WAG - Harry has never met Justin DuMorne. His Justin was Heinrich Kemmler.

[g33k]

...
@g33k: My point is that he should be categorized as dirty from at least that point. It's not like we know of a single thing he did before that. (He wardened and likely associated with Margaret).

Fair enough!

I just think that's an awfully huge swing to the Darkside, if he had been faithfully doing good Warden duty until then.  I mean, seriously:  you were just part of taking down the most dangerous warlock in modern memory... you're riding high on victory & virtue!  So you shit on it all and grab some dangerous, needs-destroying black magic ??!?

[Bad Alias]

Had he been faithfully doing good Warden duty until then? Or was he dragooned into service as a Warden because of the Kemmler situation?

Taking Bob¹ doesn't violate a single Law of Magic. Bob isn't black magic. He's knowledge not quite incarnate. Naked power. The good or evil of Bob is almost entirely in the holder.

Stealing Bob isn't even close to warlock territory. It's corrupt. It's "dirty." It's helped Harry save the world repeatedly.

I do think we should all be able to agree that Justin wasn't a loyal upstanding Council member long before he decided to adopt some heavy hitter wizardlings to use as enforcers (or some as yet unknown purpose).

1: I'm going to call him Bob because what else should I call him? The spirit currently known as Bob? Kemmler's air spirit?

[g33k]

Had he been faithfully doing good Warden duty until then? Or was he dragooned into service as a Warden because of the Kemmler situation? ...

You know... I think we don't actually know very much about Justin's past.
 
Maybe he was dragooned into the Wardens to fight Kemmler, just as Harry was dragooned to fight Kemmler's heirs...  That's not my impression, but I don't recall any canon I can quote, or WoJ I can link, to show support for the "long-term warden" as Justin's backstory.

...
Taking Bob¹ doesn't violate a single Law of Magic. Bob isn't black magic. He's knowledge not quite incarnate. Naked power. The good or evil of Bob is almost entirely in the holder ...

Not so.

Recall that when Harry re-united Bob with Kemmler-era Bob, we got Evil Bob.

Evil Bob is... well, evil.  Just having the memories made the change -- Harry was still the Boss of Bob, technically (even EvilBob had to obey the return-to-skull conditions Harry had laid down), but Bob tried to KILL Harry; and you recall the WWII-Nazi bit of the Nevernever that EvilBob cooked up.

If Bob were as neutral as all that, destroying the skull wouldn't have been a priority -- Bob could have "safely" been retained and studied by the Council.  Instead, it needed to be destroyed... "of course."

Early on in the series, Harry explains (or sometimes just narrates what/why he can't explain) to Murphy how some research will get him killed, if the WC were to find out.  Some knowledge is inherently Black-Magical, or at least a presumptive death-sentence.
 

[Bad Alias]

About Justin: The closest we have to evidence of his upstandingness is whatever it was that LaFortier said in Summer Knight. I think that's it. On the other hand, we have everything else we know about him from stealing Bob to Harry killing him that would lead us to believe he wasn't a good guy.

About Bob: I don't know. Bob, on his own, destroyed as much "Evil Bob" as he could and locked away the rest. Kemmler was evil. That's why Bob was evil. I think the Council was ignorant as to Bob's true nature. I will freely admit Bob is extremely dangerous because he himself is neutral. He has no internal moral limits. It'd be really bad if an evil person got a hold of him.

About Harry's research in Storm Front: I think that had more to do with the Doom, Morgan being a hardcase, and Early Installment Weirdness. Let's ignore EIW because it isn't too helpful and is just my opinion. I don't think Harry was allowed within spitting distance of violating the Laws. See his interactions with Toot. For an example of Morgan being a hardcase about the Laws, see the his reaction to the "standard practice" wards on Harry's storage unit in Turn Coat.

[g33k]

About Justin: The closest we have to evidence of his upstandingness is whatever it was that LaFortier said in Summer Knight. I think that's it...

<heh>
<heh, heh>
And we all know LaFortier to have been an upstanding pillar of righteous behavior & exraordinarily-good judgement.

