Dark Book, was Re: Dark Magic (+ a little Marietta)/Karma and the Twins

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 176938

Jen wrote: 
<snip>
The students have been under pressure all year from the Carrows which
in my understanding greatly enhanced the split between the houses. 
I'm sure Snape did what he could to protect the students but his hands
were tied by his secret allegiance, and violence and torture of
students sounded like a regular affair the entire year.  If it wasn't
happening directly to students, they were observing what happened to
others.  
> 
> It's too much to reprint here, but on pages 573-576 from The Lost 
Diadem chapter (US ed.), Neville talks about various events the 
Carrows were responsible for, including:  Having students (plural)
practice the Cruciatus curse on others who received detention 
(Neville points out a deep gash on his cheek at this point); the 
Carrows tortured 'mouthy' students but don't want to spill too much 
pure blood so they stop short of killing them; chained up a first
year; caused students to think twice about trying to help other kids
after torturing Michael Corner 'pretty badly' for attempting to 
release the chained-up first year; kidnapped kids to force relatives 
to behave; attempted to go for Gran when they couldn't stop Neville
from fighting back.....
> 
> It doesn't sound like Snape was able to stop the Carrows from doing
much when it came to punishment except those times when he was able 
to step in to divert the punishment, like when he assigned Ginny et. 
al. to detention with Hagrid.
>
Carol responds:

I agree that Snape could not stop the Carrows from torturing students,
but that's not what I was arguing against. I'm not talking about
punishment. I'm talking about what Amycus Carrow probably taught in
his DADA classes. Yes, he taught the Unforgiveable Curses )(and
Fiendfyre), but I don't think he taught them to the younger students
(which would have been pointless since most of them would lack the
will or the ability to cast an Unforgiveable Curse, particularly
against a fellow human being as opposed to, say, a spider or a fly). 

Since the *only* students we know of who tortured other students in
detention are Crabbe and Goyle, both seventh-years, there's no reason
to assume that the Unforgiveable Curses were taught to students below
sixth year, the year in which Crouch!Moody was supposed to introduce
the Unforgiveable Curses (learning about them, not how to perform
them) in GoF. It's also the year in which Snape taught his NEWT DADA
students about them in HBP. 

Since we don't hear about students killing or Crucioing each other in
the hallways, and students in fourth year (GoF) are told that they
don't have the power to perform the curses (*and* you have to mean
them--Harry doesn't perform a successful Crucio until what would have
been his seventh year), I don't think we can safely assume that Carrow
was teaching "each and every one of the students" (quoting lizzyben
from memory) to perform Unforgiveable Curses. It's more reasonable to
assume that he taught some nasty hexes to the fifth-years and under
but reserved the Unforgiveable Curses for students old enough to
perform them successfully. And even then, some of the students (e.g.,
Neville) probably refused to learn them or failed to perform them. (I
can't see Neville performing the Cruciatus Curse on anyone or anything
for any reason. It represents pure evil to him, IMO.) And note that
even Draco, a DE as far as we know and the son of a DE, hates
performing the Cruciatus Curse. I doubt that the Carrows had any
recruits to help them torture fellow students other than Crabbe and
Goyle. We don't hear of Draco joining in, for example. On the
contrary, we see that he, the "bad boy" of all the previous books,
hates casting it.

Anyway, to repeat, I'm not talking about the Carrows torturing the
students themselves. that's canon. I'm talking about the students
supposedly learning to torture or kill each other, as lizzyben claims.
If the younger students could perform a successful AK, I doubt that
McGonagall would be so concerned to keep anyone under seventeen off
the battlefield.

Carol, again emphasizing that we know of only two students who
performed the Cruciatus Curse *in school*, none is identified as
performing the Imperius Curse, and no student kills another or tries
to kill anyone until Crabbe attempts to AK Harry in the RoR