I disagree. By not having any external penalty, it makes his decision not to kill V a choice, not an act made from fear.
This whole new business about if someone takes your wand they have become its master has me wondering about previous times in the series when people have been disarmed. Hasn’t Harry previously had his wand taken away? Did he lose the mastery of his wand at that point? Did he become the master of others’ wands after expelliarmusing them?
What about the times they’ve practiced expelliarmus on one another? The wand must have known it was only practice?
Seems rather more like a convenient device to add in this book.
The wand probably can tell the difference between schoolyard scuffling and a proper Wizarding beat down.
All Big Climatic Scenes in Potterworld must be in the Spring time.
I don’t necessarily mean an external penalty – I’d be fine with Harry sitting down after using an Unforgivable and realizing the weight of what he’d done. Maybe even a conversation with Hermione about it, since she’s stood in for his conscience so often.
I absolutely understand the principle of “shoot to disarm, even when it’s Voldemort, because that is what makes us the Good Guys.” I thought that Harry understood that principle, too, especially after the Order makes such a big deal out of his choice of tactics and he sticks to his determination to do the right thing.
I understand Harry losing his temper, too – insults can be worse than injuries sometimes, and he was in a very emotional situation. But Harry has a whole library of spells at his disposal. He could also have used Levicorpus, Petrificus Totalus, Stupefy, or even Sectumsempra and not crossed the line into the Unforgiveables. Having practiced for so long with the D.A. at using “soft” spells, and expressed his principle of restraint, the use of Crucio can’t even be written off as a knee-jerk reaction – he even says that he really meant it.
It’s clearly a deliberate choice on Rowling’s part. Do I just not get it? Why is it acceptable for Harry to use an Unforgiveable Curse as a response to an insult? Why doesn’t his character lose some of its shine at that point?
Or maybe it applies only to the Elder Wand.
Because he didn’t want Harry to seize the Hallows for the wrong reasons.
I’m getting more at the point that everyone is amazed that Harry is a Parselmouth. That (to me) seems to imply it’s inherently magical to be able to speak to snakes, not just knowing what sounds tie to what meanings. If you could learn Parseltongue, rather than having to be born speaking it, I’d have thought someone somewhere would have written down a Parseltongue primer and you could take an owl-order class in it or something. After all, if there are people [del]weird[/del] dedicated enough to learn a made up language like Klingon, there’d be people who want to be able to speak to snakes too.
You are a genius. Followed by Harry taunting Voldemort’s dead body “You’re no daisy!”
The interview airs on July 26 and 27 (Thursday and Friday) on the Today show, and on July 29 (Sunday) on Dateline NBC. Since it hasn’t aired yet, I don’t expect NBC to release a transcript.
I didn’t want to see a scene with George weeping: I wanted to see a scene with him later, having moved on a little, to get a sense of how he’s getting on without his twin. I wanted this from a lot of characters: something about the ends of their stories, a closing of that chapter in their lives and a sense that their lives were going to go on. After investing 7 books in most of them, you’d think we’d get that much instead of having them discarded as side-plots that had now served their purpose.
Right. It’s much like the martial arts idea that (with traditional training by a good teacher) by the time you are so good at what you’re learning that you can kill someone with your bare hands, you’ll be mature enough to have the self-control not to. If I’m remembering it right, Dumbledore had the stone/ring and the wand for at least a good quantity of one book, and Harry the cloak since book one - the Hallows were all under Hogwarts’ roof together, 'though Harry didn’t know it at the time. But if Harry had simply been presented with the Hallows in Dumbledore’s office, he wouldn’t have had the maturity to handle them without succumbing to their dark side the way everyone else did. It’s a pretty common idea in Quest Lit idea; the Quest itself shapes and prepares the Quester for his tools and tests.
Plus, of course, Dumbledore wasn’t all that jazzed with the Hallows, anyway, was my impression. After all, he manipulated Snape into killing him at least partly to disarm the Elder wand (as well, I still believe, as to save Draco from himself) so no one could ever use it again. Giving it to Harry as a weapon was not what he wanted to do at all.
Actually, in the King’s Cross chapter, Dumbledore explains that when he found Marvolo’s ring and saw the Resurrection Stone on it, he was so eager to use it that he put the ring on immediately without destroying the horcrux first (p. 719 in the American hardcover edition)
I agree. I think it was way out of line. Also strange, he can’t muster enough anger (righteous or otherwise) toward Bellatrix right after she killed Sirius to get a Cruciatus curse going, but he’s able to do it to a random Death Eater for spitting in a Professor’s face? It seemed tossed in there, it didn’t fit in with Harry’s character, and I didn’t care for it.
Granted, he was going through a lot, it could have been a “last straw” kind of situation, but he still should at least have been reprimanded for it.
If there was a show of remorse later (which there very well may have been, this is Harry we’re talking about), we certainly didn’t see it. There was that nineteen year gap at the end, though.
Changing topics, I also wondered why Voldemort killed Snape via flying bubble-snake as opposed to Avada Kedavra. From a storyline perspective, he needed to be alive just long enough to give his memories to Harry, but from V’s perspective? Was that any way to repay (in his mind) his most loyal servant? Perhaps he thought it was an honor to kill Snape with Nagini.
kaylasdad99:
That wasn’t a potion, it was a memory, such as can be stored and viewed in the Penseive.
oft wears hats:
Because the only wand Voldemort had was the Elder Wand, which would not work properly against its recognized master, who he thought was Snape.
Fair enough, though I thought he had retained his original wand. Though if he did, I suppose the time it would take for him to draw it would have given Snape a chance to run or defend himself.
I like the glossing over death thing as well. It seemed very realistic. I’m sure people fighting a war would encounter death in the same way–come back from a battle and find out that one or more of your friends died. I also think that having only a sentence or so about a death in the book is a nice touch. It hits like a punch out of nowhere, then the world moves on.
Because he was afraid that the Elder Wand might not work against its true owner?
ETA: Read the whole thread before answering!!!
Notice that Harry doesn’t use any Unforgiveable Curses after Voldemort’s soul shard is purged from him. He instead uses his signature (defensive) move, and Voldy uses his signature (killing) move.
Also notice that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction: Harry was taught how to cast Unforgiveable Curses by Death Eaters, and uses it against them.
Tonks is there to demonstrate the principle that someone’s Patronus can change over time, due to emotional impact. She is also there to demonstrate that magical powers can fade for the same reason. Both principles are important: the Patronus thing shows the depth of Snape’s love for Lily, and the magical-powers-fade thing shows why Tom Riddle’s mother couldn’t save herself, at the end.
Both illustrations reinforce the notion (and Dumbledore’s theory, and Bellatrix’s comment) that wizarding takes emotional commitment.
Could that have been handled through the use of a different character? Possibly — but who? Few of Harry’s classmates were capable of producing a decent Patronus at the time those principles were introduced.
I loved the red herring of the treasure references on the Dumbledore family crypt and the Ravensclaw statue, incidentally. I was sure something would be buried in the Dumbledore grave other than Ariana (who I was convinced was a myth).
Hmm. Perhaps the purging of the possible influence that the Voldy shard had on him, or a laying down of any extra aggressive feelings having seen what such things lead to (seeing the Voldy shard in agony in King’s Cross). Or a combination of both. If it’s the former, it really is a credit to Harry that he’s so good despite spending most of his life as host to an eighth of the soul of a powerful dark wizard. His indiscretion using the Cruciatus curse on that Death Eater was unusual behavior for him.