Ironically, I guess in HPMOR one supervillain death is a tragedy and all Death Eaters dead is a statistic.
To me it feels like the issue is just, killing someone actively threatening your life in self-defence is acceptable, and killing someone who is entirely in your power just as a means to further some other goal is not. Which is actually a fairly common moral standard (e.g.: any country that does not have the death penalty). It’s not ground breaking but neither it feels contradictory to me. Harry explicitly also feels guilty about the fact that to some extent he thinks killing the Death Eaters was also instrumentally beneficial, even though in that context it was also totally self defence. But it turns out self defence gave him a chance to do something that his darker desires wanted anyway, and he does feel guilty over that (perhaps unreasonably so).
Quirrell of course is now immortal so anyway the question of whether he should be killed or not is purely academic.
Quirrell of course is now immortal so anyway the question of whether he should be killed or not is purely academic.
Not necessarily? “What magic can make, magic can corrupt”, also there’s no need[1] to know[2] locations of horcruxes—for all we know, a rare version of Summoning Charm could work.
“If she knew in very vague terms what the spell was supposed to do, or she was only partially wrong, then the spell would work as originally described in the book, not the way she’d been told it should.”, chapter 22
We know for certain that there are types of magic that could be used to get information about the locations of Horcruxes. Because Hermione had one.
There was an Unspeakable who showed up before Filius, ah, removed him. He performed certain spells he probably ought not to have known, and declared that Hermione’s soul was in healthy condition but at least a mile away from her body.
It’s clearly not common knowledge. But if some secret spells could spot that Hermione’s soul is displaced, there is likely other magic that could be used to divine the location more precisely.
Even if reliable means of locating Horcruxes could be obtained, dismantling Voldemort’s network would still be a megaproject.
But if some secret spells could spot that Hermione’s soul is displaced, there is likely other magic that could be used to divine the location more precisely.
If spell returns the actual distance instead of “is the distance greater than a fixed threshold built into the spell”, then relevant technomagic already exists under name “trilateration” (what GPS does, essentially).
dismantling Voldemort’s network would still be a megaproject
Totally within power of Harry’s generation, in my opinion, so they could take that option. “And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one,” as Gandalf said at the council deciding what to do with the One Ring.
To me it feels like the issue is just, killing someone actively threatening your life in self-defence is acceptable, and killing someone who is entirely in your power just as a means to further some other goal is not. Which is actually a fairly common moral standard (e.g.: any country that does not have the death penalty). It’s not ground breaking but neither it feels contradictory to me. Harry explicitly also feels guilty about the fact that to some extent he thinks killing the Death Eaters was also instrumentally beneficial, even though in that context it was also totally self defence. But it turns out self defence gave him a chance to do something that his darker desires wanted anyway, and he does feel guilty over that (perhaps unreasonably so).
Quirrell of course is now immortal so anyway the question of whether he should be killed or not is purely academic.
Not necessarily? “What magic can make, magic can corrupt”, also there’s no need[1] to know[2] locations of horcruxes—for all we know, a rare version of Summoning Charm could work.
“He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts and he cast a high-level Dark curse without knowing what it did.”, chapter 26
“If she knew in very vague terms what the spell was supposed to do, or she was only partially wrong, then the spell would work as originally described in the book, not the way she’d been told it should.”, chapter 22
We know for certain that there are types of magic that could be used to get information about the locations of Horcruxes. Because Hermione had one.
It’s clearly not common knowledge. But if some secret spells could spot that Hermione’s soul is displaced, there is likely other magic that could be used to divine the location more precisely.
Even if reliable means of locating Horcruxes could be obtained, dismantling Voldemort’s network would still be a megaproject.
If spell returns the actual distance instead of “is the distance greater than a fixed threshold built into the spell”, then relevant technomagic already exists under name “trilateration” (what GPS does, essentially).
Totally within power of Harry’s generation, in my opinion, so they could take that option. “And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one,” as Gandalf said at the council deciding what to do with the One Ring.