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A Harry Potter Quest: He who was not

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You've all forgotten Olivander's words.

Great does not mean good.

"Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember... I think we must expect great things from you, Mr Potter... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things — terrible, yes, but great."

[ ] She had achieved what was great – She was a woman with deep intricate beliefs and someone who had strived to bring those beliefs of hers to life. Where others would have lingered in doubt and hesitated out of fear, she had simply walked on, taking all evil up on her soul to do what was needed in the end. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the few Greats walking the earth, taking the responsibility where her husband could not.
 
[] She had achieved what was great – She was a woman with deep intricate beliefs and someone who had strived to bring those beliefs of hers to life. Where others would have lingered in doubt and hesitated out of fear, she had simply walked on, taking all evil up on her soul to do what was needed in the end. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the few Greats walking the earth, taking the responsibility where her husband could not.

While this acknowledges what she did was great it also acknowledges what she did was evil.
It reminds me a bit of how the word hero has changed with time.
Nowadays we mean someone who does good (as in superhero), but the term originally came from the Greeks.
And while those Greek heroes did Great things, few of them were good by modern standards.
 
Come on, Perenelle, people have kids all the time, you're so extra. They coulda just grabbed one from the side of the road, but nooo, you had to do the darkest magic because it was cool.

Also hey guys, this quest is amazing.
 
Something tells me Albus will have a rather innocuous yet ominous talk about Jacob's heritage.

He read Jacob's mind when he was thinking about the whole homunculus stuff, after all.
 
Very nicely done, @Tabula Rasa . I really enjoyed the twist on the death bed confession while still humanizing an inherently selfish character.

In the end, Perenelle was a supremely selfish individual: she had her husband keep the secret to everlasting life secret and she brought Jacob to confess to him not to ask for forgiveness or for concern for his well being but so that the greatness of her act would not be forgotten. But, she still loved and was human.

As to the choices, none of them are perfect. I am leaning towards Jacob considering her a monster, though I do wish that there was a little more nuance it seems about right for a 13 year old boy.

It seems the three choices will help develop Jacob's sense of ethics:

"She had achieved what was great" appears to espouse an idea that there should be no boundaries in obtaining a goal if it is great enough. This is not something I would want Jacob to feel or believe as it is a very dangerous line of thought that leaves behind many injured people.

"She had done what was needed" appears to espouse the view that what she did was wrong, but because the ends were good, it wasn't evil. A milder ends justifies the means view, but one that I can understand. Sometimes, if the need is great, bad things will be done. I don't agree that magical conception falls into that, but the philosophy is there.

"She had become nothing but a monster" appears to look at the actions without concern as to the outcome. I understand this, too, as what Perenelle did was evil. But, it seems to put upon Jacob a feeling of obligation and guilt that would be a good character driver. If he ever gets over the entire "I was created only by the sacrifice of 200 years of tortured souls" thing.
 
[ ] She had achieved what was great – She was a woman with deep intricate beliefs and someone who had strived to bring those beliefs of hers to life. Where others would have lingered in doubt and hesitated out of fear, she had simply walked on, taking all evil up on her soul to do what was needed in the end. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the few Greats walking the earth, taking the responsibility where her husband could not.

The biggest problem I have with this vote is that the way it's worded makes it sound like Jacob admires what she has done which to me is just ridiculous. What Perenelle did was completely vile and disgusting and in no way do I want Jacob to acknowledge what she has done as 'great', it's this line of thinking that will lead to morale compromises down the line that I do not want Jacob to think is ok if the achievement is great enough.
 
guys guys I just came up with a great use for that useless person in our third year, Michael he can be the basis of our Philosopher stone!

since apparently you only need one life to create it!
 
Eh, its clearly monstrous. If it was solely about raising a child there are so many better options out there, that would have ended up helping out and improving the world.

It seems they choose this approach not because it was needed, or even for someone in particular given it started over two hundred years ago, but because they wanted to see if they could and if it was possible. They were capable of extending life, were they capable of creating it. And they did it purposefully to people who trusted them, whom they lured to the Island with their promises, with the specific intent only to capture their soul and use it in an experiment. Who knows what the metaphysical significance of that is, I won't presume to use our own own philosophy as the magical world would know far better and debated far more extensively on the matter of the soul, but an adept comparison IC would be what thsi world thinks about the creation of horcruxes or dementors and its not remotely positive. Even the creation of a horcrux pales in comparison to what happened, on both the sheer scale and nature of the crime as it only requires murder not the usage of the victims soul.
 
