There is something all too appropriate about comparing AK to a gun.
On the other hand, there are other spells that could be equally lethal, like Diffendo (a cutting spell) or Fiendfyre, and those aren’t “Unforgivable.”
That ‘unforgivable’ label always seemed utterly arbitrary. Yes, torture, coercion and killing tend to be nasty things to do but there are far more ways to go about doing it than those three spells. Effective use of winguardium leviosa could kill dozens of people at once, for example. And combining healing magic with a sharp stick over a period of a month is probably worse than crucio for a couple of seconds. Then there’s the old ‘sleep/stab’ combination that makes ‘sleep’ the most feared spell of all in certain magical worlds.
I suppose the thing about Avada Kedavra is that there’s no defense against it.
That seems to be the big distinguishing feature. Teaching 12 year olds something that Dumbledore himself could not protect anyone against seems like it may have downsides.
I’ve always taken the position that stigmatising AK was arbitrary and pointless but I’ve never quite taken that position all the way to teaching junior grades how to use it. Surely it is something that should at least have the limitations that are in place for apparition? (Even if that just means removing the limits RE: apparition!)
One justification I liked was that AK, being “fueled by hatred”, can only be cast by those who are already beyond the Moral Horizon. So it’s not the murder itself that’s so terrible, it’s that fulfilling the prerequisites for using AK means that you are a dangerous sociopath who cannot be safely let loose in the wizarding world.
Unfortunately this doesn’t cover Crucio and Imperius, which IIRC are even used by some “good guys” in canon. But I’m sure you could come up with some other fan-wank to explain them.
I like that justification too, in as much as it is the best of the possible ‘fan-wank’. Even so I suspect that Lily could have pulled off an AK if she had more of a chance. She had huge reserves of magical talent and a hell of a lot of hatred. Yet she still wouldn’t be a dangerous sociopath. In fact, the scariest thing about sociopaths is that they don’t even need to have overwhelming hatred to do brutally nasty things. The fact that most people need to be overwhelmed by emotion before they violate mores is what distinguishes them from sociopaths.
Oh yes, I was talking about canon; IIRC Lily Potter, or any non-Death Eater, doesn’t attempt AK there, does she?
Not that I recall. Mad Eye AKed a spider but technically that was a death eater impersonating Mad Eye. (Although nobody, not even Dumbledore, seemed to blink when Mad-Eye was AKing arachnids. That suggests that people within canon!verse do not all believe that casting AK means you are actually evil.)
I drew the analogy that it’s like the term “deadly weapon”. Fists can be deadly, but they are not called deadly weapons. Hitting someone in the head with your fist is not guaranteed to kill them. Likewise you can drop a shipping container on someone—and I’m sure this would earn you a life sentence—but Winguardium Leviosa is not itself a deadly (Unforgivable) spell, as an arbitrary cast of the spell is not guaranteed to kill.
It’s still a bit arbitrary. To my knowledge, using a love potion is not Unforgivable—though it’s clearly magical coercion and serves only such a purpose as that.
There is something all too appropriate about comparing AK to a gun.
That ‘unforgivable’ label always seemed utterly arbitrary. Yes, torture, coercion and killing tend to be nasty things to do but there are far more ways to go about doing it than those three spells. Effective use of winguardium leviosa could kill dozens of people at once, for example. And combining healing magic with a sharp stick over a period of a month is probably worse than crucio for a couple of seconds. Then there’s the old ‘sleep/stab’ combination that makes ‘sleep’ the most feared spell of all in certain magical worlds.
That seems to be the big distinguishing feature. Teaching 12 year olds something that Dumbledore himself could not protect anyone against seems like it may have downsides.
I’ve always taken the position that stigmatising AK was arbitrary and pointless but I’ve never quite taken that position all the way to teaching junior grades how to use it. Surely it is something that should at least have the limitations that are in place for apparition? (Even if that just means removing the limits RE: apparition!)
One justification I liked was that AK, being “fueled by hatred”, can only be cast by those who are already beyond the Moral Horizon. So it’s not the murder itself that’s so terrible, it’s that fulfilling the prerequisites for using AK means that you are a dangerous sociopath who cannot be safely let loose in the wizarding world.
Unfortunately this doesn’t cover Crucio and Imperius, which IIRC are even used by some “good guys” in canon. But I’m sure you could come up with some other fan-wank to explain them.
I like that justification too, in as much as it is the best of the possible ‘fan-wank’. Even so I suspect that Lily could have pulled off an AK if she had more of a chance. She had huge reserves of magical talent and a hell of a lot of hatred. Yet she still wouldn’t be a dangerous sociopath. In fact, the scariest thing about sociopaths is that they don’t even need to have overwhelming hatred to do brutally nasty things. The fact that most people need to be overwhelmed by emotion before they violate mores is what distinguishes them from sociopaths.
Oh yes, I was talking about canon; IIRC Lily Potter, or any non-Death Eater, doesn’t attempt AK there, does she? The wiki doesn’t say so, at least.
Not that I recall. Mad Eye AKed a spider but technically that was a death eater impersonating Mad Eye. (Although nobody, not even Dumbledore, seemed to blink when Mad-Eye was AKing arachnids. That suggests that people within canon!verse do not all believe that casting AK means you are actually evil.)
Fake!Mad-Eye also told the class that actually casting the Killing Curse was extremely difficult and that none of them would be able to do it.
That kind of claim was usually the prompt for Harry or Hermione to pull it off a couple of chapters later. ;)
Or squishing spiders requires less evil than squishing people.
I drew the analogy that it’s like the term “deadly weapon”. Fists can be deadly, but they are not called deadly weapons. Hitting someone in the head with your fist is not guaranteed to kill them. Likewise you can drop a shipping container on someone—and I’m sure this would earn you a life sentence—but Winguardium Leviosa is not itself a deadly (Unforgivable) spell, as an arbitrary cast of the spell is not guaranteed to kill.
It’s still a bit arbitrary. To my knowledge, using a love potion is not Unforgivable—though it’s clearly magical coercion and serves only such a purpose as that.