Even if one wishes to argue the virtues of mass murder as a method of intentional population control, which I find quite horrifying enough, I would hope that violent assault and month-long torture are not one’s preferred methods.
Alsadius
Karma: 2,638
What possible reason would you have to assume that? If we’re talking about an actually intelligent AI, it’d presumably be as smart as any other intelligent being(like, say, a human). If we’re talking about a dumb program, it can take into account anything that we want it to take into account.
Or Snape is just a good double agent.
I think the key line here is Dumbledore’s “The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order’s families.”(Ch. 62). IMO, he openly burned Narcissa alive, as a method of scaring the Death Eaters into leaving the Order’s families alone. It’s a reason that many would consider valid, I think, but it would sunder Harry from either Dumbledore(more likely) or Draco(less likely) when Harry finds out.
I’ll admit, a big part of my reason for that belief is narrative causality—I would not find this evidence convincing in an open world, but in the context of a fictional story, it fits a little too neatly for coincidence. It’s obvious that Harry is going to move out of Dumbledore’s camp at some point—their worldviews differ too strongly—but this would make an absolutely beautiful cause for the split.
And yes, “I don’t give in to intimidation” is a good start for getting people to stop threatening you, but ”...and if you try, I’ll start intimidating your people and see how you like it” works much better. There’s a reason nuclear deterrent involved having your own nukes, and not just saying “London can take it” writ large.
War makes people do some pretty awful things. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by the Death Eaters massacring families en masse as a threat to their opponents—in fact, Quirrell explicitly confirms that they did, in his post-Battle of Zabini speech.
If you’re the commander of the forces of the light, and you know that someone is knocking your people out of the war with tactics that you have no plausible way to stop directly(too many innocents to secure, etc.), then you’re faced with a problem that you must address for the war to continue, and one that you must address indirectly at that. Honestly, I can think of no better solution to that problem than...well, burning a completely innocent woman alive as a terror tactic. Maybe two or three, if the lesson didn’t take. Voldemort won’t care, but his people will, and it should at a minimum reduce the numbers of such attacks. It’s not fairytale logic of the sort Dumbledore prefers, but we know that he can be a hardass at need, and this seems like a need.
These are the tradeoffs you get when lives are the playing pieces of your game and you can’t walk away from the board. War sucks.
As for the hostage case, consider the logistics of holding a hostage. Voldemort is essentially all-powerful, and not even Dumbledore can best him in a straight-up fight(and of course, Voldemort’s a lot more likely to come rolling in with a SWAT team at 4 AM than to let you have a fair fight, especially MoR!Voldemort). You need some sort of fortification that can resist a trained and very pissed-off witch being inside it indefinitely, and an unbeatable army at the gates. Hogwarts is as close as Dumbledore has available, and as we saw in Deathly Hallows, it’s not sufficient. The alternative is a secret location, using magical anti-detection methods, but those have flaws of the sort the HP books spent a lot of time dealing with, and to my understanding of the spells involved, simply bringing Narcissa inside would ruin the secrecy were she ever to get out again. And of course, how do you pass messages telling Lucius that you have his wife and that you’ll kill her if they keep killing your family members, and have them be believed and respected?
That’s a reasonable narrative. We’ll have to wait to see exactly how it played out, of course, but I wouldn’t find that version surprising at all.
Conversely, however, remember how many of the basic protections we take for granted that don’t exist in the wizarding world. In a lot of ways it’s a medieval society, and very few leaders from that era would have flinched at doing something utterly brutal to make a point. Even real-world terrorist groups try to pretend to play by the rules of civilized society, because those rules are so expected that ignoring them would damage their cause terribly. It’s the same as dictators running “free elections”—they’re not, but they pretend for the PR value. I doubt that PR value exists in the wizarding world.
Dumbledore has no difficulty with action when needed(TSPE, most notably), but he’s been burned too many times by the cost of his efforts to be eager about it. He’d much prefer to stop the war by passive deeds(sequestering Harry, poisoning Voldemort’s father’s grave, etc.), and not risk the bloodshed that open war would cause, or even the loss of political capital caused by a showdown with Lucius Malfoy. There’s bound to be a big difference between an 11 year old sci-fi fan and a hundredish year old veteran when it comes to eagerness to do harm, and frankly I think that Dumbledore’s caution is at least as justified as Harry’s sneakiness when it comes to planning a war. After all, Harry’s never seen one of his incredibly clever plots fail, and he’s eleven, so he is naturally going to be far too eager. Inaction isn’t always wrong.
