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There was one comment I wanted to pull out from the recent Lily threads for separate discussion.
I’m glad Hwyla pointed out that Lily almost had to have been a prefect in SWM. I’d been wanting someone to bring that up.
Warning: Lily-bashing ahead. At least I can't come up with any way to have Lily look good in SWM if she's really a prefect as well as Snape's supposed best friend.
Is it credible that Lily, a scant year later chosen to be Head Girl, was NOT a prefect in SWM?
Can anyone make a case (without violently contorting) that she was not?
Yet if she was: what does that say about her behavior in SWM? It was her perfectly duty as much as Lupin’s to discipline James and Sirius—both to stop their misbehavior, to punish them, and to prevent (one hopes, although in this case probably futilely) recidivism. Why isn’t Lily in there docking house points from Gryffindor and issuing detentions?
I mean, imagine if Hermione had found Cormac McLaggen and a couple of his friends ganging up on Ron. Or Percy witnessing several Gryffindors setting on Penelope. Would either of them credibly react as Lily does?
We know what we think of Prefect Lupin’s cowardice in not stopping his friends. But at least we understand his motives.
Lily’s motives…. Is she guilty of more favoritism than Snape at his worst, unwilling to punish her own house? (At least the Slytherins, as Whitehand points out, actually make considerable effort to make sure Snape doesn’t directly see their worst misbehavior. James checked to make sure Lily was watching before he started in on Snape!)
Is she a coward like Lupin, whose girlfriends have made her aware they will ostracize her if she punishes the wrong people (two popular, rich, good-looking Gryff boys, one a Quidditch star) or takes too many house points?
Is this James’s way of getting Lily to commit publicly to engaging him one-on-one rather than prefect-to-misbehaving student?
Or is she simply too weak to enforce her authority?
I can’t come up with any way to have Lily be a prefect and not look worse than Lupin.
And I can’t come up with any plausible reason why the future Head Girl wouldn’t have been Prefect.
(Oh fine, I can so. Mary Sue Macdonald, who was Lily's superior in all conceivable and inconceivable ways, was Gryffindor prefect fifth year and a shoo-in for Head Girl in Seventh. But Mulciber, who adored her, killed her sixth year in a fit of jealous rage--you'll be happy to know DD prevented his being expelled. Alternatively, the MoM pulled her from school to serve as head of the DMLE to lead the fight against You-Know-Who. She asked (with her dying breath or from her new position of power) that her mantle be passed to her lowly friend Lily, as a symbol of hope for Muggleborns that despite their inferior blood and abilities,they too might be granted a position of power if they pleased their superiors. The End.)
Bad fanfic aside, discuss?
I’m glad Hwyla pointed out that Lily almost had to have been a prefect in SWM. I’d been wanting someone to bring that up.
Warning: Lily-bashing ahead. At least I can't come up with any way to have Lily look good in SWM if she's really a prefect as well as Snape's supposed best friend.
Is it credible that Lily, a scant year later chosen to be Head Girl, was NOT a prefect in SWM?
Can anyone make a case (without violently contorting) that she was not?
Yet if she was: what does that say about her behavior in SWM? It was her perfectly duty as much as Lupin’s to discipline James and Sirius—both to stop their misbehavior, to punish them, and to prevent (one hopes, although in this case probably futilely) recidivism. Why isn’t Lily in there docking house points from Gryffindor and issuing detentions?
I mean, imagine if Hermione had found Cormac McLaggen and a couple of his friends ganging up on Ron. Or Percy witnessing several Gryffindors setting on Penelope. Would either of them credibly react as Lily does?
We know what we think of Prefect Lupin’s cowardice in not stopping his friends. But at least we understand his motives.
Lily’s motives…. Is she guilty of more favoritism than Snape at his worst, unwilling to punish her own house? (At least the Slytherins, as Whitehand points out, actually make considerable effort to make sure Snape doesn’t directly see their worst misbehavior. James checked to make sure Lily was watching before he started in on Snape!)
Is she a coward like Lupin, whose girlfriends have made her aware they will ostracize her if she punishes the wrong people (two popular, rich, good-looking Gryff boys, one a Quidditch star) or takes too many house points?