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My main issue with the third option is that it's too unnecessarily emo. We basically become full of self-hatred and become almost completely unable to reciprocate any kind feelings towards those who love us, because of the sheer scale of self-loathing and rejection of our own existence.

You can hate Perenelle all you want. God knows I don't like her. But I absolutely refuse to take the option that would make Jacob reject those who still love and care about him, as that is not only cruel to them, but to himself.
The circumstances of his birth - not his creation, for he is no object, but his birth - were simply out of his control.

I am of the belief that the Great option will lead Jacob to recognize her achievements, while also condemning her actions, much like how one can say Hitler's unification of Germany was impressive, but essentially everything else about it was absolutely vomit-inducingly abhorrent.

That is not admiration or idolization. If anything, I think it leads towards self-reflection; what is the price of greatness? What does it mean to walk that lonely road, to bear the sins of the world you have made?

What the Flamels did... it can be considered the center of their existence.

They were capable of emulating something from the Age of Myth, they were their own Prometheus, and they will be immortalized.
But only Jacob, the crystallization (forgive the pun) of their efforts, will understand what that means.

Where the rest of the world would only see the greatness of the Flamels, only Jacob can see the terrible truth of the Greatness of the Flamels.

Part of this is my personal philosophy, too, I suppose. The worst possible thing one could do to someone is to "reduce" them, to render them from a person to a list of actions, an object, a moment in time. How many countless times has history been rewritten to fit the narrative of those who remained? What the second option does best, in my opinion, is to truly set Jacob on the path to his own form of Greatness. One that we all will be able to be proud of, I hope.

If it can be considered Great for the Flamels to create the Philosopher's Stone and stitch together a soul from hundreds, then it will be Great to grant those souls peace and make our own [soul, destiny, future] from scratch. We will go further than what they could do, we will atone, and we will stand on the shoulders of giants.

Perenelle—I do not think she was asking to be forgiven. That is good, because if she was, I would truly despise her. You cannot commit a crime as terrible as that and simply ask for forgiveness.

She is asking us to do better. To be better.
And you know what? We will.
But we won't be able to do that if we reject it, turn away from it all, and drown in our self-loathing.
The time for hatred is never. The time to be better is now.
 
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[ ] She had done what was needed

This seems fine to me. I am not into self loathing. We didn't ask for this, so we don't need to carry a millstone around our neck.

The great option is a bit iffy but if we are able to differentiate between great and terrible like Ollivander, then I don't have a problem with it.


Also, just to put things into perspective, what she did was horrible undoubtedly, but I don't think we can compare it to a horcrux.

Yes, she hijacked the afterlife of people through deception but she didn't go around murdering them in cold blood. These people lived their full lives. So overall what she did was unethical and disturbing, I wouldn't equate her to a dark lord.


Edit - hurray on 100 pages.
 
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godofsmallthings said:
[ ] She had done what was needed

This seems fine to me. I am not into self loathing. We didn't ask for this, so we don't need to carry a millstone around our neck.

The great option is a bit iffy but if we are able to differentiate between great and terrible like Ollivander, then I don't have a problem with it.


Also, just to put things into perspective, what she did was horrible undoubtedly, but I don't think we can compare it to a horcrux.

Yes, she hijacked the afterlife of people through deception but she didn't go around murdering them in cold blood. These people lived their full lives. So overall what she did was unethical and disturbing, I wouldn't equate her to a dark lord.


Edit - hurray on 100 pages.
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She literally took away all of those people's afterlife's and patch worked all of their souls together just to make a child for an infertile couple. That is undoubtably worse than the creation of a Horcrux, it's only the creator of the Horcrux whose soul is mutilated while Perenelle messed with hundreds of souls to create Jacob.
 
makes you wonder if Voldie only needed a horcrux of himself and the blood of the enemy, bone of the father, flesh of the servant to remake himself... Could there be more economical humunculi recipes? Perhaps Jacob could spawn asexually? :p
 
TheMortalRuins said:
She literally took away all of those people's afterlife's and patch worked all of their souls together just to make a child for an infertile couple. That is undoubtably worse than the creation of a Horcrux, it's only the creator of the Horcrux whose soul is mutilated while Perenelle messed with hundreds of souls to create Jacob.
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Exactly, extremely impressive and Great.
 
Fundamentally the second option misses the mark for me because Perenelle ultimately did not take responsibility for her actions. I'm inclined to vote for the third option because realistically we will have to bear the burden of the wrong doing.
 
