Lack of re-examination SPOILERS for Corambis and Tigana

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186603

a_svirn:
> > ,snip> 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. <snip>

Carol responds:

I snipped the last part of your post because I think I understand what you're saying but it's so different from my own view that I'm just going to hoist the agree-to-disagree flag rather than attempting to discuss it. 

But with regard to Draco, I agree with you. As Hermione says, the person who poisoned the mead (or arranged to have it poisoned) and tried to bring the cursed necklace into the school is actually more dangerous than a determined killer focusing on a single target because he nearly kills innocent people in his carelessness and desperation. So even though Draco finds himself unable to kill Dumbledore when they're face to face and lowers his wand slightly, we can't regard him as innocent. He's been trying, however ineptly, to kill Dumbledore all year; he has endangered his classmates; and he has brought Death Eaters into Hogwarts. (That he didn't want the horrible Fenrir Greyback to be included humanizes him slightly but does not make his action any more innocent.) He is unqestionably an accessory before the fact in Dumbledore's death, which in his own view as in Harry's is a murder since he thinks that Snape is a loyal Death Eater and has no idea of the arrangements between him and Dumbledore. And, had any of the other DEs killed DD, it *would* have been murder. (He has also Imperio'd Madam Rosmerta, using an Unforgiveable Curse to make *her* an accomplice to intended murder.)

Then what does Dumbledore mean by suggesting that Draco is an innocent? Or is he referring to Draco at all when he says that killing is not as easy as the innocent believe? Possibly, he means that Draco is "innocent" in that he has not killed. Or maybe he means that Draco has lost his innocence and learned through experience that killing isn't as easy as those who are truly innocent believe. Certainly, he doesn't believe that Draco's soul is as "pure" as Harry's (setting aside the question of whether Harry's is really pure, which I don't want to get into here). DD tells Snape that Draco's soul is "not yet so damaged" that he would want it to be "ripped apart on his account" (DH Am. ed. 685). The implication is that Draco's soul is spotted and impure but whole and DD wants it to stay that way. (Draco's soul would be torn because his killing of DD, however reluctantly, would be murder; Snape's killing of DD, in contrast, would be a humanitarian act to "help an old man avoid pain and humiliation" (and save Draco's soul in the process), not murder, so his soul--more damaged already than Draco's but still intact--is safe from further damage.)

To return to Draco. On the one hand, Dumbledore is psychologically manipulating him when he says that Draco is not a killer. But, on the other hand, he's clearly right. If Draco were the cold-blooded killer he imagines himself to be at the beginning of the year, bent on avenging his father and earning lasting "glory" as Voldemort's favorite Death Eater, he'd have found a way to kill Dumbledore more quickly and efficiently or at least repaired the Vanishing Cabinet more quickly to bring in DE back-up since even with an injured hand, the "stupid old man" was likely to be more than a match for a sixteen-year-old boy. 

Besides the lessons he learns about the real nature of Voldemort, Draco does learn that killing is difficult and that he, unlike Aunt Bellatrix, is not a killer. He may have had no difficulty with the Imperius Curse, but he later finds that he doesn't like Crucioing people, either. (How he manages to cast the spell without enjoying it, I don't know, but I'm ignoring JKR's inconsistencies here.) HBP teaches him that he doesn't have the makings of a Death Eater. He isn't his father (an interesting parallel with Harry that might be worth exploring at some point).

Draco is an interesting case of a character who starts out bad, an arrogant bully and a bigot who supports the Dark Lord and the weeding out of Muggle-borns and "blood traitors." (Harry's belief that Draco is enamored of Dark magic seems to have no basis in canon, but he has plenty of unpleasant characteristics and the potential to fall into evil without that particular trait.) The mission to kill Dumbledore (which turns out to be dangerous and difficult and not at all glorious) reshapes Draco's thinking. He does not become good, exactly. He can't recover his lost innocence (which, nasty as he was, he must have had before his parents indoctrinated him and he started wishing death on Muggle-borns). He can't undo attempted murder or his role as accessory in the death of Dumbledore. And he can't find the courage actually to stand up to Voldemort for fear of death and torture for himself and his family. But he does, at least, refuse to directly identify HRH to his still-loyal DE father and his sadistic Aunt Bellatrix. He at least wants to do the right thing as far as possible without being tortured or killed. He's not brave. He's not strong. But he's not evil. He's not a killer. And he's much more human, much more pitiable, than he was before HBP (IMO). He is effectively neutralized,  and, in the epilogue, grudgingly grateful to Harry. whether he becomes a productive citizen, we don't know, but he seems unlikely to fall into further evil even if another Dark Lord arises to take Voldemort's place.

Carol, who thinks that Draco's incomplete redemption is as much as we can expect from a character brought up in a family of Pure-Blood supremacists and Voldemort supporters