Dumbledore WAS: Re: Love and Joy vs. Hate and Despair

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 190964


> > Pippin:
> > I'm confused. In your earlier post you mentioned mob rule, and now you say that having one guy decide for everyone else is just wrong. But if one person does not stand up to protect the innocent against the mob, who will?
> 
> Nikkalmati
> 
> There are more than two choices.

Pippin:
Could you expand on that?

 IIRC, you mentioned David and Uriah earlier. It was wrong for David to send Uriah to the forefront of battle for his personal advantage. But David always had to send some soldiers and not others to the forefront of battle. He was supposed to pick them on the basis of who he thought was going to win,  not for personal advantage, but also not, say, on the idea that it would be fairer if everyone had to face peril equally.

Come to think of it, he himself was a  child sent into battle against what looked to be hopeless odds. We might all be Philistines today if King Saul had refused on principle to let a boy fight Goliath. :)

Pippin earlier:
> > I wish there was an ethical canon that wasn't subject to severe misuse and had never been used to excuse bad behavior -- unfortunately clever people like Dumbledore can always find a way to rationalize their decisions no matter what ethics they subscribe to. 
> > 
> Nikkalmati
> 
> Well,then you agree "the greater good" is not a reliable guide to behavior.
> 

Pippin:
Like any guide, it's only as reliable as the people using it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have guides, just that they have to be used intelligently. Dumbledore's mistake,  in his Grindelwald days, was to think only of the greater good of wizards, when he should have been thinking of the greater good of Beings. He also gave up the idea of trying to impose his vision of the greater good by force, though that meant he sometimes could not protect innocent people, because he believed that more innocent people would be harmed if he intervened by force to stop it.  

>  
> Nikkalmati
> yes, there should have been a trial.  I think Sirius was sent to Azkaban on his initial utterance.  He probably would have retracted his guilty plea if given a chance.  There was much information that could have come out.  Did they try Priori Incantatum on Sirius' wand?  What about the Animagi information?  Maybe Pettigrew could have been caught.

Pippin:
I don't know if Sirius even got a chance to plead. They thought he was insane, because of the senseless attack on the Muggles and because he had laughed when he was captured. Perhaps he was, temporarily. And I suspect that after being held in Azkaban for a while, most people thought they were horribly guilty of something. I doubt Sirius could have held on to his belief in his innocence if he hadn't been able to transform. It's probably a good thing he never got the chance to tell the court he was an animagus, because they'd have kept him from transforming if they knew. 

If Sirius's wand appeared innocent, they would only think he had used another wand, or that he'd used some dark magic that didn't leave a trace. Whatever killed a wizard and twelve Muggles all at once could not have been an ordinary AK, which kills only one person at a time even when Voldemort uses it. 

As for hunting Peter,  they would have had to believe that Peter was an animagus. Only Sirius and Lupin could testify to that, and neither of them would have been a credible witness. McGonagall, expert witness for the prosecution, would have said that in her opinion such a spell was completely byond Peter's ability, and furthermore he was "hopeless at dueling." 

> Nikkalmati
> 
>  Such as Snape? :>).  I doubt DD was doing the investigating himself.  He probably relied on SS and maybe others to find the spy.

Pippin:
Snape could only investigate from the DE side of things --- he wasn't attending Order meetings or hanging out at their safe houses at this time. But since Lupin, James and Sirius were all aware that there was a spy in the Order and, according to Fudge,  Dumbledore suspected Sirius, there must have been some investigating going on. Lupin guesses correctly that the reason Sirius did not tell him about the secret keeper switch was that Sirius thought he was the spy.

And of course any  training they'd been given to resist interrogation by DE's and Ministry turncoats would also allow them to resist interrogation by Dumbledore or anyone else. 

Pippin