There's pretty much nothing the cruciatus curse can accomplish that another spell can't do more effectively, except cause pain for its own sake. If you want to distract someone there are about a million possible spells. If you want to get information out of somebody, legilimency and veritaserum will get it much more quickly than cruciatus and people are less likely to lie. One of the books I read for Dark Arts had a chapter on the cruciatus curse and its use during interrogations, and the author thought using cruciatus was a bad idea -- not because he objected to it morally, but because he said people who are being tortured will say whatever they think will make the torture stop. He said five minutes of cruciatus will make most people claim to be a basket of dried peas, if they think their interrogator wants them to be a basket of dried peas. And the object of interrogation is supposed to be USEFUL information. He thought it was far more worthwhile to learn how to brew veritaserum but he seemed to have a bias towards potions generally.
Hydra has suggested that Bellatrix uses torture in conjunction with legilimency because pain weakens people's resistance to having their mind read. Although Minerva's comments today (and Hydra's experience) suggest that nonconsensual telepathy is ALSO not as reliable as one might assume. (It can be hard to show this on the surface of the game, though.)
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Date: 2013-06-07 04:21 am (UTC)There's pretty much nothing the cruciatus curse can accomplish that another spell can't do more effectively, except cause pain for its own sake. If you want to distract someone there are about a million possible spells. If you want to get information out of somebody, legilimency and veritaserum will get it much more quickly than cruciatus and people are less likely to lie. One of the books I read for Dark Arts had a chapter on the cruciatus curse and its use during interrogations, and the author thought using cruciatus was a bad idea -- not because he objected to it morally, but because he said people who are being tortured will say whatever they think will make the torture stop. He said five minutes of cruciatus will make most people claim to be a basket of dried peas, if they think their interrogator wants them to be a basket of dried peas. And the object of interrogation is supposed to be USEFUL information. He thought it was far more worthwhile to learn how to brew veritaserum but he seemed to have a bias towards potions generally.
Hydra has suggested that Bellatrix uses torture in conjunction with legilimency because pain weakens people's resistance to having their mind read. Although Minerva's comments today (and Hydra's experience) suggest that nonconsensual telepathy is ALSO not as reliable as one might assume. (It can be hard to show this on the surface of the game, though.)