I answered some of your questions above, to some extent, but do allow me to elabourate. At perhaps more length than you might desire, but brevity has never been one of my virtues.
When Finch-Fletchley first appeared in my classes I saw an overly-mannered swot who was attempting to keep his head down and avoid notice. Several weeks into the term, however, we had worked through our discussion of "what are the 'Dark' Arts", and I was giving the children a chance to cast some of the magic they would be learning if they opted into the practical track of the class.
(For many reasons: I love my subject a great deal, but I will be the first to agree that it is not for everyone. I wanted the children to have the chance to see if they would be able to do the spellwork, and I wanted to be able to evaluate whether there were any I ought to discourage from the practical track until they were slightly less unformed and labile. The Arts originally ceased to be taught at Hogwarts at least in part because teenagers, with their stew of hormones and a thousand other things distracting them, are often susceptable to the imbalances the Arts can prompt if one is not exceedingly careful. (There is a reason I introduced meditation and self-examination within that first month; there is a reason the Conclave does not accept students under the age of twenty-two.) I knew that our practical classes would need to cover a great deal of material very quickly; I did not want to waste time on those who were not suited for the subject.)
At that point I was still being exceptionally careful with the little darlings -- Alecto Carrow had been a disastrously poor choice as teacher, and I knew I had to ease them into the true study of the subject slowly -- and so instead of asking them to curse each other, I asked them to curse me. (Also, of course, because who better to evaluate the casting of the curse than the one having the curse cast upon him?) (In retrospect, mind you, I ought to have remembered that I was no more than two months out from an injury that had nearly killed me, and would go on to almost do me in again later that year; that week was bloody exhausting. And I'm glad I've always made it a point to restrict the spells used in that exercise to things the target can undo himself rather than having to wait for it to be lifted, as several of the children panicked as soon as they realised they had just cursed a teacher and proceeded to flail about rather than lifting the curse.)
Finch-Fletchley was one of the last to cast, and the moment he did, his entire demeanour changed. The diffident, polite, retiring swot disappeared, and I was looking at someone who knew what power was, knew that he was able to use it, and would not hesitate to strike. Some champion duellists lose themselves in the heat of battle, and find strength in that berserker rage; some step sideways into a state where the conscious mind can be set aside, leaving only unconscious calculation and instinct. Finch-Fletchley was the latter, and his skill and his lack of hesitation intrigued me. The conversation we had later that day -- that was the week in which I was counselling the children as to whether they ought opt into the theoretical or practical track -- only cemented my belief that there was a natural practitioner hiding beneath that diffidence.
And I was both right and wrong. He took to it beautifully -- and again, no matter what he says, there was a part of him that found both the magic itself and the uses to which we put it immensely satisfying -- but what I did not realise, and what led to that conviction that he needed to be stopped, was that he did not adopt the accompanying habits of self-introspection.
I am fully aware many listeners will point at my actions in the summer after the Unmaker's death and call this the pot calling the kettle black, but I have never denied the Arts can be dangerous. Aside from the practical considerations of the potential for injury or long-term physical damage, there is a mindset it is all too easy to slip into: that because the practitioner can use the Arts, he should; that because a particular square peg is at hand, it ought to be forced into the round hole one is confronted with. Much of the meditation and introspection I teach alongside teaching the Arts is there to provide a grounding in the sort of skill that will allow you to examine the impulse that prompts you to choose that tool for the particular problem you are facing and question whether you are choosing the right tool for the job.
As it happens, I now have a collection of cautionary tales -- my own and others' -- with which to reinforce this lesson in my students.
The Noble Arts are many things -- beautiful, powerful, elegant, graceful -- but the one thing they must be, above all else, is mindful. I came to realise Finch-Fletchley had absorbed all my lessons save that one. And I had seen him in action far too many times by that point to believe he would be capable of ever setting those tools aside. He was a true believer in his cause, but he would not -- coud not -- allow himself to see that it is when you are most convinced that your behaviour is above reproach that you must hold yourself even more firmly to a ruthless self-honesty. Say what you will about me, and I am well aware what is said about me, I have always chosen my hypocrisies deliberately and consciously, knowing in advance that I am compromising my principles or bending one of those principles in service to another. I came to realise that he had not been doing the same -- and given the company he was keeping, that he lacked the tutelage of a more experienced practitioner who could stop him from overreaching himself. (I have often wondered how that summer would have been different had Severus Snape lived through the Battle of Hogwarts: the man was a fool, but he had been, once upon a time, a gifted enough practitioner that I can't help but wonder if he would have noticed the chasm Justin was walking across and been able to stop his teetering.)
