I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up to No Good

[alt_terry]

I'm doing well. This morning was quiet. He forgot to lock the door last night and slept until noon today, so I was able to slip out and practise a bit. It's all right, I got back inside before he woke up again.

I'm still working on the animagus spell, but with no luck so far. It's frustrating. But I'm not giving up.

I've been thinking a whole lot in the past week about things. About the git. I've been watching him, studying him, because I want to figure out how I'm going to survive this, how I'm going to get away from him and eventually beat him at his own game. This is what I've mulling over:

He likes to dominate things, to have power over them. He also likes to ruin things. He thinks that no one is as important as he is. I think all the dark magic he's used over the years have addled his wits, although maybe that's partly from the drinking, too. From some of the stuff he's said this week, I realised that he really thinks I admire him. Is that sick or what?

The first part, wanting power over me, that's obvious. He likes having a mudblood he can kick and order around, someone he can make cower and cringe. It's safest to give him that, but what he doesn't know now is that it's all an act.

But I'm seeing something else I never saw before. I think he wants to make me rotten inside, too. Like him. He wants me cowering and ignorant, but he's also interested in making me...cruel. Not enough that I'd ever threaten him, you understand, but then he's arrogant enough to think he totally controls me.

It's little things. Like he always used to be the one to kill his pigeons and rats for his experiments. But now he's started ordering me to kill them (I do it if I have to. But I try to sneak them out and free them instead if I possibly can). He got a crop of prisoners last week, and one of them had concealed a photograph of his wife in his shirt, and the git found it. He took the photograph away from the man and ordered me to burn it. In front of the prisoner.

He said something this week that made my blood run cold: that maybe he might get another mudblood. Someone even younger than me. 'You'd like having someone you could teach master's ways, wouldn't you? Someone you could break in yourself.'

Just getting away from him isn't enough. As long as I'm with him, I also need to figure out how to stay a decent human being, even if he's trying to warp me into someone who thinks he's admirable.

(Fred and George, did you figure out whether it'd be safe for me to use that cushioning charm? He hasn't hit me since I got healed. Yet. But it would be good to know.)

Comments

[alt_gredforge]

We did some experimenting with the standard cushioning charm, yeah. Bad news, though: we're pretty sure he'd be able to tell if you're using it.

There's one other possibility, though. Not sure if it would help, but it might. It's another varient of cushioning charm, that doesn't lessen the force of the blow but it spreads it out over a wider area. So if he nails a punch to your kidney, it'd feel the same to him but it wouldn't hurt as much in that one spot. You'd feel it all the way out to your fingers and toes. Wider but shallower bruises.

Makes us sick to think of it. But it might be a good thing for you to know how to do.

[alt_terry]

Maybe that could help. Anyway, I could try it.

[alt_ron]

So. Um.

I don't get how Carrow can make you a bad person. I mean, it's not like you do actually admire him or anything. And he can't make you. I mean, that's really the one thing no one can force, right? What you believe or don't--or, y'know, what you think is good or awful.

I don't see how having another servant changes anything. Except I guess it'd be someone else for him to kick around and not just you.

[alt_terry]

You have no idea, it'd be easier than you think. See, I think he wants to get me liking the idea of kicking another servant around. Like I'd take out my frustrations about being his punching bag by making someone else my punching bag. Someone even smaller and weaker than me. He'd absolutely love that.

I've trained myself to not show any anger toward him. But I suppose he knows it's there. He has to know. He'd think it would be pretty cool to channel that anger into learning to like hurting something or somebody else.

Um. See, he has a whole bunch of books on...on causing pain. There are people that cause pain because they like it, because it gives them pleasure. It's something called 'sadism.' This is, um, really sick stuff, Ron. It's the sort of pleasure that some people, normal people, usually get from being with the ones they love. Where ordinary people would do stuff like, I dunno, hugging or kissing (and other stuff too, don't know how much you know about it), sadists pull out whips and sticks for beating people with and, um, other things. The opposite of sadism is something called 'masochism,' that's when you get pleasure from experiencing pain. He's just fascinated with this stuff, along with his sister; they talk about it all the time.

Anyway, I looked at some of those books once. They gave me nightmares. The, um, practical stuff. But they talked about how to make people want to do this stuff more. It can really overlap with dark magic, you start to crave it more and more. Giving pain. Or receiving it.

