Why should any of us be willing to die, but not willing to kill the people who would kill us without a thought?
As the only person on this lock who has ever actually faced this decision, or something close to it, I reckon I should answer.
Killing someone changes you. I am not sure I can explain it, except that the life you lived before is completely over, and you will never get it back. Even if the person you killed was as despicable and evil as the git was.
The only reason I could live with myself afterwards is that first of all, it wasn't really a decision at all. Well, literally. The Professor, uh, I guess, just sort of tapped into whatever wolf is in his ancestry, and so I tore out the git's throat out of sheer survival animal instinct. It was self defence.
It took Mr Longbottom and Sirius Black a long time to get it through my thick skull: I'm not a murderer.
But I am a killer.
I will always be someone who has killed. And as much as I loathed him, I wish that wasn't true. I tasted his blood in my mouth for months afterward. And the worst thing is you start to see yourself turning into exactly what you hated.
It's easy to scoff at innocence as worthless. Until you've lost it.
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no subject
2013-06-07 06:42 (UTC)As the only person on this lock who has ever actually faced this decision, or something close to it, I reckon I should answer.
Killing someone changes you. I am not sure I can explain it, except that the life you lived before is completely over, and you will never get it back. Even if the person you killed was as despicable and evil as the git was.
The only reason I could live with myself afterwards is that first of all, it wasn't really a decision at all. Well, literally. The Professor, uh, I guess, just sort of tapped into whatever wolf is in his ancestry, and so I tore out the git's throat out of sheer survival animal instinct. It was self defence.
It took Mr Longbottom and Sirius Black a long time to get it through my thick skull: I'm not a murderer.
But I am a killer.
I will always be someone who has killed. And as much as I loathed him, I wish that wasn't true. I tasted his blood in my mouth for months afterward. And the worst thing is you start to see yourself turning into exactly what you hated.
It's easy to scoff at innocence as worthless. Until you've lost it.