Genre WAS: That Bloody Man Again

[pippin_999]

Nora:
> The Order is still on the side of Good, and Voldemort is Evil. 
Love 
> is Good.  I'll make fairly solid predictions that the scale isn't 
> going to be fundamentally upset.  Individuals can wax and wane in 
> their adherence to either side.  But I do get the feeling that 
> opportunists go somewhere worse than the Vestibule.
> 
> -Nora thinks: morally ambiguous characters!  Shock and awe!

Pippin:
Maybe I am not following you, but you seem to be saying that
in a morally ambiguous universe there is nothing very shocking about 
morally ambiguous characters, while in a world which posits a stark 
division between Good and Evil, there can't *be* morally ambiguous 
characters. I think Jo wants to show us  a world of Good and
Evil in which there *are* morally ambigous characters, where the
triumph of Good depends on its refusal to micromanage moral
certainty. I think, by your own definition, that's subversive.

Murder is Bad, okay.  Love is Good, you betcha. Picking on people at 
school is...acne. Horrible while it lasts, but mostly people get over
it. Potentially disfiguring, fatal in rare cases, we'd all
be happier if it didn't exist, but a threat to civilization as we know
it, no. No point in trying to curse your nose off to get rid of it.

The fate of the opportunists is to lead cramped, pointless lives,
never knowing that  joy and wonder exists just beyond
their blinkered vision. How sad. But they're not murderers. Even
Umbridge isn't.

Pippin