Easier / Insecure!Ron + Hermione / The sword in the pond

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186428

Magpie wrote:
> 
> << The idea of somebody saying "Well, I just cut off my own hand because it was easier" just sounds hilarious. >>
> 
Pippin replied:
> 
> << Not if you finish the sentence "easier than getting killed." >>

Catlady responded:
> I find the rest of Pippin's post to be insightful, but I don't agree with this one sentence. My thought is not about good and evil and whether to obey a terrifying monster's command, but about a news report I once heard about a man who cut off his own arm with a pocket knife because it was trapped under a boulder and he would die of dehydration and exposure if he didn't get out of that isolated canyon ... <snip>

Carol responds:
I'm not sure that "right vs. easy" applies to Wormtail at all, especially once we get past his initial choice to betray the Potters. Clearly, the right choice in that instance was to hold out against threats and torture and keep the secret with which he had been entrusted. Not that betraying his friends was *easy*--he seems to have felt about it if Lily's letter to Padfoot is any indication, but it was certainly easier than doing the right thing and staying true to his friends. But in that instance, the "easy" choice was also unquestionably the *wrong* choice. He betrayed them to their deaths. 

Peter's next clear choice, between confessing his crime and going to Azkaban or framing Sirius (and killing a dozen Muggles in the process) can also be presented as right vs. easy, but it, too, is a clear case of right vs. wrong. How many people, even in RL, would find  betrayal and murder "easier" than taking responsibility for a previous crime and going to prison? (Sure, criminals make this choice all the time, but would a good person who had betrayed a friend out of cowardice find it "easy" to compound his crimes in this way? Or has "right vs. easy" ceased to apply, leaving Wormtail with the simple choice of right vs. wrong (and courage vs. self-preserving cowardice)?

Obviously, hiding out in rat form rather than turning himself in is "easy," but I don't think it's a choice since he never considers the alternative. And even making the effort to escape from Crookshanks (and Sirius) isn't right vs. easy; it's self-preservation vs. comfort, with the "easy" choice of staying put being most likely fatal. Since staying with Lupin and Black once he's caught is not an option in Wormtail's book and staying on as Ron's rat is no longer possible, the next choice is whether to return to Lord Voldemort (now living in vapor form somewhere in Albania) or take the chance of being found and caught again by his former friends. Just how returning to Voldemort, talking to rats and other small animals to track down the monster that's possessing and killing them, qualifies as an easy choice, I'm not sure. Surely, living in the sewers would be easier--and less dangerous. But Peter, feeling weak and vulnerable, I suppose, chooses to return to the biggest bully on the block, even though that bully doesn't even have a body. And he chooses to serve that bullying master, actually restoring him to not one but two bodies, not as a choice between right and easy but as a choice between serving a powerful master and having no protection. He has, as Voldemort points out in GoF, no place else to go.

Even cutting off his arm is not a choice between right vs. easy. The easy choice would be,as Harry thinks, to "let it drown"--or, at least, to leave the helpless but unquestionably evil creature to die. Whether that would also be the right choice, we can all decide for ourselves, but it seems to me more right--or less wrong--than restoring an evil overlord to a body that will enable him to do great harm. But Wormtail, perhaps fearing retribution from the thing in the cauldron, makes the hard choice of cutting off his own hand. Whatever choice he's facing, it isn't a moral one. I suppose he knows that cutting off his own right hand is the only way he can bring back the master he loathes and fears but without whom he is, he thinks, in much greater danger. And besides, it seems, Voldemort has promised him a new hand in place of the old one. A little pain, a little blood, and then--a beautiful silver hand, the like of which no one has ever seen. Or so I gather from Wormtail's subsequent actions and Voldemort's words.

At the end of his life, Wormtail is offered one last choice, not between right and easy but between right (mercy in return for mercy) and wrong (killing someone who has shown him mercy). Ironically, he pays with his life for making the clear right choice.

Of course, had he chosen right vs. easy in the first place, he would never have faced all those other choices. He would be dead.

Carol earlier:
> 
> << [Ron] he has the confidence to let *Hermione* destroy the cup Horcrux after he has had the resourcefulness to get them into the Chamber of Secrets in the first place. >>

Catlady 
> I kind of had the idea that Ron *made* (rather than *let*) Hermione destroy the cup Horcrux, and that a leading part of his motive was for Hermione to undergo that experience of being wrung out, so she would be less arrogant. 
> 
> If he were still insecure!Ron, he would not have wanted her to watch him destroy a Horcrux because he would not want her to see him confronting his inmost hopes and fears. So I kind of hope he gave Hermione some privacy to destroy the cup, because if he watched her confront her inmost hopes and fears while she had not watched his, he would be kind of one-up on her.

Carol responds:
That's an interesting interpretation, but I don't see any evidence to support it. Ron simply says that he thought she should stab it "because she hadn't had the pleasure yet" (DH 623). Hermione at this point, judging from her behavior afterwards, is already glowing with admiration for Ron. It's his idea to enter the CoS and use a Basilisk fang to destroy the cup Horcrux. He manages to remember the word in Parseltongue for "Open!" and open the Chamber. She keeps repeating that he was "Amazing!"

Naturally, under those circumstances, our chivalrous Gryffindor, who has already proven himself worthy by destroying a Horcrux, would offer Hermione her own chance. 

As for offering her privacy to destroy the cup, I see no reason why it would know her inmost fears. She hasn't written in it as Ginny wrote in the diary or worn it close to her heart as they all wore the locket. She hasn't had it long enough to form any sort of bond with it, and after the locket, I think they'd all be leery of holding it much. In fact, I'm not even sure how the cup Horcrux would have formed a bond with anyone. You can't wear a cup as you can a locket or a ring or even a tiara. Would you just stare at it and admire it for its beauty and craftsmanship, as Helga apparently used to do before it was Horcruxed? Would you have to drink from it to feel its powers? It doesn't seem to have been cursed like the ring, and it can't be opened  like the locket. How would you even interact with it?

In any case, there's no indication of any struggle with it. Just Hermione stabbing it because Ron thought that she should, Hermione praising Ron to the skies (for a change), and Ron saying that "it was nothing." I don't think he'd say that if Hermione had struggled with the Horcrux and triumphed over it as he triumphed over the locket.
 
Carol, snipping the other comments because the post is already too long