Damn, that was a pretty heavy chapter. I think we all knew that there was something going on though. When it was confirmed that Flamel had a hand in our birth, along with our growth compared to other other Wizards, I figured he slipped something in when we were 'born'. Didn't think it was to this extent though.

Tabula Rasa said:
To you, he almost looked like his older self again, only this time without his usual outgoing and expressionist personality to him. When his eyes met yours, you felt Lobo's presence for a moment.
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Also, Dumbledore is getting annoying. So far every interaction we have had with him has involved him reading our mind. I doubt he is getting anything but vague surface thoughts or impressions, as he is doing it without a wand, but it is starting to get a bit grating. Expected, but grating all the same.

Tabula Rasa said:
[ ] She had done what was needed – While you couldn't find it in your heart to condone what she had done, deep in your heart you understood her motives. She had come from a different time with different beliefs and in the end had been guided by visions of something larger than herself. There was a sin in her actions, but in light of what had been in the end good, creating something that had not existed on this world before, how could it be evil?

[ ] She had achieved what was great – She was a woman with deep intricate beliefs and someone who had strived to bring those beliefs of hers to life. Where others would have lingered in doubt and hesitated out of fear, she had simply walked on, taking all evil up on her soul to do what was needed in the end. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the few Greats walking the earth, taking the responsibility where her husband could not.

[ ] She had become nothing but a monster – You had been created out of nothing but the results of evil. Those that had been betrayed died without knowing their fate. They had been sealed to nurture an experiment and to create something that was wrong to exist and now you must live with this burden, for it is on you to carry her sin until the day that you died.
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Yeah, not a fan of us thinking we are a monster, because we aren't. We are a person, one who was born under unique circumstances, but a person all the same. If anything, I like the Great option the most, because it acknowledges the truth that her actions were evil but at the same time she achieved something unthinkable. Like Ollivander said, you can do " great things — terrible, yes, but great.". We acknowledge that we can't change the past, that it was a terrible thing that was done, but it wasn't an evil we did. We are just the result. So I'm all for great, because I think it lets us acknowledge that evil and greatness aren't the same thing, but the means by which great things can be achieved can be terrible.

Edit: Basically, blaming ourselves for circumstances that were beyond our control is a bit much. She did something that was thought impossible. If there was a sin here, it was one that she committed, not us.
 
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[X] She had become nothing but a monster – You had been created out of nothing but the results of evil. Those that had been betrayed died without knowing their fate. They had been sealed to nurture an experiment and to create something that was wrong to exist and now you must live with this burden, for it is on you to carry her sin until the day that you died.
 
[X] She had become nothing but a monster – You had been created out of nothing but the results of evil. Those that had been betrayed died without knowing their fate. They had been sealed to nurture an experiment and to create something that was wrong to exist and now you must live with this burden, for it is on you to carry her sin until the day that you died.
 
[X] She had become nothing but a monster – You had been created out of nothing but the results of evil. Those that had been betrayed died without knowing their fate. They had been sealed to nurture an experiment and to create something that was wrong to exist and now you must live with this burden, for it is on you to carry her sin until the day that you died.
 
[X] She had achieved what was great – She was a woman with deep intricate beliefs and someone who had strived to bring those beliefs of hers to life. Where others would have lingered in doubt and hesitated out of fear, she had simply walked on, taking all evil up on her soul to do what was needed in the end. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the few Greats walking the earth, taking the responsibility where her husband could not.

I don't want Jacob to carry the burden, and I don't want Jacob to think that it wasn't evil. So Great, but Evil it is.
 
[X] She had achieved what was great – She was a woman with deep intricate beliefs and someone who had strived to bring those beliefs of hers to life. Where others would have lingered in doubt and hesitated out of fear, she had simply walked on, taking all evil up on her soul to do what was needed in the end. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the few Greats walking the earth, taking the responsibility where her husband could not.

Party's a go-go, folks! Something-something may the best argument win!
 
[X] She had become nothing but a monster – You had been created out of nothing but the results of evil. Those that had been betrayed died without knowing their fate. They had been sealed to nurture an experiment and to create something that was wrong to exist and now you must live with this burden, for it is on you to carry her sin until the day that you died.

Yeah, the downside of this is the self-esteem problem, but Jacob can grapple with that. Growing up is hard, and Jacob's having a rougher time than most, but he's managing it. He can overcome this, too, and eventually realize that while Perenelle a shit none of this is his fault.

But Perenelle's plan wasn't needed, and though it was arguably great, that's not the important takeaway from the mass ghosticide. Ollivander did say "terrible, but great," but that was an intensely creepy bit, not something to emulate imo. So the last is the least bad option.
 
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