A Sense of Betrayal / Unforgiveables

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 173489

Matt wrote:
>
> Lee Kaiwen wrote about the "moral inconsistency" of characters
portrayed as "good" using the unforgiveable curses, beginning with
Snape (and Harry's attempt) at the end of HBP, and continuing through
DH.  <snip>

Carol responds:

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this paragraph. (I'm not arguing
with your main point, which I agree with.) Do you think that Snape
Crucio'd Harry in HBP? Harry tries to Crucio Snape, true, but Snape's
supposed Crcuio is the unreliable narrator reflecting Harry's belief
that Snape is going to Crucio him into insanity. The person performing
the curse is actually one of the Death Eaters (probably the big blond,
whose name I can't remember at the moment). Snape *stops* the Crucio:

"'No!' roared Snape's voice and the pain stopped as suddenly as it had
started. . . .'Have you forgotten our orders? Potter belongs to the
Dark Lord--we are to leave him! Go! Go!" (HBP Am. ed. 603).

Snape is saving Harry from the Crucio using a reason that the DEs will
accept, protecting him as he has promised to do, and at the same time
getting the DEs off the Hogwarts grounds.

This incident occurs *after* Harry has tried to crucio Snape. Snape
easily parries the curse and shouts "No Unforgiveable Curses from you,
Potter! You haven't got the ability or the nerve!" (602). Again,
obviously, he's giving a reason that sounds plausible for a DE, but (I
think) he's trying to advise Harry not to use Dark curses, just as
he's trying to get him to use nonverbal spells and close his mind to
the Dark Lord. Harry, having just seen Snape "murder" DD, obviously
doesn't take his advice seriously.

But this scene, and the much-quoted scene in GoF where Sirius Black
talks about the corrupting influence of the UC's (and we see what
became of the two Crouches, who used them so freely) makes Harry's use
of Crucio on Amycus Carrow (who would more fittingly have been turned
into a cockroach, if Harry could manage it) extremely disturbing for
some readers, including me, especially when he quotes Bellatrix's
words about having to mean them. Bellatrix, the ubersadist, who
Cruciod the Longbottoms into insanity, is now a role model and teacher?

Snape *saves* Harry, whom he doesn't even like but has vowed to
protect, from a Crucio. Harry *Crucios* Amycus Carrow (admittedly a
contemptible piece of scum who deserves to spend eternity as a piece
of gum on the bottom of someone's shoe) for the crime of spitting on
McGonagall and she regards it as a "gallent" gesture! The moral
universe we thought that Rowling had established has been turned
upside-down.

BTW, I don't recall McGonagall using the Imperius Curse. Can you point
me to the passage?

Carol, sharing your objection to Harry's use of the Unforgiveables but
wanting to clarify that Snape does not use the Cruciatus Curse
anywhere in the books, and particularly not on Harry