*ETA: Oh yeah, and the whole mystery of who Dumbledore's talking about here is his slow sister he didn't want to take care of. Which would be actually a really interesting story if I didn't hear it so many times in DH, where it really wasn't as important as people acted like it was.
And if it still didn't make zero sense. I don't see how the words he says here connect at all to the traumatic event when he, Gellert, and Aberforth were brawling. Unless he's saying Ariana's lines? "Don't hurt them, hurt me?" Doesn't that sound like something she would say, rather than DD?
If he were really re-living that moment, wouldn't it be something more like, "Stop trying to run my life you goat-loving freak!"?
*ETA: Honestly, I don't get why Harry uses Sectumsempra here. I mean, it's a perfectly good spell to use if he used it correctly, like by cutting off the zombie's arms and legs or heads so they can't come after him. But I don't really get what the spell's supposed to mean thematically. He almost killed another boy accidentally with it during a fight, so why does the author choose to have him use it here? (Since it's not like he's using it strategically the way I mentioned above.) It seems like it really is just about him adding it to his badass arsenal after trying it out successfully--like Levicorpus.
Well, that's the whole thing, isn't it? Was it all misdirection--starting with Minerva's line about DD being "too noble" to use Dark Magic? We were consistently told that Dark Magic was evil and the sign of a Dark Wizard. But the very spells that Hermione condemned as suspect in HBP she used without qualms in DH. So, it wasn't the magic that was bad, it was the person who invented the spell (a person she had every reason to think the worst of in DH).
One would think that JKR was making a very sophisticated point about the hypocrisy of our world. It's torture if someone does it to our people, but it's merely enhanced interrogation if we do it to those evil people we captured. But it doesn't come off as irony. It comes off as self-serving as.... well, you know who.
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timeasmymeasure
Part Two
Date: 2009-01-23 05:16 pm (UTC)And if it still didn't make zero sense. I don't see how the words he says here connect at all to the traumatic event when he, Gellert, and Aberforth were brawling. Unless he's saying Ariana's lines? "Don't hurt them, hurt me?" Doesn't that sound like something she would say, rather than DD?
If he were really re-living that moment, wouldn't it be something more like, "Stop trying to run my life you goat-loving freak!"?
*ETA: Honestly, I don't get why Harry uses Sectumsempra here. I mean, it's a perfectly good spell to use if he used it correctly, like by cutting off the zombie's arms and legs or heads so they can't come after him. But I don't really get what the spell's supposed to mean thematically. He almost killed another boy accidentally with it during a fight, so why does the author choose to have him use it here? (Since it's not like he's using it strategically the way I mentioned above.) It seems like it really is just about him adding it to his badass arsenal after trying it out successfully--like Levicorpus.
Well, that's the whole thing, isn't it? Was it all misdirection--starting with Minerva's line about DD being "too noble" to use Dark Magic? We were consistently told that Dark Magic was evil and the sign of a Dark Wizard. But the very spells that Hermione condemned as suspect in HBP she used without qualms in DH. So, it wasn't the magic that was bad, it was the person who invented the spell (a person she had every reason to think the worst of in DH).
One would think that JKR was making a very sophisticated point about the hypocrisy of our world. It's torture if someone does it to our people, but it's merely enhanced interrogation if we do it to those evil people we captured. But it doesn't come off as irony. It comes off as self-serving as.... well, you know who.