 

... About Bob: I don't know. Bob, on his own, destroyed as much "Evil Bob" as he could and locked away the rest ...

Yeah... Bob did that.  Harry's Bob.  Kemmler's skull?  No, that was actively evil.  And that evil was there inside, waiting a chance to get out.  And without any proximate owner to order it to, it tried to kill Harry (and nearly succeeded).

(BTW -- I know Bob "locked away" as much of the Kemmlerian stuff as he could; but I don't know that he "destroyed" any of EvilBob, or was even capable of doing so: if he could destroy his knowledge, he could have been safe from Mab by getting rid of the Immortal-Killing info...)
 

[didymos]

(BTW -- I know Bob "locked away" as much of the Kemmlerian stuff as he could; but I don't know that he "destroyed" any of EvilBob, or was even capable of doing so: if he could destroy his knowledge, he could have been safe from Mab by getting rid of the Immortal-Killing info...)

He says he destroyed some of it:

“Kemmler was bad, Harry,” Bob said. “He…he took what I was. And he twisted it. I destroyed most of my memories of my time with him, and I locked away everything I couldn’t. Because I didn’t want to be like that.”

Butcher, Jim. Dead Beat: A Novel of The Dresden Files (p. 33). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

As to getting out of trouble with Mab, how would she ever know he'd done it?

[g33k]

He says he destroyed some of it:
...

TYVM!!

I wonder what it was he (supposedly) destroyed?  I mean... EvilBob got back a LOT of stuff!

Maybe Bob actually "forgot" (locked away) the fact that he couldn't actually destroy any of it...

...
As to getting out of trouble with Mab, how would she ever know he'd done it?

Some time when he gets a "pass" (or has a slightly-loose phrasing on a specific mission), he could send a message via dewdrop or other low-powered faerie.

Harry calls Bob "one of the most powerful spirits I have ever seen."  There's got to be a LOT of ways for him to get a message to Mab's attention...
 

[didymos]

TYVM!!

I wonder what it was he (supposedly) destroyed?  I mean... EvilBob got back a LOT of stuff!

Maybe Bob actually "forgot" (locked away) the fact that he couldn't actually destroy any of it...

My theory is that he could destroy the day-to-day stuff about being around Kemmler, but couldn't destroy the stuff directly related to magic.

Some time when he gets a "pass" (or has a slightly-loose phrasing on a specific mission), he could send a message via dewdrop or other low-powered faerie.

Harry calls Bob "one of the most powerful spirits I have ever seen."  There's got to be a LOT of ways for him to get a message to Mab's attention...

Would she believe it?  Can Bob lie?

[Bad Alias]

Yeah... Bob did that.  Harry's Bob.

Harry never met any version of Evil Bob until Dead Beat. The Evil Bob from Dead Beat seemed to have no knowledge of Kemmler's death or Justin's ownership of him. Admittedly, that whole scene raises a lot of questions, but I think Bob eliminated/locked away the Kemmler stuff on his own without anyone's influence. He definitely had done it without anyone ordering him to.

[kbrizzle]

Well here’s how I see it - Bob can’t destroy anything he learnt from Kemmler that changed his views of how magic works, or really knowledge that Bob has used later - there are too many memories to destroy in these scenarios. However any knowledge gained from Kemmler that hasn’t been put to further use/ fundadementally change how Bob sees magic can safely be ‘deleted’.

@Kindler
I’ve been thinking a lot about Justin’s slide & will make a new thread about it soon.

One of the theories I’m seriously considering (especially in light of the new Morgan short story) is that Harry & Elaine were ‘marked by the Adversary at birth’. I think Justin found out that someone he was working with (likely Simon/ Cowl) was planning on Nfecting his Starborn foster-kids soon, so as a result he decides to enthrall them to keep them secretly loyal to him - IIRC he was creating fine thralls, not the brute force submission kind.

This would also explain why HWWB didn’t try to subdue or kill 16 yr old Harry - instead he was testing Harry to see if DuMorne did a good job in raising him (which the Walker wouldn’t need to do if it were regularly in contact with Justin). I suspect Simon sent HWWB after Harry.