Is this James’s way of getting Lily to commit publicly to engaging him one-on-one rather than prefect-to-misbehaving student?
Or is she simply too weak to enforce her authority?
I can’t come up with any way to have Lily be a prefect and not look worse than Lupin.
And I can’t come up with any plausible reason why the future Head Girl wouldn’t have been Prefect.
(Oh fine, I can so. Mary Sue Macdonald, who was Lily's superior in all conceivable and inconceivable ways, was Gryffindor prefect fifth year and a shoo-in for Head Girl in Seventh. But Mulciber, who adored her, killed her sixth year in a fit of jealous rage--you'll be happy to know DD prevented his being expelled. Alternatively, the MoM pulled her from school to serve as head of the DMLE to lead the fight against You-Know-Who. She asked (with her dying breath or from her new position of power) that her mantle be passed to her lowly friend Lily, as a symbol of hope for Muggleborns that despite their inferior blood and abilities,they too might be granted a position of power if they pleased their superiors. The End.)
Bad fanfic aside, discuss?
That surely must've been one of the most prejudiced, racist things any character ever said in those books. She might've well said, "but they are all *muslims*, Sev, and you know what they say about Americans like me.. They want to kill us all.. You'll become a terrorist for sure if you don't denounce your heritage, your faith and your family".
Um...really?
This is incredibly offensive. You're equating being a follower of Islam with being a follower or at least supporter of a violent pureblood supremacist movement. Do you not see your own racism here? Death Eaters already are terrorists.
-butterbeergirl on LJ
And this *is* offensive, and reflects the "all Muslims are terrorists or proto-terrorists" type of thinking.
To spell it out clearly: in the analogy given, Muslim =/= DE (as you interpret it in your post). Muslim = Slytherin and DE = jihadist. And while equating Muslims with Slytherins may or may not be a very good analogy (one is a religion, the other a school House), the only way I can see that it is truly offensive is if you assume Slytherins as a group are morally corrupt, etc. rather than as a group of individuals making their own choices.
You can argue about the appropriateness of the analogy, of course, but please make sure you are clear on what is being equated with what first.
Because if she said "Death Eaters," and the person making the analogy substituted the word "Muslim" for that, then they are the one who equated DE=Muslim. I assumed this was the substitution made, and yes, I take offense to that. I really don't think I recall Lily saying "But they're Slytherins, don't hang out with them," I think she made a much more damning accusation than that.
-butterbeergirl on LJ
Lynn
I suppose one can take the 'some' to mean she approved of his other Slytherin friends? (Of course between her and Sirius we don't know of any that did not become Death Eaters. Maybe Rabastan Lestrange was quite pleasant in his school days and only became radicalized after his brother married Bellatrix?)
In the post-SWM conversation she calls them "You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"
So she is calling people who are still in school and may or may not be planning to join Riddle's group Death Eaters. (We know Regulus and possibly Draco were recruited while still at school, but I doubt this was the standard procedure. Draco was being used to punish his father and Regulus had his cousin speak for him.)
The overt agenda of the Death Eaters (before Riddle showed his true colors) as presented both by Regulus and by Sirius was very close to a view that was common among a large part of British wizards. For all anyone knew they were calling for restoring traditional wizarding values and dabbling in traditional mysterious magic, AKA Dark Arts.
The fact that she was talking about Slytherins, and that you assumed she was talking about Death Eaters, makes it look like you're doing what she accused Lily of -- but I think that you misunderstood who smallpotato was actually talking about, rather than actually conflating the two groups.
Does this clarify the situation?
Sorry for butting in, but I'd rather try to head off the misunderstanding.
Lynn
I understand the sentiment that the poster making the analogy was expressing. But did Lily say "Slytherins" there about Avery and Mulciber, or "Death Eaters"? Because if it was the latter, her analogy is totally inappropriate.
-butterbeergirl on LJ
And all I meant, butterbeergirl, was that that is the analogy smallpotato was making - not that I agree/disagree with it, or that Lily expressly uses particular terms in canon. I think one can debate about how correct smallpotato's analogy is (i.e. was Lily *really* assuming all Slyths are proto-DEs?), but I think smallpotato was reading the scene that way (please correct me if I am wrong, smallpotato). THAT'S what I was trying incoherently to get at. I hope I did not offend anyone, I just wanted to clarify.
