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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186432

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
 
> Carol responds:
. How many people, even in RL, would find  betrayal and murder "easier" than taking responsibility for a previous crime and going to prison? 

Pippin:
It's not clear that Peter intended to commit murder. If there was a curse that killed twelve people at once, Voldemort would surely have discovered and used it. It sounds as if the Ministry's cover story was partially correct and Peter exploded a gas main unintentionally when he used diffindo or reducto to blow a hole in the street. Peter may have become a killer more out of fear than out of hatred or indifference.

If those people had not died, then Sirius's laughter, if it had still taken place, would not have seemed so horrible, and he probably would have had a chance to explain himself. 

Ironically the belief that such a spell did exist may have been what convinced Voldemort that the Elder Wand had failed him. 
 
Carol:
 Surely, living in the sewers would be easier--and less dangerous.

Pippin:
Peter knows that once the Ministry knows he is still alive, the DE's still at large will find out too. He will have no protector, and Peter can't face life without a protector, even one that he loathes as much as Voldemort.

Carol: 
> 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.

Pippin:
Um, aren't you forgetting that Voldemort can't die? If the creature drowns, LV  will only return to the bodiless state in which Peter found him -- a state in which Voldie can still possess Nagini, if not Peter himself.  Peter's rat form won't help him to escape a snake. And Voldemort doesn't need Peter so much now that he has Barty. No, Peter does not have a lot of options here.

The point is not that Peter's choices aren't wrong. Of course they are. But he's not choosing them because he's decided that being evil will make him happier than being good.  He's choosing them because it's easier than being good. 

Pippin