Draco/Draco/Worst Magic (with more Draco)/Did Albus torture?/Youth Potion

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 179906

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179789>:

<< I don't think Draco ever had the opportunity to take Dumbledore's
side. The offer of sanctuary in HBP ("The Lightning-Struck Tower")
never materialized and I doubt that he believed DD when it was
offered. >>

Dumbledore was a great talker. He could sell refrigerators to Eskimos,
as the old saying goes. If he'd had a few more minutes before Fenris &
Co interrupted, Draco would have believed the offer of sanctuary. And
if he accepted it, Snape could have materialized it. And Draco might
have accepted it, as Dumbledore had offered to include his parents.

As things worked out, much as he hated serving Voldemort, he wouldn't
have taken an opportunity to run away and hide, nor to run away and
join the good guys, because of what punishment Voldemort would do on
his parents. Protecting his parents was a very high priority to him.
What if he had been in a situation of save himself OR save Lucius?

Of course, he would give his life to save his mother, regardless
whether she deserves it -- that's conventional good behavior. But to
save his father? The one who got him into this mess in the first
place? That plot bunny (take it out of fanfic entirely, make it
terrorists in a totally non-magic world) could hop in a lot of
different directions.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179860>:

<< Scorpius has surely been raised to think he has enemies, but I
doubt he's been raised to think dark magic is cool. Everyone saw the
greatest dark wizard who ever existed beaten by an Expelliarmus. >>

Scorpius may have been raised to think that Dark Magic is cool but not
all-powerful. Those who revere power received a demonstration of the
Power of Love, and should have since then been trying to figure out
how to fake Love, exploit Love, and generally benefit from this
powerful type of magic.

Scorpius's father can teach him that it was conquest and mass murder
that got Voldemort in trouble (not Dark Magic) and therefore he should
steer clear of people who view murder as an enjoyable hobby, or even
as an effective means to gain wealth and power.

I wonder if Draco, as adult, regarded his own inability to murder as a
weakness that he would rather shove out of his mind, or as a clue that
life is valuable, so that he can preach that ideology to his son if
not his rich adult friends. If Snape had survived, he could have
preached it to Draco!

Mike Crudele wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179790>:

<< What was the Best Piece of Magic JKR put in the books? (snip) I
guess while we're at it, we could include the Worst Piece of Magic. >>

The worst is Quodpot. 

I understand that it's just a little joke about American football, but
I take these things too seriously and am irritated by the presentation
that the wizarding world has to be exactly like the muggle world. Poo.

Second worst magic: all that stuff about wands, not just the Elder
Wand, switching their allegiance to the person who conquered their
owner. We  had such lovely theories about the wand try-out scene in
the first book, that the wand has to be attuned to some characteristic
of the wielder, like it 'receives' on the same 'frequency' that he/she
'sends' on. So it makes sense that some stupid thug's blackthorn wand
didn't work for the reasonably intelligent and reasonably peaceful
Harry, and I hate the idea that it would have worked for him if only
he had been the one to disarm the stupid thug. Then Draco's former
wand working for him would have been a clue to Draco not being that
bad at heart.

Mike Crudele wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179793>:

<< One must stand the canonical Dumbledore on his head to conclude
that he is also capable of torture and murder of innocents. >>

I personally don't believe that Dumbledore extracted Hokey and
Morfin's memories in a painful and destructive way (altho' calling
Morfin an innocent just because he didn't murder those Muggles struck
me as odd). But I don't share your certainty that he is as incapable
of it as Draco is of killing a human.

It appears that Dumbledore really did believe in 'the greater good',
not just as a slogan to excuse a power grab. So the first question
would be, could he get those memories without torturing and murdering
innocents? And how badly did he think he needed those memories to
defeat Voldemort?

You can have a situation in which a good man, believing that torture
and murder of an innocent is needed to save many thousands of
innocents, calls on all his willpower to be able to force himself to
do something so repugnant to him. In real life situations, I'm not
necessarily agreeing that it was the moral or good thing for this man
to do, but I respect his sincerity and good intentions and willpower
(as demonstrated by the PTSD he suffers from having done such things).
But then, I can't assert that it was always the immoral and bad thing
to do unless I accept some kind of deontological absolute commandment:
"Do not torture". 

I don't know how viscerally repugnant doing torture and murder to an
innocent would be to Albus Dumbledore -- did he have visceral feelings
at all, or was everything purely intellectual to him, and everything
from a good meal to chamber music was an act he put on to appeal
'normal'? Even so, it could be intellectually repugnant, an affront to
everything he had syllogized about Love and Kindness.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179799>:

<< why would a Shrinking Solution turn Trevor into a tadpole rather
than a smaller toad? It's not a Youth Potion! >>

Maybe it is a Youth Potion, but its inventor (Rowling or Hector
Dagworth-Granger or Damocles Belby or whoever) was addicted to
alliterative names, even if that distorted the meaning... well, he
could have called it Juvenality Juice...