No, Tosha. Only the ones for which you are responsible.
Who the deuce
It was your handiwork. Don't insult me by feigning otherwise. You came to Penzance from her, or else you'd have been there early enough to lay the trap properly.
Richard Hewsley, as well. So, that's what, four to your anonymous credit?
Well done, by the way, trying to twit me for signing my work, when you're both not signing yours and it was you who taught me to do so. But then again, our goals--and our directives--have been different.
So you've only found four of them? Really, Юшка, that's just lazy work. And here I've been telling you for two weeks to keep your eyes open.
But you thought I was lying, didn't you? Trying to get under your skin. Trying to push you into doing something rash. My dear boy, if I wanted you to do something rash, I know far better ways to go about it, and lying has always been far more effort than telling the truth. In this, at least, I am playing fair. Shall I stop doing so?
You're correct about one thing: I do know you. I know how you twist the truth. Introspection, what, that was good advice. Unlucky for you that with my introspection came renewal of purpose.
But as you like. Because unlike you, I am not 'playing' at anything.
Renewal of purpose? What purpose is that, then? Do you really think that killing me will bring you your happy ending?
Some free advice: be careful what you wish for; some wishes cannot be undone once spoken. And you may realise too late that you are unwilling to pay the price that they demand.
I'd rather never have to kill another person again--even you. However, that does not mean I'll not defend myself. My purpose has been to use the skills you insisted I develop to end this conflict. To ensure that Muggles, Muggleborn, Halfbloods and Purebloods all have an equal opportunity to live alongside one another without fear of oppression. You like to accuse me of righteousness but you fail to acknowledge what that really means. It means fighting on the side of right, avoiding harm to innocents (adult or otherwise) and only applying oneself to the minimum amount of carnage absolutely necessary to achieve one's goals.
I'm aware of where I've faltered--and of where the Order have not been perfect--but I dare you to tell me I was ever in the wrong about which side to support.
I am mocking your self-righteousness because you are here nattering at me about avoiding harm to innocents less than a day after I watched you kill a man because he would not get out of the way of your vigilante justice. Dear boy, you are as much a hypocrite as I am, but if you must persist in claiming your ethics are deontological rather than teleological, I will persist in pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
If you'd rather not have to kill me, then you may feel free to cease making the attempt. Your stated intention to do so is no influence on my actions. And unless you remember to mind your left elbow, among other things, I doubt you've a chance of succeeding anyway.
Another twist to the truth. If you mean Serle, I offered him the chance to yield; he refused. If you mean Baddock, can you deny that you were coming to kill him, yourself? I've already admitted to stumbling on my path. You don't need to point it out. Yes, I took satisfaction in killing him--but not pleasure, مدرس. Never pleasure.
You're far too solicitous of my elbow. I'm flattered you find it so difficult to sever your tutelage. Is it that much harder to leave off your pursuit? Your 'moral imperative'?
If I believed for a moment you'd forswear ever committing another murder, ever casting another Dark spell, then I'd consider what might be done with you. If you were willing to eliminate the threat you represent, then I'd be willing to bring you to the Order alive to answer for the debt you owe.
Oh, that's far too easy to answer: Define 'Dark spell'.
Go on; I'm waiting. And if you try to fob me off with the stereotypical "designed to cause injury or death blah blah blah" nonesense, I shall retroactively fail you for the past three years of my class.
Oh, Tosha. As if I care about passing your class. The one you enrolled me in against my wishes?
That 'stereotypical' definition, as you quaintly put it, is, it turns out, the only one worth using.
No doubt you would prefer to confine it narrowly, as 'one which can be applied empirically and solely to the property of the spell's effects upon the caster - that is, only those spells which the casting thereof may impact negatively upon the one who attempts to harness their power.'
Personally I don't much care what 'class' of spells you consider 'Dark' or 'Noble' so long as you abdicate any that don't adhere to our polite societal taboos. Swear never to cast with the intent to severely harm, kill or subjugate another living creature, and we can call an end.