You're equating Lily's (and, I suppose we've already assumed, the other Gryffindors, and probably most of the rest of popular wizarding sentiment) fear/dislike/distrust of Severus's friends - who are Slytherins, but not yet Death Eaters, but have used Dark Magic for a laugh - on another student to ignorant American "Islamophobia." (Please understand, I put it in quotes not because I do not recognize it, because I've experienced "Islamophobic" sentiment firsthand - I put it in quotes because I think it's sad and ridiculous.) We know they've used Dark Magic because Severus doesn't deny it and because it sounds Lily at least witnessed part of the after-effects on Mary herself.
"Islamophobia" grows out of xenophobia, out of a disturbingly prevalent American distrust of things that different from what they consider mainstream or "normal." Practicing Muslims take part in a wide variety of customs, holidays, diets, religious practices, manners of dress that may differ from what non-Muslim America expects, and if the family is an immigrant family (mine is not) they may often speak a language other than English. Things like this tend to make non-Muslim Americans uncomfortable because xenophobia causes them to see these practices as "mysterious," "different," "other," and because of the constant conflating of practicing Muslim = potential terrorist, "dangerous."
This does not apply to this situation with Lily, Severus, Avery, and Mulciber, or to Lily, Severus, and the Death Eaters in general, because Dark Magic is not just some mysterious or different custom that a sector of the population participates in because of their culture. I really wish we had a more - is metaphysical the word? - definition of what Dark Magic is in canon and how it is distinguished from normal magic, but we don't, so we have to go with what we know, which is that Dark Magic is dangerous to perform, always harmful to the victim, and requires some dark or evil energy or willpower from the caster. "People like me" does not refer to a socially dominant group of people like "Gryffindors," or "non-Slytherins," it refers to Muggle-borns.
And that's why I find your analogy inappropriate. I understand the point you're trying to make, and it would stand if, say, Lily just meant she thought Severus shouldn't hang out with them because they're Slytherins and she thinks that's creepy. But she made the point about their use of Dark Magic, and that means you're equating just being a Muslim in the U.S. and largely misunderstood by society with using harmful and illegal Dark Magic. One is already inherently bad, one is just largely misunderstood and feared. This is not "I saw Mulciber and Avery going to a mosque and that freaks me out," this is "I saw Avery and Mulciber leaving a skinhead rally and that freaks me out." This is not Lily's fears at some mysterious part of their culture she is too ignorant to understand, this is Lily's fears at their harmful actions.
Does that make any sense? Sorry for rambling.
-butterbeergirl on LJ
Dark Magic
Well. Your argument rests on your assumption that Dark Magic is in fact evil and everyone in the Potterverse really knows it, so Lily is right to criticize Sev’s friends.
You seem to have come up with your own internally-consistent theory of Dark Magic. Your definition would indeed make an interesting fantasy world. Unfortunately that world is NOT the Potterverse; your interpretation is suggested by some bits of canon, but contradicted by others.
I read the theory that “Dark” magic was powered by “negative” or “evil” magical energy over on Mugglenet. But that is a fanon theory, not canon. It seems to be an extrapolation from Bella’s comments on the Cruciatus and Barty’s on AK, to whit “You have to really mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain—to enjoy it—” and “Avada Kedavra’s a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it.”
But note that Bella actually is talking about emotion and intention, not a different type of magical energy, and Barty only actually says that fourteen-year-olds aren’t powerful enough to cast an AK. (Most also cannot yet cast a Patronus.) And while it may be true that Harry must hate and enjoy causing pain to cast the Cruciatus with full strength, it isn’t so for Draco; in DH Draco casts it with no motive but terror at being tortured himself if he fails, and it’s obvious even to Harry that he’s not enjoying it. (Indeed Voldemort seems to be punishing Draco by ordering him to cast it.)
Moreover, as Oryx pointed out, even that emotion/intention requirement is only, in canon, applied to (some of) the Unforgivable Curses, not to Dark Magic in general. Besides, do you really consider the two worst nutcases among the DE’s to be reliable sources of information?
