[HPforGrownups] Re: DD's plan -- Minister of Magic

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 189145


> Eric:
>>
>> A good idea is a good idea.  And considering who we are talking about
>> (mass-murdering, torturing terrorists) I find it difficult to resist
>> the idea.
>>
>
> Pippin:
> Would it help you to resist if you remembered that one of the people 
> killed under that policy would have been Sirius Black?
>
> If the goal is to prevent innocent people from being murdered, it does not 
> seem that JKR thinks state-sponsored executions are such a good idea.
>
> Pippin

But Pippin, your argument is true of ANY public system of incarceration, 
exection or means of punishing criminals: we have the best intentions to 
make sure it's only the guilty are punished, but invaribly, there are 
innocents among those whom we locked up in a jail cell or were killed for a 
crime. The failure of the Ministry of Magic in this case was in jumping to 
the wrong conclusion and getting the wrong guy for the crime, but that 
happens everyday in real life, to very real people. I think JKR is saying 
that the Wizarding World is just as screwed up as our real one is.

Personally, the story of Sirius being wrongly accused is just a set up for 
her story- she needed Harry to be an orphan, to be abandoned, to be taken in 
by Muggles for her plot of "protection" via Aunt Petunia to work. Thus, she 
wasn't giving a message that "executions" were a bad thing as much as 
telling us that the MoM was a very, very flawed system of justice. Sirius 
later then becomes a plot devise again of "the things Harry was denied" in 
the love of family, promise of a home where warmth and laughter was shared, 
etc. He's used in the theme that Harry can make a difference by righting 
certain wrongs (execution of Buckbeak and Sirius), because both were 
innocent. She didn't say executions were wrong- only that executions of 
innocents were wrong.

Shelley