I really like your point about how much better books are when they're a bit ethically messy. When a book insists on a moral on every possible occasion, all the life goes out of the book.

So I guess that the ethical inconsistencies readers find when an author "just dumps this big pile of story out" (I love that!) are a sign of the story's vitality. In Tolkien I think that's definitely true -- Frodo's tough decisions at the end maybe wouldn't seem so tough if every single character in the book had been able to see the humanity of their enemies. To me it makes a lot of sense that two good characters like Legolas and Gimli would make this kind of a bet. If evil characters had done it, that would just show that the characters were evil. Since good characters did it, that shows that goodness is hard in Tolkien's universe, which is much more important and interesting.

Maybe Rowling will prove to be up to the same kind of thing by the time the series is over. It's easy to admire the artfulness of Tolkien's messiness, maybe, because we know how the story turns out, and the implicit ethic of any plot depends so heavily on the ending. With Rowling we're maybe still guessing where she's going to go. I really like the connection you make among the three characters who get cold feet. Maybe the connection will remain just that -- a repeated plot element that doesn't go anywhere. Or maybe the ending will turn this plot element into a quality of evil in Rowling's universe -- it could prove to be the key to Voldemort's weakness if another of his minions (Peter Pettigrew?) gets cold feet at a crucial moment and brings him down.