Lack of re-examination SPOILERS for Corambis and Tigana

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 186604

> > 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. 

a_svirn:
In other words, argues technicalities at wandpoint? Possibly. 

> Carol:
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. 

a_svirn:
Learn through the experience of ... murdering or trying hard to murder someone? While still not being a "killer at heart"? 

> Carol:
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. 

a_svirn:
Yes, he seems to have a rather disturbing habit of grading other peoples' souls. Certainly he is much more concerned with the state of Draco's soul, than that of Snape. 

> Carol:
(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.)

a_svirn:
I wonder why did Snape seem so devastated, very nearly deranged even, after committing this "humanitarian act" and saving Draco's soul in the process. Should he not have congratulated himself with the job well done instead? It looks like he wasn't on the same wave with Dumbledore on that one. 

> Carol:
> To return to Draco. On the one hand, Dumbledore is psychologically manipulating him when he says that Draco is not a killer. 

a_svirn:
Agreed. 

> Carol:
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. 

a_svirn:
If Dumbledore was easy to kill he wouldn't have lasted for so long. Moreover, everyone who was privy to the plan wouldn't have assumed that Draco was doomed to fail, and that it was actually Voldemort's way of punishing his father. And there is nothing in canon to suggest that Draco had been sabotaging his own work on cabinet. Quite the contrary: he was jubilant when he finally solved the problem. 

No, Draco is not a cold-blooded, bold avenger. He's instead queasy-stomached, panicky and inept. Moreover, I quite agree with magpie that in that scene at least he doesn't even want to kill. But it doesn't change the fact that he did try to kill several times, and that his victims survived not because of his inner qualities or Dumbledore's belief in his heart, but *despite* of all that. 

> Carol:
<snip>> 
> 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. 

a_svirn:
Does he though? Then what was he doing in the end of DH? Was he not trying to capture Harry and deliver him to his Lord and Master in order to regain his favour? Or, at the very least, sabotage whatever Harry was doing to prevail over Voldemort? 

> Carol:
He's not brave. He's not strong. But he's not evil. He's not a killer. 

a_svirn:
Not brave? Obviously. Not strong? Definitely. Not evil? No, probably, not. Not a killer? Well, he hasn't killed, certainly. But not for the lack of trying, so what does it tell of his heart? 


> 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

a_svirn:
Hm. I don't know. Sirius and Regulus's parents were Pureblood supremacists as well, yet they both – each in their own fashion – rejected their family values.