as death, especially 
since he and Harry are having this conversation in the afterlife, 
with Harry having found out that Dumbledore's plan involved his own 
death. But that's okay, because Dumbledore only planned on Harry's 
death because it couldn't be avoided. 

-m