There was a world before and a world beyond...
"What has happened?" said Dumbledore sharply, looking from Fudge to Professor McGonagall. "Why are you disturbing these people? Minerva, I'm surprised at you -- I asked you to stand guard over Barty Crouch --"
"There is no need to stand guard over him anymore, Dumbledore!" she shrieked. "The Minister has seen to that!"
Harry had never seen Professor McGonagall lose control like this. There were angry blotches of color in her cheeks, and her hands were balled into fists; she was trembling with fury.
"When we told Mr. Fudge that we had caught the Death Eater responsible for tonight's events," said Snape, in a low voice, "he seemed to feel his personal safety was in question. He insisted on summoning a dementor to accompany him into the castle. He brought it up to the office where Barty Crouch --"
"I told him you would not agree, Dumbledore!" Professor McGonagall fumed. "I told him you would never allow dementors to set foot inside the castle, but --"
"My dear woman!" roared Fudge, who likewise looked angrier than Harry had ever seen him, "as Minister of Magic, it is my decision whether I wish to bring protection with me when interviewing a possibly dangerous --"
But Professor McGonagall's voice drowned Fudge's.
"The moment that -- that thing entered the room," she screamed, pointing at Fudge, trembling all over, "it swooped down on Crouch and -- and --"
Harry felt a chill in his stomach as Professor McGonagall struggled to find words to describe what had happened. He did not need her to finish her sentence. He knew what the dementor must have done. It had administered its fatal Kiss to Barty Crouch. It had sucked his soul out through his mouth. He was worse than dead.
"By all accounts, he is no loss!" blustered Fudge. "It seems he has been responsible for several deaths!"
"But he cannot now give testimony, Cornelius," said Dumbledore. He was staring hard at Fudge, as though seeing him plainly for the first time. "He cannot give evidence about why he killed those people."
"THE PARTING OF THE WAYS," HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, J. K. ROWLING
***
And so Osama bin Laden is dead. It is the death he would have wanted, if one obituary is to be believed, a death by the bullet.
In another universe, I imagine him spending long years alone in a dark cell. I imagine him standing trial and giving testimony, facing the survivors of his victims. I imagine for him a prolonged death in captivity, in a world where he has stopped mattering. But that universe is not possible anymore.
Instead, in this universe, crowds are congregating on the streets of New York and D.C., cheering at a corpse. They evoke for me the faded recollections of video footage from another decade, others riotously rejoicing in our pain, and even though I know this is different, I am saddened that ten gruesome years have not taught us to be better people.
There was a world before and a world beyond, but the two were never quite alike. A decade out, that's the best I can come up with to describe what September 11th did. For me it was the transformative historical moment to which so much else harkened, the event that singularly cast into glaring light how unsafe a place the world could be.
I've learned many things since I was fifteen, but I still haven't learned how to celebrate death, the great irreversible. Of course I'm relieved that Osama bin Laden is no longer at large, no longer able to mastermind more attacks that would shatter more lives. Of course I understand that capturing him alive may not have been possible, or not possible without greater loss of life. Last night, when I first heard the news, I felt relief and disbelief entwined. I felt a sensation like the lifting of a shroud, as though the world had become a safer place for bin Laden's absence.
But the truth is that Osama bin Laden's death cannot give me my old world back. Nothing can; it is gone. Today I am wary. Sitting in my Manhattan apartment a stone's throw away from Times Square, I feel more cautious of my safety than I did yesterday.
We can kill a single terrorist; we can even decimate an individual terrorist network; but a war on terror is a war we will never win. Anger and hatred and violence cannot be eradicated from the human species. I want for us all to see the world for its complexities and nuance, to approach it with sensitivity and measure, to remember that there are at least two sides to every story.
Today a man is dead, a man with sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. I do not mourn him. But I do not delight.
"There is no need to stand guard over him anymore, Dumbledore!" she shrieked. "The Minister has seen to that!"
Harry had never seen Professor McGonagall lose control like this. There were angry blotches of color in her cheeks, and her hands were balled into fists; she was trembling with fury.
"When we told Mr. Fudge that we had caught the Death Eater responsible for tonight's events," said Snape, in a low voice, "he seemed to feel his personal safety was in question. He insisted on summoning a dementor to accompany him into the castle. He brought it up to the office where Barty Crouch --"
"I told him you would not agree, Dumbledore!" Professor McGonagall fumed. "I told him you would never allow dementors to set foot inside the castle, but --"
"My dear woman!" roared Fudge, who likewise looked angrier than Harry had ever seen him, "as Minister of Magic, it is my decision whether I wish to bring protection with me when interviewing a possibly dangerous --"
But Professor McGonagall's voice drowned Fudge's.
"The moment that -- that thing entered the room," she screamed, pointing at Fudge, trembling all over, "it swooped down on Crouch and -- and --"
Harry felt a chill in his stomach as Professor McGonagall struggled to find words to describe what had happened. He did not need her to finish her sentence. He knew what the dementor must have done. It had administered its fatal Kiss to Barty Crouch. It had sucked his soul out through his mouth. He was worse than dead.
"By all accounts, he is no loss!" blustered Fudge. "It seems he has been responsible for several deaths!"
"But he cannot now give testimony, Cornelius," said Dumbledore. He was staring hard at Fudge, as though seeing him plainly for the first time. "He cannot give evidence about why he killed those people."
"THE PARTING OF THE WAYS," HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, J. K. ROWLING
***
And so Osama bin Laden is dead. It is the death he would have wanted, if one obituary is to be believed, a death by the bullet.
In another universe, I imagine him spending long years alone in a dark cell. I imagine him standing trial and giving testimony, facing the survivors of his victims. I imagine for him a prolonged death in captivity, in a world where he has stopped mattering. But that universe is not possible anymore.
Instead, in this universe, crowds are congregating on the streets of New York and D.C., cheering at a corpse. They evoke for me the faded recollections of video footage from another decade, others riotously rejoicing in our pain, and even though I know this is different, I am saddened that ten gruesome years have not taught us to be better people.
There was a world before and a world beyond, but the two were never quite alike. A decade out, that's the best I can come up with to describe what September 11th did. For me it was the transformative historical moment to which so much else harkened, the event that singularly cast into glaring light how unsafe a place the world could be.
I've learned many things since I was fifteen, but I still haven't learned how to celebrate death, the great irreversible. Of course I'm relieved that Osama bin Laden is no longer at large, no longer able to mastermind more attacks that would shatter more lives. Of course I understand that capturing him alive may not have been possible, or not possible without greater loss of life. Last night, when I first heard the news, I felt relief and disbelief entwined. I felt a sensation like the lifting of a shroud, as though the world had become a safer place for bin Laden's absence.
But the truth is that Osama bin Laden's death cannot give me my old world back. Nothing can; it is gone. Today I am wary. Sitting in my Manhattan apartment a stone's throw away from Times Square, I feel more cautious of my safety than I did yesterday.
We can kill a single terrorist; we can even decimate an individual terrorist network; but a war on terror is a war we will never win. Anger and hatred and violence cannot be eradicated from the human species. I want for us all to see the world for its complexities and nuance, to approach it with sensitivity and measure, to remember that there are at least two sides to every story.
Today a man is dead, a man with sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. I do not mourn him. But I do not delight.