Did you not stop to THINK there was a reason that volume was in a locked cabinet, behind a locked door, in a locked and warded box with seventeen individual layers of warding that had to be undone before one could get at it?
Justin, I say this to you speaking as plainly as I know how, bereft of any attempt to manipulate or deceive: I beg you, do not look to that book as anything other than a curiosity. You ought to know that I am willing to bear your death on my conscience; you may safely heed my words when I say that the results of using that book would be worse.
Find me one example of a time at which I have ever claimed they do not.
There is a reason that text is not used as anything other than historical reference, you idiot child, and there is a reason I spent so bloody long in class on teaching you what not to do with an unknown text.
I'm sure you're telling yourself that you know better than to use anything you find in that book, or in one of the others of mine that you've been 'triaging' or 'handling' or 'making safe' or any one of a thousand other euphemisms to conceal that what you are actually doing is plundering knowledge in search of power. I'm sure you're telling yourself that you're stronger than that. Better than that. More pure. More noble.
But I know you. Better, it seems, than you do yourself. All it will take is one moment of weakness. One moment of being overwhelmed. One moment with one of your targets in your sights -- me, or Bella, or Rowle, or one of the others. All it will take is one solitary stray thought of "I could do this, and it needs to be done, and I don't care what it will do to me to do it", and that will be the end of the matter.
And you won't stop. You never would have, and that is precisely why I came to realise it is my obligation to stop you -- you may go ahead and tell your wife that I have answered her question, by the way. Because yes, I made you. And I shouldn't have.
But your zealotry and conviction is going to lead you to overreach sooner or later. Almost certainly sooner. And when you do, you will wind up dead either way. A foregone conclusion.
So I regret to inform you, student of mine, that I have no desire to be anywhere near ground zero of your inevitable explosion -- and an explosion it will be. As I have no doubt you will take care of the matter for me, I do not need to be anywhere near your self-immolation when it happens; I shall take Ari's example instead. And perhaps recusing myself as temptation will point you at those others who are on my list.
If I may leave you one last word of advice: begin praying now that when you do overreach yourself, you are the only casualty that you care about.
For what it is worth, which I am aware is 'precisely nothing', I am sorry for how things ended. I cannot regret your death, but I do regret its necessity, and its manner. I ought to have seen to it myself -- tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé, and all -- but there are so many things I ought to have done.
I wish you the best of luck in the next life, my student.
Almighty God, you judge us with infinite mercy and justice and love everything you have made. In your mercy, turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life and the sorrow of parting into the joy of heaven, through our Saviour, Jesus Christ, amen. You promise eternal life to those who believe; remember Your servant Justin, as we also remember him. Bring all who rest in Christ into the fullness of your kingdom, where sins have been forgiven and death is no more.
Unto him that is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the God our saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.
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no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 05:58 pm (UTC)Very well, then. Allow me to return the question: what did Lysander Searle do to earn his death? Or is it simply that he was in your way?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 06:18 pm (UTC)Who the deuceIt was your handiwork. Don't insult me by feigning otherwise. You came to Penzance from her, or else you'd have been there early enough to lay the trap properly.
Richard Hewsley, as well. So, that's what, four to your anonymous credit?
Well done, by the way, trying to twit me for signing my work, when you're both not signing yours and it was you who taught me to do so. But then again, our goals--and our directives--have been different.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 06:28 pm (UTC)But you thought I was lying, didn't you? Trying to get under your skin. Trying to push you into doing something rash. My dear boy, if I wanted you to do something rash, I know far better ways to go about it, and lying has always been far more effort than telling the truth. In this, at least, I am playing fair. Shall I stop doing so?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 06:56 pm (UTC)But as you like. Because unlike you, I am not 'playing' at anything.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 07:09 pm (UTC)Some free advice: be careful what you wish for; some wishes cannot be undone once spoken. And you may realise too late that you are unwilling to pay the price that they demand.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 07:38 pm (UTC)I'm aware of where I've faltered--and of where the Order have not been perfect--but I dare you to tell me I was ever in the wrong about which side to support.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 07:54 pm (UTC)If you'd rather not have to kill me, then you may feel free to cease making the attempt. Your stated intention to do so is no influence on my actions. And unless you remember to mind your left elbow, among other things, I doubt you've a chance of succeeding anyway.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 08:11 pm (UTC)You're far too solicitous of my elbow. I'm flattered you find it so difficult to sever your tutelage. Is it that much harder to leave off your pursuit? Your 'moral imperative'?