As to your contention that Dark Magic is intrinsically harmful to the soul/mind of the user: well, Dumbledore himself directly contradicted that. He told a boy who had used THE CRUCIATUS, which I consider easily the worst of the three U’s (the only one with no conceivable merciful use), “you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!... You remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven….”
If the torture curse can’t sully in the slightest one’s purity of heart, I can’t see that other Dark Magic would. Except, of course, murder—which, we are told in canon, “rips the soul” however it’s accomplished, with AK or Scourgify or a carving knife. In the quote above Albus also conflates the Dark Arts with following Voldemort. But it’s absolutely clear in canon that this is not a general association. Post-1981, Death Eaters are universally despised (except, presumably, by each other), but Dark witches and wizards who are not Voldemort supporters (or who convincingly claim not to be) are the cream of Wizarding society. Proof, the position of the Blacks historically, and of the Malfoys until Lucius was outed at the end of book 5.
Dark Magic is clearly both legal and generally socially acceptable in the Potterverse, whatever Harry and Lily (and you) feel about it.
Jodel (the Red Hen) and Whitehound have great essays on “the Dark Arts” which you should read. Jodel, “The History of Magic”
http://www.redhen-publications.com/Hist
Whitehound, “Sectumsempra and the Nature of Curses” http://members.madasafish.com/~cj_white
At the end of “Sectumsempra,” Whitehound compiles EVERY canon reference to Dark Magic, Dark magic, dark magic, and the Dark Arts. You’ll find that nowhere in canon is your definition stated or even implied, and that canon uses of the terms are, in fact, inconsistent. You’ll also find that canon characters talk both about “evil Dark” and about “illegal Dark” magic, implying that there must be uses of Dark magic that are good and/or legal.
Give us CANON quotes to support your contention “that Dark Magic is dangerous to perform, always harmful to the victim, and requires some dark or evil energy or willpower from the caster,” or admit that you’re making stuff up. You’ve already once been asked for quotes.
Re: Dark Magic
Which sounds to me like fuel enough for "meaning it" and "really wanting to cause pain" -- he wants to because it means avoiding pain for himself. Fear is always a strong motivator. It does seem to contradict Bella's assertion that one needs to "enjoy it", but then, maybe this is true for her and not for others, as you sort of suggested with the example of Harry -- that is, perhaps she is generalizing based on her own experience, and since she is a natural she never thought to question the actual mechanics, or something.
Also, she then goes on to say "righteous anger won’t hurt me for long" (emphasis mine): this implies that you can cast a Cruciatus which has some effect without meeting her criteria of "wanting to", "enjoying it" etc., but that the result is either not as effective, not as long in duration, or both. (Perhaps Draco is similarly not performing up to snuff?)
do you really consider the two worst nutcases
among the DE’s to be reliable sources of information?
On this topic I'd consider them more reliable than someone who doesn't use such magic, yes. Their being "nutcases" doesn't automatically invalidate their information about something they have regular personal experience of.
(If we could get much information out of Severus I'd consider him the most reliable, since he's knowledgeable, sane, and doesn't have the kind of agenda that leads to wanting to suppress information (unlike Albus, who probably also knows a thing or two about a thing or two), but...)
Re: Dark Magic
(I thought the take on the fake Cruciatus was rather clever.)
Re: Dark Magic
Exactly my point. I would not take a lunatic's experience as normative for ANYTHING. Much less as our sole determination of the true nature of the Dark Arts.
And Draco must have gotten an "A" at least from Voldie, since he wasn't being Cruciated in turn.
You've assumed it, and ascribed your interpretation to the group.
Lily's friends and the Marauders don't like Snape. Lily doesn't like Snape's friends. That's all that's actually in the text. The rest is interpretation. We can't even *know* that Mary didn't like Mulciber and Avery or that they didn't like her.
"have used Dark Magic"
What *Lily* calls Dark Magic. We don't know how reliable her opinion is.
"for a laugh"
*Snape* called it a laugh. We don't *know* what Mulciber's motive was.
"We know they've used Dark Magic because Severus doesn't deny it"
We *don't* know that.
1) He *can't* deny it because he wasn't there. He's only going by hearsay, and we don't know whose.
2) You're assuming the failure to deny meant agreement, but it might just be that he didn't see the distinction as important - or not as important as warning her against the Marauders.
