Failed Friendships (was:Re:Draco, Narcissa and Harry)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 179911

> > >>Pippin:
> > Similar views on magic use?
> > I must have missed the part where Harry desecrated corpses, burst
> > out of the back of someone's head, convinced people there was no 
> > good and evil, slaughtered unicorns, drank their blood and         
> > instituted wholesale use of the Unforgivables. 
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> You're pointing out the difference between a psycho and a non-
> pyscho.  But there's not really a difference in the the type of magic 
> used, as in one uses dark magic and the other does not. 

Pippin:
 Nobody in the books uses the term 'psycho'  so I'm not sure how it
differs from 'dark'.   'Dark' seems to be, in part,  the way  the wizards
understand what we would call psychosis or sadism. In that case, 
there may be no dark magic in the sense that there's magic only
psychotics or sadists can use. But there may be magic that makes
the human who uses it psychotic or sadistic, especially over time.
In practice the distinction would blur, would it not?

The unforgivables are condemned many times by various people
in the text, so I'm not sure what you mean by saying they're never
condemned. Harry doesn't condemn himself for using them, but
people hardly ever condemn themselves in the Potterverse. When
it comes to confessing guilt, Lupin and Dumbledore stand almost 
alone. Remorse, says Hermione, is so painful that it could destroy
you -- it's no wonder wizards don't go in for it much. 

> Betsy Hp:
> Yeah, but obviously, neither was the half-blood Voldemort.  I mean, 
> not really.  The whole blood thing was more pasted on and not 
> something Voldemort dedicated his life to.
> 

Pippin:
I wouldn't say that. 
He murdered his father and grandparents. He didn't want to believe
in pureblood superiority but IMO, he was desperately afraid that it might 
be true and he dedicated his life to trying to prove that it
wasn't by bringing all of the WW under his control and the Muggle
world as well. 
 
> Betsy Hp:
> Yeah, but that's got nothing to do with anything.  The house rivalry 
> still exists and is still important and a Slytherin and a Gryffindor 
> are never going to be friends.

Pippin:
Slughorn was friends with Dumbledore, Hagrid, and Lily. HBP!Harry
thinks that Gryffindor students are supposed to hate Slytherin students
on sight, and vice versa, but in DH the Snape/Lily story taught him that 
things didn't have to be that way, and in the epilogue we see people
trying to effect change. It might be a losing battle...but what's new
about that? 


> > >>Pippin:
> > <snip>
> > We do not see Harry question his use of the cruciatus curse or the
> > expulsion of the Slytherins. But his elation shows us that he should
> > have. 
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Well, *I* think so, but I don't see anything to suggest JKR wanted us 
> to think so. And since Harry doesn't ever question or think about 
> his ease with dark magic, any questioning or challenging of dark 
> magic does not occur. 
 Ergo, the end of the series has little to 
> nothing to say about dark magic and has nothing to do with defeating 
> it.

Pippin:
Codswallop, in my opinion <g>.
Harry puts aside the Elder Wand. At the end of the series,  he's still not
using it. Why not use it, except that he's afraid it would make doing
dark magic too easy? How did he come to fear that, except by
learning how easy it already was? 

 
> > >>Pippin:
> > We don't see him question his feeling okay with the condition
> > of the maimed babything -- but we did see him go back and try to
> > save Voldemort from making that choice anyway. 
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> In a very half-assed and flippant way.  Which is fine because it was 
> lost cause anyway.  You don't "cure" a psycho by asking them to 
> rethink things. 

Pippin:
But this is like saying motorcycles can't fly. This
is a world where love can be trapped behind a door, and soul
fragments can be stashed in a bank vault. To quote my favorite
wizard, the usual rules don't seem to apply. 


Dark wizards can repent. They can put their souls back together, if 
they're willing to risk the pain. Grindelwald apparently did so.  Voldemort 
had this one chance, despite having damaged his soul much more badly
than Grindelwald did, because of Harry's magical blood. The text
goes out of its way to point out that Harry is not being flippant,
that Voldemort is shocked more than by a taunt or a revelation. He
chooses to treat it as a taunt: "You dare--"  

And Harry says he dares because Dumbledore's last plan didn't
backfire on him, it backfired on Riddle. He offered Riddle that 
last chance not because he wanted to himself, but because 
Dumbledore would have wanted him to do it. 

Betsy_Hp
 However, we do walk away from the books with the 
> image of our hero not attempting to succor a pained and crying 
> infant, which was an interesting choice on JKR's part.

Pippin:
Yes. It suggests that the instinctive source of evil is also the
instinctive source of pity, and that Harry, seeing himself apart
from the id, or being a creature of pure soul, however you want
to interpret what's happening, had lost the instinct to care for
a child. He's moved for Dumbledore, whom he knows and loves,
 but his soul, pure though it is, is only human, and not, as it 
seems, large enough to care about suffering in the abstract.

JKR does not tell us what about the child is so repellent. She
does not want us repelled, she wants us very aware of our
instinctive need and how this differs from a choice. IMO,
of course. 


> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179863
> 
> > >>Betsy Hp:
> > > Yes, I totally agree that one of the (many!) bad things about
> > > Slytherin is their bigotry. But I didn't get the sense that Harry
> > > (or Gryffindor) was too concerned about challenging that bigotry.
> 
> > >>Pippin:
> > Harry and Gryffindor do not challenge Slytherin's beliefs, they
> > challenged Slytherin and Voldemort's attempts to enforce them on
> > everybody.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Wait a minute, I thought you thought Slytherin didn't side with 
> Voldemort. <rbeg>  

Pippin:
Sorry, I was referring to the wizards Gryffindor and Slytherin, 
not the Houses. 

Betsy_Hp: 
> Again, Harry isn't worried about the whys and wherefores of the 
> (incredibly easy) destruction of the WW under Voldemort's (far too 
> fast to be belived) coup.  He just wants Voldemort dead.  And he 
> achieves that.  There's no attempt to change the viewpoints of the WW 
> when it comes to muggles and muggleborns.

Pippin:
But that would be a different book. This book is about Harry
learning that there needs to be a change, that fighting
evil isn't just a matter of getting rid of the psychos/dark wizards.

I don't think the coup was too fast to be believed. Voldemort
had been laying the groundwork for it since his return, many of
his servants were already ministry employees, and he could
use the Imperius curse on the rest. Plus there hasn't been 
effective anti-dark arts training for anybody but Aurors or the
DA for something like thirty years, so most people haven't
learned how to resist it. 
> 
> > >>Pippin:
> > Canon doesn't see separate but equal as a big problem if it's      
> > voluntary, though it may be hard for some of us with a melting pot 
> > mythology to embrace that point of view.
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> I've never been a fan of the prime directive, so yeah, I'm not going 
> to embrace your bigoted world, JKR, sorry. <eg>

Pippin:
Funny, I think the bigoted world view is the one where 
cultural imperialism is a good thing. We agree to disagree, I guess.

Considering two thousand years of people trying to melt my culture into 
the dominant one, sometimes with actual fire, I'm more in favor of letting 
people find their own way to unity. But that's just me.

Pippin