OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Eric Oppen wrote:

One thing to keep in mind about Snape's attitude toward the senior Longbottoms is that during the latter stages of the First Voldemort War, the Aurors were about as ruthless and hair-triggered as the DEs themselves. We don't know how Mr. Longbottom, or both Longbottoms if they were both Aurors, approached their duties...were they like Mad-Eye Moody, and at least willing to try not to kill, or were they more like Judge Dredd on acid?

Heh. Oh, boy, do I like you! My original de-lurk actually had some very harsh things to say about Aurors, but I was too cowardly to leave them in. You're very brave.

But I can't quite bring myself to believe that Longbottom was Judge Dredd on acid. Dumbledore gives too great an impression of having approved of the man, and while my readings of the books may often be a tad subversive, I just can't quite help myself. I do trust Dumbledore.

No, I'm sure that Frank Longbottom was not all that bad, as Aurors go. (I don't think that his wife was an Auror, BTW. Had she been one, then Crouch's summary of his son's crimes in the Pensieve scene would surely have included something about the prisoners having captured two Aurors, rather than an Auror and "his wife.") I feel reasonably confident that Longbottom was a "Good Auror."

For whatever that's worth.

I mean, let's take a look at our exemplar of "Good Auror" for a moment, shall we? Alastor Moody. Dumbledore's friend. The man Sirius claims was one of the better ones. Tried to avoid killing. All of that. What do we know about him?

Well, he doesn't believe in plea bargains, which is certainly understandable--most cops don't. But he also seems to consider it morally acceptable to break faith with captive prisoners ("Let's hear his information, I say, and throw him straight back to the dementors.") He is not adverse to dehumanizing his enemies; he feels free to sneer at them; in the course of a single page, he refers to Karkaroff as both "filth" and "scum." He is skeptical of Dumbledore's judgement of Snape; he does not believe in second chances. He tries not to kill, but he doesn't seem unduly bothered by it when he does so. And he approves of the use of the dementors as prison guards. ("For scum like this...")

Also, word of Crouch/Moody's decision to torture a student surely must have made its way to Dumbledore's ears at some point, and it didn't tip him off. I think it safe to assume that such an action would have been in character for the real Moody as well.

And this is one of the GOOD Aurors.

I know that many people on this board really really like Moody, and that I'm probably making myself very unpopular by saying this, but I simply must. I don't like Moody. I really don't care for him at all. He strikes me as the sort of person who would happily strip away all of my civil liberties, given half the chance, and I consider such men a serious threat to civilized society.

::deep breath::

There. I've said it. I feel better now.

[Eric offers a hypothetical scenario which would explain why Snape might have a bone to pick with the Longbottoms]

A while back, JudySerenity wrote that the fates of Snape's old friends might have given him a "powerful reason to hate Aurors." To which I was sorely tempted to reply: does anyone really need a personal reason to hate Aurors?

Sirius—no bleeding-heart himself—says that many of the Aurors descended to the level of the Death Eaters. We've heard about the licence to kill; we've heard about the licence to use the Unforgivables. God only knows how many innocent people were interrogated under Cruciatus in those dark days before Voldemort's defeat. Or, for that matter, how many other "special powers" Crouch invested in his jackbooted thu...er, excuse me, I mean Protectors of the People, before he was done. Search and seizure, anyone? Surveillance without warrant? Indefinite detention without arrest?

(Am I treading too closely on current political events here?)

Hey, or how about Profiling? Returning briefly to the issue of the members of Snape's little clique who did not become Death Eaters, does anyone but me worry about what might have happened to them during those years?

If we want to assume that Snape doesn't like Aurors, I really don't think we have to wander too far into the realms of the personal. There are plenty of reasons why even perfectly law-abiding witches and wizards with no personal baggage might dislike them as a general class.

—Elkins