Early this morning, lying half-asleep in the dark before dawn, a question flitted across my mind:
On the assumption that the Killing Curse works by stopping someone’s bodily functions (it leaves no observable cause of death; what else could it do?), and on the assumption that the soul leaves the body at death…
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, isn’t Minister Fudge ordering the dementor to kiss Barty Crouch, Junior (and the dementor immediately doing so) morally worse than Minister Fudge casting the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra) at Crouch
, Jr.?
The Dementor leaves the body “alive” in a biological sense, but everything that makes the person an individual is gone; they’re a husk. Presumably, someone has to then care for that husk until it dies; even if that’s at some state-run sanatorium or similar, there’s a cost to society – both monetary and spiritually – that continues for … how long? Years? Decades? Also
, any remaining family members have to live with the knowledge that their (presumably) loved one is in that state (even if they’re not the ones caring for the husk).
Don’t think that last is so bad? Talk to me after you’ve watched a loved one spend 30+ years in a nursing home because her mind was so far gone she couldn’t take care of herself and could barely interact with people around her. No, it’s not the same, but it’s similar. Yes, it happened to me.
The Killing Curse, though – it’s final. The victim dies; there’s a body to be buried and a funeral to be had. There is, for lack of a better word, closure.
So: why isn’t the use of a Dementor morally worse than the use of the Killing Curse?