De Rei Magie (the full title, of course, is a paragraph full of nested sub-clauses, but no-one ever bothers calling it anything but) is a collection of spells, rites, and rituals concerning itself with harnessing power, particularly during the points at which you are most in extremis, with a subset of spells revolving around controlling the mind and the will of your target. A quarter of the spells in there are nonsense; half of them are exceedingly difficult to control once you have begun them, cannot be stopped or deflected once you have started, and have a tendency to end very badly for the caster if his attention should waver in the slightest. If the caster is lucky, he will only kill himself; if the caster -- or rather, those around him -- is unlucky, the detonation can be more destructive than you can possibly imagine. (You may be familiar with an explosion that happened in Siberia, near the Tunguska river, in the early 20th century. You Muggles, I believe, thought it to be a meteor strike.)
I owned, and consulted, the book for the historical value and for the remaining quarter -- mostly added by the original author's son after he died partway through his research; the spell that was his demise is on page two hundred ninety one -- which was neither nonsense nor folly, but Justin did not stop to think that when one finds a book in the innermost library of a Master of the Noble Arts with which said Master has taken such precautions, it is likely not to prevent a random bystander from happening upon the book by chance: it is to protect himself and those around him from the book itself. Once you have read it, the chance you will want to use the damn thing when you are in a bad moment is great; when you are convinced that your cause is just and noble, and worth achieving by any possible means, it is greater. If I could not dissuade Justin from his fanaticism, and it was becoming clear to me by that point that I could not dissuade him from his fanaticism, I thought it best to remove myself from the potential blast radius, even if it meant leaving certain things undone. (I will always regret that I was not the one to kill Bellatrix; she had been last on my list, as I knew I was not likely to survive the attempt.)
As it happened, though, Юстинка and I got to fight our last duel anyway, and I found that despite realising how much of his danger I had created -- and realising that it was my obligation to correct my mistakes -- in the moment I could not bring myself to end it. To this day I am not sure why. Or rather, I have my theories, but I am not likely to share them. If Bella hadn't happened upon us ... well. I don't know what would have happened; we shall leave the matter there.
What would I do differently? So many things. But what-if never gets you anything but heartache.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 10:53 am (UTC)When Finch-Fletchley first appeared in my classes I saw an overly-mannered swot who was attempting to keep his head down and avoid notice. Several weeks into the term, however, we had worked through our discussion of "what are the 'Dark' Arts", and I was giving the children a chance to cast some of the magic they would be learning if they opted into the practical track of the class.
(For many reasons: I love my subject a great deal, but I will be the first to agree that it is not for everyone. I wanted the children to have the chance to see if they would be able to do the spellwork, and I wanted to be able to evaluate whether there were any I ought to discourage from the practical track until they were slightly less unformed and labile. The Arts originally ceased to be taught at Hogwarts at least in part because teenagers, with their stew of hormones and a thousand other things distracting them, are often susceptable to the imbalances the Arts can prompt if one is not exceedingly careful. (There is a reason I introduced meditation and self-examination within that first month; there is a reason the Conclave does not accept students under the age of twenty-two.) I knew that our practical classes would need to cover a great deal of material very quickly; I did not want to waste time on those who were not suited for the subject.)
At that point I was still being exceptionally careful with the little darlings -- Alecto Carrow had been a disastrously poor choice as teacher, and I knew I had to ease them into the true study of the subject slowly -- and so instead of asking them to curse each other, I asked them to curse me. (Also, of course, because who better to evaluate the casting of the curse than the one having the curse cast upon him?) (In retrospect, mind you, I ought to have remembered that I was no more than two months out from an injury that had nearly killed me, and would go on to almost do me in again later that year; that week was bloody exhausting. And I'm glad I've always made it a point to restrict the spells used in that exercise to things the target can undo himself rather than having to wait for it to be lifted, as several of the children panicked as soon as they realised they had just cursed a teacher and proceeded to flail about rather than lifting the curse.)
Finch-Fletchley was one of the last to cast, and the moment he did, his entire demeanour changed. The diffident, polite, retiring swot disappeared, and I was looking at someone who knew what power was, knew that he was able to use it, and would not hesitate to strike. Some champion duellists lose themselves in the heat of battle, and find strength in that berserker rage; some step sideways into a state where the conscious mind can be set aside, leaving only unconscious calculation and instinct. Finch-Fletchley was the latter, and his skill and his lack of hesitation intrigued me. The conversation we had later that day -- that was the week in which I was counselling the children as to whether they ought opt into the theoretical or practical track -- only cemented my belief that there was a natural practitioner hiding beneath that diffidence.