At risk of necromancy, I’ll reply.
It’s hideously inelegant, and it makes no testable predictions. That means it gets low marks from both Bayes and Science. It might conceivably be excusable to argue that most of the structure of the universe is hidden if you can actually produce elegant math or come up with some new predictions from that basis, but after thirty years the string theorists can’t even agree on how many dimensions to do the math in. A massive investment of effort has gone precisely nowhere, and there’s no reason to believe it’ll do better in future. I’ll pass.
I suppose my grammar was rather ambiguous. PR value certainly existed in the medieval world, I meant “that” as in “that particular”.
Not necessarily—what would the Polyjuice make you look like? Also, hair in Polyjuice is used at time of use, not at time of brewing, and that may be the difference.
More likely, from what we know in MoR, would be something from a troll. “The troll is unique among magical creatures in continuously maintaining a form of Transfiguration on itself—it is always transforming into its own body”(Ch. 16). Also, rereading that passage, with it’s “Expose them to sunlight” bit, does make the potion Harry brewed in 78 a lot more interesting. It’s probably too obscure to ever come up again, except maybe as a throwaway line about brewing troll repellant for sale, but it’s amusing anyways.
Yes, but will Fawkes care?
(I expect Dumbledore’s learned how to keep a secret from his pet bird by now, so Fawkes may not know, but if he did then I suspect he’ll be disgusted. Phoenixes don’t seem to do situational morality well.)
Re chapter 80: The only relevant cards I can think of that Harry owns are a threat to destroy Azkaban, and the truth about Bellatrix’s escape. The former is essentially an attempt to use naked force against the entire structure of magical Britain, which will fail miserably. The latter...well, it’s certainly shocking, but it would likely kill Harry and Quirrell both, and it’s not likely to get Hermione off the hook either. After that, there may be some sort of “trial by combat” rule or other archaic procedural crap he could use?
I have no ideas for any plan that would be likely to work, or even plausible.
The Dementor is literally death. The “sword that has slain a woman and rope that has hanged a man” ritual will almost certainly summon one, but that’s known Dark, and thus probably not something that can be used in the middle of a Wizengamot proceeding. And other than altering the punishment, how would this help? Even killing the Dementor outright will just make them mildly annoyed.
Dumbledore did (plausibly) burn Narcissa alive, and Potter saying so openly might be enough to swing something. It’d be unlikely to turn out well—Dumbledore would of course deny it, Potter’s alliance would instantly be sundered, and unless Dumbledore wound up in jail, it wouldn’t save Hermione. But, it might be tried.
The scarred man is likely Jugson, not Greyback. Isn’t Greyback in Azkaban right now? Not a solution, but it should be noted.
If he’s learned Avada Kedavra, there’s always the option of blinding everyone with a super-Patronus and then committing mass murder until your side has a majority. Somehow, I don’t see that one happening.
Snape and/or Quirrell(or someone else—Padma Patil would be a funny choice) comes to the rescue. Vanishingly unlikely, and hardly in keeping with the message of the story, but not strictly impossible.
Hermione figures out the super-Patronus, with Harry’s prompting. This one is actually the least crazy of the lot, I think—the super-Patronus works on the principle of love for all human life. Someone who casts it ought to be damn near incapable of murder, and if the principle could be explained to the Wizengamot without ruining everything, the fact that Hermione managed it would actually constitute exculpatory evidence. It likely wouldn’t be believed, but it’s closer to possible than most of the others.
As I said below though, these plans all share one common feature—they suck. I can’t think of one that isn’t either vanishingly unlikely or obviously stupid, and too stupid at that to be used even by a despairing child trying to save his girlfriend from a fate asymptotically approaching death.
Erm...isn’t the usual followup to an arrest to throw people in prison? I don’t think you’re thinking your comments through.
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I think you’ve hit on it. Well done.
It should also be pointed out, everyone thinks Voldemort is dead. Remember what happened in Order of the Phoenix to everyone who was spreading the bad news? That’s more likely to be met by confusion than by bargaining.
Agreed, but the precise form of his comment was sort of silly.
Why would I possibly feel that way? He was a rapist and a murderer. Crappy circumstances or not, he made that decision. That is not the mark of a victim.