[HPforGrownups] Re: What HP Character Scares You Most?

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 191868

Quoting sartoris <sartoris22 at yahoo.com>:

> Sartoris22:
>
> Because of Voldemort's family background, I feel some sympathy for   
> him. Essentially, he seems a guy trying to get back at the father   
> who abandoned him. Bellatrix, on the other hand, comes from   
> privilege and seems to hate Muggles only for their difference, their  
>  inferiority, in her mind. Bellatrix gleefully kills Sirius, her own  
>  family, and apparently delights in murder. Even Voldemort might   
> construe murder, in some way, as means to an end--the magical power   
> of splitting the soul seven times. Bellatrix, however, seems a   
> maniacal true believer. Of all the characters, she is the person I   
> would most fear being alone with in a room.
>
There's a lot more excuse for Voldemort than for Bellatrix.  Besides  
his abandonment issues and his raising in an orphanage (it wasn't  
apparently nearly as bad as fandom had speculated before we got to see  
it in D'dore's memories, but those places are no substitute for a  
normal or even nearly-normal family life) he could easily have  
inherited mental problems from the Gaunt side of his family.  I've  
wondered what a CAT scan would have made of young Tom Riddle's brain.   
Not to mention his mother, grandfather and uncle.

Bella, OTOH, seems to be a sick, sadistic person who causes pain and  
suffering merely for the thrills she gets from it.  It's appropriate  
that she was played by the same person who played Mrs. Lovett in the  
movie _Sweeney Todd,_ because the characters have a lot in common.   
Mrs. Lovett is a lot more evil, with a lot less excuse, than Sweeney  
Todd---he at least has the excuse that he was driven far over the edge  
by the treatment he got and the suffering he endured, while she's  
merely a greedy, callous woman who's perfectly willing to exploit a  
very mentally ill person and sign off on, if not commit with her own  
hands, serial murder of unoffending people just so she can make a  
success of her pie shop.  I can find pity in my heart for Sweeney, who  
can say with Dr. Jekyll:

"If I was the chief of sinners, I was also the chief of sufferers.   
Both sides of me were always in deadly earnest,"

but not a shred for Mrs. Lovett...and not a shred for Bella, either,  
who has far less excuse for her ravages than Voldemort ever did.

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