"it sounds Lily at least witnessed part of the after-effects on Mary herself."
What after-effects? It was something Mulciber "tried" to to do, not something he successfully did.
"Dark Magic is not just some mysterious or different custom that a sector of the population participates in because of their culture."
Unfounded assumption.
"we have to go with what we know, which is that Dark Magic is dangerous to perform, always harmful to the victim, and requires some dark or evil energy or willpower from the caster."
But we *don't* know that. We don't even know that there always *is* a victim.
""People like me" does not refer to a socially dominant group of people like "Gryffindors," or "non-Slytherins," it refers to Muggle-borns."
"People like me" is not in the text. Lily says "everyone of my birth". But, yes, she presumably means Muggle-borns.
duj
More on Dark Magic
One of the things going on here seems to be: you’re a new poster here, and these are issues that others have discussed for a long time. And of course, we older posters are also reading the books “backwards” now: Harry’s first impression of the WW, and therefore ours, was given by Hagrid. Hagrid’s a likable guy, but he’s also terminally stupid, extremely prejudiced, ignorant, and given to telling whoppers. Hagrid told us explicitly that every wizard who went bad was in Slytherin, that anyone who goes over “to the Dark side” becomes willing to commit any atrocity, etc.
Pretty much everything Hagrid told Harry (and therefore us) was demonstrated absolutely to be factually false by the end of DH. (For example, he told Harry that something about Harry finished Voldemort, when in fact it was Lily’s sacrifice that stopped Tom, not anything special about Lily’s baby.) In the meantime we read seven books taking Hagrid’s “common wisdom” to be gospel and basing our own interpretations on them.
So a group of my fellow travelers are going back and re-evaluating EVERYTHING Hagrid said. In particular, we’re evaluating, piece by piece, whether ANY part of Hagrid’s whole (implicit) equation of “bad=Slytherin=Dark=utterly conscienceless=Voldemort follower” holds up. (I.e. are Slytherins bad? Are Slytherins Dark? Are Slytherins conscienceless? Are Slytherins more likely to support Voldemort? Is Dark magic bad? Etc.)
That Dark Magic is obviously bad and evil is one of the biases Harry (and the readers) picked up in part from Hagrid back at the beginning. So now we're looking closely at canon to see if there's any more support for that (the ALL Dark Magic is bad, not that the Cruciatus is) than there is for "not a witch or wizard went bad who wasn't in Slytherin." If you want to help us look, great. But base your argument on canon.
If you want an overview of the arguments that this cohort has been painstakingly piecing together since DH, read my friend oryx_leucoryx, replying to a provocateur. Oryx specificially addesses the question: was it possible for a moral person to have joined Voldemort in the 1970’s? (The piece, “must one be conscienceless to join Voldemort?” ) But she admirably summarizes a lot of the discussion we’ve been having:
http://oryx-leucoryx.insanejournal.c
I did a close examination of what CANON tells us Voldemort’s supporters were known to be doing in the mid-seventies—and therefore what people like Severus, Regulus, and Lucius THOUGHT they were joining—in my essay “Death Eaters in the Seventies” (this also contains my spell-by-spell analysis of who really did what in the fight in OotP which leads to some startling conclusions about how vicious DE’s really were: they lost the fight largely because only those soul-damaged by prolonged exposure to Dementor could bring themselves to curse kids):
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/10
Hope this helps, if you want to understand how a whole group of us came to such weird conclusions….
We have a canon example of Dark Magic that can be healed completely - Harry's Sectumsempra of Draco. (I wouldn't be surprised if had the missing part of George's ear been found in time Severus would have been able to sing it into place, but that's my speculation.) I'm not sure where you get 'dangerous to perform' - I'd say probably more risky, but that's my impression, I don't think it is stated anywhere. But someone with knowledge and good discipline can control the risk. And as others have stated, evil energy, willpower etc are only stated for Unforgivables, and the examples we see regarding the Cruciatus shows the emotion behind a 'successful' Cruciatus can vary.
And considering that there are situations where a known Dark Curse can cause less harm than known non-Dark spells, I don't think Dark magic is inherently worse than the non-Dark variety.
-butterbeergirl on LJ