And I was both right and wrong. He took to it beautifully -- and again, no matter what he says, there was a part of him that found both the magic itself and the uses to which we put it immensely satisfying -- but what I did not realise, and what led to that conviction that he needed to be stopped, was that he did not adopt the accompanying habits of self-introspection.
I am fully aware many listeners will point at my actions in the summer after the Unmaker's death and call this the pot calling the kettle black, but I have never denied the Arts can be dangerous. Aside from the practical considerations of the potential for injury or long-term physical damage, there is a mindset it is all too easy to slip into: that because the practitioner can use the Arts, he should; that because a particular square peg is at hand, it ought to be forced into the round hole one is confronted with. Much of the meditation and introspection I teach alongside teaching the Arts is there to provide a grounding in the sort of skill that will allow you to examine the impulse that prompts you to choose that tool for the particular problem you are facing and question whether you are choosing the right tool for the job.
As it happens, I now have a collection of cautionary tales -- my own and others' -- with which to reinforce this lesson in my students.
The Noble Arts are many things -- beautiful, powerful, elegant, graceful -- but the one thing they must be, above all else, is mindful. I came to realise Finch-Fletchley had absorbed all my lessons save that one. And I had seen him in action far too many times by that point to believe he would be capable of ever setting those tools aside. He was a true believer in his cause, but he would not -- coud not -- allow himself to see that it is when you are most convinced that your behaviour is above reproach that you must hold yourself even more firmly to a ruthless self-honesty. Say what you will about me, and I am well aware what is said about me, I have always chosen my hypocrisies deliberately and consciously, knowing in advance that I am compromising my principles or bending one of those principles in service to another. I came to realise that he had not been doing the same -- and given the company he was keeping, that he lacked the tutelage of a more experienced practitioner who could stop him from overreaching himself. (I have often wondered how that summer would have been different had Severus Snape lived through the Battle of Hogwarts: the man was a fool, but he had been, once upon a time, a gifted enough practitioner that I can't help but wonder if he would have noticed the chasm Justin was walking across and been able to stop his teetering.)
De Rei Magie (the full title, of course, is a paragraph full of nested sub-clauses, but no-one ever bothers calling it anything but) is a collection of spells, rites, and rituals concerning itself with harnessing power, particularly during the points at which you are most in extremis, with a subset of spells revolving around controlling the mind and the will of your target. A quarter of the spells in there are nonsense; half of them are exceedingly difficult to control once you have begun them, cannot be stopped or deflected once you have started, and have a tendency to end very badly for the caster if his attention should waver in the slightest. If the caster is lucky, he will only kill himself; if the caster -- or rather, those around him -- is unlucky, the detonation can be more destructive than you can possibly imagine. (You may be familiar with an explosion that happened in Siberia, near the Tunguska river, in the early 20th century. You Muggles, I believe, thought it to be a meteor strike.)
I owned, and consulted, the book for the historical value and for the remaining quarter -- mostly added by the original author's son after he died partway through his research; the spell that was his demise is on page two hundred ninety one -- which was neither nonsense nor folly, but Justin did not stop to think that when one finds a book in the innermost library of a Master of the Noble Arts with which said Master has taken such precautions, it is likely not to prevent a random bystander from happening upon the book by chance: it is to protect himself and those around him from the book itself. Once you have read it, the chance you will want to use the damn thing when you are in a bad moment is great; when you are convinced that your cause is just and noble, and worth achieving by any possible means, it is greater. If I could not dissuade Justin from his fanaticism, and it was becoming clear to me by that point that I could not dissuade him from his fanaticism, I thought it best to remove myself from the potential blast radius, even if it meant leaving certain things undone. (I will always regret that I was not the one to kill Bellatrix; she had been last on my list, as I knew I was not likely to survive the attempt.)
As it happened, though, Юстинка and I got to fight our last duel anyway, and I found that despite realising how much of his danger I had created -- and realising that it was my obligation to correct my mistakes -- in the moment I could not bring myself to end it. To this day I am not sure why. Or rather, I have my theories, but I am not likely to share them. If Bella hadn't happened upon us ... well. I don't know what would have happened; we shall leave the matter there.
What would I do differently? So many things. But what-if never gets you anything but heartache.