If I believed for a moment you'd forswear ever committing another murder, ever casting another Dark spell, then I'd consider what might be done with you. If you were willing to eliminate the threat you represent, then I'd be willing to bring you to the Order alive to answer for the debt you owe.
I say, are you willing?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 08:28 pm (UTC)Go on; I'm waiting. And if you try to fob me off with the stereotypical "designed to cause injury or death blah blah blah" nonesense, I shall retroactively fail you for the past three years of my class.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:26 pm (UTC)That 'stereotypical' definition, as you quaintly put it, is, it turns out, the only one worth using.
No doubt you would prefer to confine it narrowly, as 'one which can be applied empirically and solely to the property of the spell's effects upon the caster - that is, only those spells which the casting thereof may impact negatively upon the one who attempts to harness their power.'
Personally I don't much care what 'class' of spells you consider 'Dark' or 'Noble' so long as you abdicate any that don't adhere to our polite societal taboos. Swear never to cast with the intent to severely harm, kill or subjugate another living creature, and we can call an end.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:29 pm (UTC)oh you idiot.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:29 pm (UTC)You've been reading De Rei Magiae?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:30 pm (UTC)Did you not stop to THINK there was a reason that volume was in a locked cabinet, behind a locked door, in a locked and warded box with seventeen individual layers of warding that had to be undone before one could get at it?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:42 pm (UTC)Good to know.
You were saying, about hypocrisy?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:46 pm (UTC)There is a reason that text is not used as anything other than historical reference, you idiot child, and there is a reason I spent so bloody long in class on teaching you what not to do with an unknown text.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-29 03:11 am (UTC)I'm sure you're telling yourself that you know better than to use anything you find in that book, or in one of the others of mine that you've been 'triaging' or 'handling' or 'making safe' or any one of a thousand other euphemisms to conceal that what you are actually doing is plundering knowledge in search of power. I'm sure you're telling yourself that you're stronger than that. Better than that. More pure. More noble.
But I know you. Better, it seems, than you do yourself. All it will take is one moment of weakness. One moment of being overwhelmed. One moment with one of your targets in your sights -- me, or Bella, or Rowle, or one of the others. All it will take is one solitary stray thought of "I could do this, and it needs to be done, and I don't care what it will do to me to do it", and that will be the end of the matter.
And you won't stop. You never would have, and that is precisely why I came to realise it is my obligation to stop you -- you may go ahead and tell your wife that I have answered her question, by the way. Because yes, I made you. And I shouldn't have.
But your zealotry and conviction is going to lead you to overreach sooner or later. Almost certainly sooner. And when you do, you will wind up dead either way. A foregone conclusion.
So I regret to inform you, student of mine, that I have no desire to be anywhere near ground zero of your inevitable explosion -- and an explosion it will be. As I have no doubt you will take care of the matter for me, I do not need to be anywhere near your self-immolation when it happens; I shall take Ari's example instead. And perhaps recusing myself as temptation will point you at those others who are on my list.
If I may leave you one last word of advice: begin praying now that when you do overreach yourself, you are the only casualty that you care about.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:32 pm (UTC)You idiot.
Order Only
Date: 2015-08-28 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-31 12:07 am (UTC)I wish you the best of luck in the next life, my student.
Almighty God, you judge us with infinite mercy and justice and love everything you have made. In your mercy, turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life and the sorrow of parting into the joy of heaven, through our Saviour, Jesus Christ, amen. You promise eternal life to those who believe; remember Your servant Justin, as we also remember him. Bring all who rest in Christ into the fullness of your kingdom, where sins have been forgiven and death is no more.
Unto him that is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the God our saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.