To kill or not to kill and resolutions of the storylineWAS :Re: Disarming spell

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 185487

Alla:
> I see the hints in the text, which I am not asking you to accept,
but I am thinking that maybe this storyline was indeed written that
> subtly that it could be ignored, you know?
> 
> I mean, Slughorn does return to fight, and while I wish that JKR
> would have never said that Slytherins return to fight and left it to
> the reader to decide, I think Pippin's interpretation of that quote
> can easily hold water. How indeed would Harry know that Slughorn
> returned with *friends of the remaining students*? Okay, families, I
> get, but friends?
> 
> So, what I am trying to say is that to me the originality is here
> only if I accept that Slytherins' redemption is written subtly and
it is not very glorious, glamorous, etc.
> 
> I mean, I cannot stand Draco, but he does save his friend from
mortal danger. Isn't that the deed of courage of JKR's favorite house?
> 
> I am not making sense, I am just trying to explain why I find
> Slytherins' resolution to be original.
> 
> But I would agree that if they are just bad guys, it is not
original. I just think that she portrayed the kids whose minds are
massively swayed by poison and what it did to them, not that they are
all bad.
> 
> But before you ask, yes, one thing goes against this argument of
> mine - against the subtlety I mean, I have no clue whatsoever why
the Hat was left to sort.

Pippin:
The Hat is left to sort because people still want to be sorted. They 
had their night of unity "all jumbled together", but  like Harry,
their House dormitory  is where they felt at home and  they really
only craved the company of a few.  

But we don't know if they still sit at House tables nowadays, do we?
Maybe not!

It seems to me that if you read the books with the sensibility of a
ten year old, you get the moral universe of a ten year old. And JKR is
saying there is nothing wrong that if you are, in fact, ten. You can't
force an adult's sense of moral complexity on a child, and you
shouldn't try.

But if you have an adult's sense of moral complexity, then you not
only shouldn't expect to find easy resolutions to moral problems, you
know there  aren't any, even if it looks that way at first. 

JKR doesn't have to have McGonagall give us a lecture on why Harry
shouldn't practice torture. No matter how good it feels or how richly
it seems to be deserved, we saw what Draco became and what Neville
refused to be: the pawn of a stronger torturer.

The same thing happens with murder. Harry's initial sense that killing
Voldemort would be murder does not last long in the face of
Voldemort's campaign of terror. He, like Draco, is only too pleased to
embrace an assignment to kill, and also it seems to be the only way he
can survive. But they both discover they are pawns in the hands of
someone who (apparently) cares no more about their own lives than
about the lives of their (supposedly) intended victims.

JKR doesn't have to demonstrate the  hazards of Harry's plan to
eliminate Voldemort because she already did that with Pettigrew.

If Harry had become distracted at the critical moment ("Look! A
Blibbering Humdinger!"), if he'd miscalculated about the Elder Wand as
badly as Lupin did when he tied himself to Pettigrew,  then  Voldemort
might have escaped, and  found  a way to rebuild his powers. 

Eliminating the horcruxes did not diminish the lifespan of Voldemort's
current body -- if he had surrendered or escaped, he might have lived
as long as Grindelwald. The possibility existed, and Harry would have
to have been a fool not to know it. That is where his courage lay, in
taking that risk so that he would not have to kill, and so that
Voldemort could have one final chance to repair his soul. 

Pippin