I think...I think there's part of him that wants a mudblood who's what you call a 'masochist.' A mudblood who likes getting kicked around. Someone who gets pleasure from it, craves it. When a sadist gets paired with a masochist, it can...well, it can get really ugly really fast. Because they sort of egg on each other, see? But I've been, I dunno, too stoic for his tastes or something; I don't show him that I get pleasure from getting hurt. Well of course I don't, I'm no masochist!

So I wonder if he's starting to think he can turn me into a sadist, too. Well, a weaker one than him, one that doesn't threaten him. But would threaten someone else.

Then he would get to watch. And he'd get even more pleasure watching me inflict pain on somebody else.

[alt_ron]

Erm.

So you're saying everybody's either one or the other?

I mean if you're not the m-wotever, the M kind, does that mean you're the other?

Do you think you'd like hurting someone else?

Cause that doesn't seem right to me. That you're either one or the other. I mean, most people are just normal. And those kinds of people are sick.

[alt_terry]

The opposite of a masochist is a 'sadist.' That's what master is, and his sister, too.

No, I don't think everyone's either one or the other. I think most people are neither one. I have no interest whatsoever in either one myself and yeah, I agree it's really sick.

But maybe messing around with this stuff, just thinking you're going to dabble in it, could be real dangerous. What I'm really afraid of is that he'll force me to do it, and before I know it, I'll find myself starting to like it. Not because I want to, or because I'm that way naturally, but because it's like dark magic. It can suck you in and you find yourself wanting it more and more. That thought just scares me so much, that I could end up being anything like him.

[alt_neville]

Whoa.

That's just...

whoa.

Maybe the way to think of it is, if it's like a sickness is there any way you can guard against it? Like as if you innoculated yourself against it, as if it were a disease?

[alt_terry]

Huh.

I'll have to think about that.

I sometimes think to myself that Ma--that the git is sort of like a backwards moral compass. In a way. Like, if I can figure what he wants me to do, I should do the exact opposite.

Is there a different opposite to liking to cause pain than liking to receive pain? Because I don't want to be like that, either.

[alt_neville]

Well, sure, I guess so. It's not liking to cause pain. Like pity. Or empathy. Liking to help someone.

[alt_lee]

Yeah, that'd be it.

[alt_terry]

I guess it would.

Does that mean I'd have to practise being nice to him, though?

[alt_gredforge]

The git wouldn't deserve it.

[alt_terry]

No. But the point isn't what it does to him, but what it does to me.

I guess...I did go back to that prisoner later. The one whose picture I burned. I told him I was awful sorry.

I was, too. I felt just terrible.

[alt_sally_anne]

There are two other opposites to liking to cause pain. 'Compassion,' and 'disinterest.'

I've been thinking about my next essay about Dark Arts, I'm probably going to write about cruciatus, even though I don't expect you'll ever want to cast it. But you know how they talk about 'primary' and 'secondary' emotions for the mindset, there are also emotions you need to close off, and those are sort of the exact opposites you're talking about, since you have to want to hurt someone to cast the cruciatus curse successfully.

'Disinterest' is like you just don't care about the person at all. You don't feel pity, you just don't feel anything toward them and that can make it hard to cast a really dark spell. And compassion, well, that's pretty obvious.

[alt_sally_anne]

I found my notes and I got it slightly wrong. It's compassion and indifference.

The other emotion that you have to root out to cast dark spells is guilt, and in the mindset lectures that was discussed a lot, about how wizards sometimes believe they don't have the RIGHT to cast spells like this and so on. And there's something to it but when it comes to the cruciatus curse essentially she was saying, 'if you have a conscience, try to smother it in its sleep or you'll never be REALLY powerful.'

[alt_ron]

Ugh.

Wait.

D'you think that's right? I mean. Do you think you have to get rid of your conscience if you're going to get on?

Are you saying Terry has to?

[alt_sally_anne]

Of course I'm not saying that's right.

I'm saying, the opposite of what Terry's talking about was something we actually discussed in Dark Arts. There are a bunch of opposites and one of them is having a conscience. Which Terry has. Which is why he's not going to become like Carrow.

[alt_terry]

Thanks. For that vote of confidence.

I'll have to think more about this, about Neville's idea. Developing my conscience, I guess.