Lack of re-examination SPOILERS for Corambis and Tigana

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 186601

> a_svirn:
> Yes, definitely. But I still think it's wrong to divorce peoples' inner nature, so to speak,  from their actual behaviour. At best it's confusing, quite often it's just a way to avoid accountability.

Magpie:
I feel like that's a definite issue throughout the books or amongst readers. Because to use Draco as an example--and I think he's one of the best examples--as you say, he's taken steps to murder someone and people got hurt. But what does Dumbledore mean when he says he's not a killer? Because he got lucky/unlucky?

I get what he means in context--Draco doesn't really want to murder somebody. That's true. And I understand why Dumbledore's saying that--he's basically telling him to go with that impulse because it'll make him happier (and people will not be killed if he doesn't do anything to kill them). After the scene on the Tower Draco is, imo, genuinely not a killer because he is a person consciously does not to kill. 

But before then, what Draco really wants to do doesn't make the poison or the necklace less deadly. He's not a killer in the scene with Dumbledore because he doesn't throw a killing curse, not because his soul is innocent or he's good at heart. And that's the kind of grey area that gets weird, imo. Because I do get the feeling that there's some quality that characterize some characters and not others and that this quality changes their actions in some way. Snape's a sadist while Harry is not, despite Snape stopping Crucios that Harry throws. James' bullying does seem put across as fundamentally different than, say, Draco's, even when the text draws clear parallels with their language. (The twins, too.) Sorting of all types really does seem to be accurate within the series. Even if I'm not always sure what it means. That's why I do think there's a recognizable way of reading the text that seems like reading against it--and I know I'm not the only person who focuses on this pattern--where you expect peoples' actions to have a different weight than they do. 

-m