[HPforGrownups] Re: Unbreakable Vows

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 165591

Neri:
>I think you need to make up your mind whether Dumbledore was
>"temporarily alive" or "already been killed". These are not a same
>thing at all, you know. Killing a man who has yet one month to live
>(or a day or an hour) is still murder. I don't see JKR justifying
>murder in her books because the victim was just temporarily alive. We
>are all just temporarily alive.

You aren't thinking about magic, here. In a world with Inferi, the line between life and death is not quite that fine. Consider, for example, a patient in a hospital whose system has pretty much shut down; they will stay alive only as long as CPR is maintained. The medical staff can't keep the CPR up forever, but, sometimes, if there is a strong reason for the paitent to stay alive for a bit longer (especially if the patient is conscious, such as saying goodbye to his/her loved ones), the medical staff will work to keep the patient alive. In other words, the patient is only alive because of extraordinary efforts by others. Given this, consider that Dumbledore was about to die from the ring, is only being kept alive by the extraordinary efforts of Prof. Snape. Prof. Snape cannot keep this up forever, and therefore Dumbledore, with Snape's reluctant cooperation, has decided to stall his actual death until it would do the most good. 

According to this theory, Snape is as responsible for killing Dumbledore as a doctor who ceases to give CPR to a patient with no prognosis of recovery is of killing his or her patient. 

Bart