Do you think Harry had a justified reason for using the cruciatus curse on Carrow?

[Eleni]

I have to say I think it was unnecessary. There are plenty of other less cruel things he could have done to overpower the guy without sinking to that level.

I think the Cruciatus curse might even be the worst of the Unforgiveable curses. The circumstances of Dumbledore's death show that Avada Kedavra could be used to help someone but Crucio only ever causes pain and suffering.

[Ruby]

He did the curse in the defense of the innocent (McGonagall). The question is whether it had to be THAT curse. I could see it being categorized as 'cruel and unusual punishment' and also as self defense. I think that it's gray. Well, my final response would be that Carrow himself was a murderer, torturer, and at that moment attacking someone verbally, Harry attacking him/stopping him was justified even if the spell he used was harsh. I do agree that he could have used a different spell, maybe Petrificus Totalus, seeing as that would loop back to the first one.

[A]

I think at the time Harry was filled with anger and fear and desperation to destroy the horcruxes. Seeing McGonagall so disrespected by a death eater who'd also been torturing students, was obviously the final straw for Harry.

I know it's not ideal to see a hero reduced to something like that, but it's realistic. Harry wasn't perfect, he always had a temper. It made sense to me.

[Shamma8]

It made Harry human, with all that anger and hate tapped into that dark side of Harry

[Sahil]

Desperate times requires desperate measures.... nuff said

[Ioanna]

I agree that Harry had to do something to stop Carrow, and that it really didn't have to be the Cruciatus curse. Hurting somebody needs to have a good reason, and Carrow hurting McGonagall wasn't a good enough reason to use the Cruciatus curse.
So Harry didn't use the Cruciatus curse because of a good reason but only because he was angry, hurt, indignant, etc. The Cruciatus curse was a result of Harry's anger, not Carrow's current action; and anger doesn't justify hurting somebody (more than is necessary to stop them hurting someone else).

Having said that, however, I also believe it was important for Harry as a literary character to do it. We have seen him try to act out in anger before (e.g. trying to use Avada Kedavra on Bellatrix in The Order of the Phoenix), and I think it was an important realisation for him to know how these curses worked and made him feel.

[Shannonmd]

I feel that it's kinda like giving a bully a taste of their own medicine. I mean they were so bad that people cheered when some little kid thought they were dead. You have to do some pretty horrible things to deserve that.

[Hannag]

I think it's interesting to see Harry do this because in many other books of fiction the "hero" does only good. They may have some mishaps, but when they do bad things they always regret it very deeply and feel generally really bad about it just to still keep that kind of golden finish of sparkly hero and to remain confident on the good side.

So seeing Harry do something like this, the cruciatus - a very dark spell - on Carrow - a very dark character - is very interesting.

I think first of all it was mainly a surge of rage that made him just loose himself and cast this curse. He'd seen what Carrow did to his friends and family and of coarse he got angry. But I also think it was a lot about feeling guilty for not being there to defend his friends and family, since he was gone hunting horcruxes. He just had to show them that he was still on their side and that he would've stood up for them if he had the chance.

I also think this is a pretty good way to show how the war has changed Harry and the wizardling world. Before the war and before Voldemort I think these curses where regarded as really horrible curses, really dark and I almost think people didn't even talk much about them because only talking about it made them really scared. We've also seen a lot of Harry reacting very badly with these curses, with Neville's parents and Sirius' and his own parent's death, but also in the way that he almost always uses very nice spells and curses himself when battling. He know's what these curses can do, and he doesn't like it.

So maybe this was his way of realizing the war was real? He always knew things were wrong and that he'd be the one to do something about it, but maybe he first realized it when coming back to Hogwarts, his school and home, and saw what the war had done to it.

I don't know if I'm making any sense, but I guess what made him do it was rage, guilt and some sort of madness and desperation from going through this endless war.

And just to be clear: when I say it was interesting seeing Harry cast this spell I don't mean it like it was justified - in my eyes no one deserves an unforgivable - but merely that it was an interesting turn for Harry the character.

[BubblesTheMonkey]

I thought it was strange he could use it so well on Carrow for spitting on McGonagall but couldn't use it correctly on Bellatrix when she had killed his godfather. Granted, that was the first time he tried using it but still, he must have meant it more than when Carrow spit on McGonagall. I guess I kind of agree with Shahdia about all the anger building up in Harry about what Carrow had done, but... idk.

[Ioanna]

I think in the fifth book he was, for the most part, still a child and still innocent; he understood hate and darkness, but only as something outside himself - as something that only came to him through Voldemort alone, rather than as emotions and urges he experiences himself. In the seventh book, or even at the end of the sixth (Dumbledore's death etc), Harry loses this innocence, which is why he is able to use the curse.