[HPforGrownups] Curriculum/the Dark Arts

[Catherine Keegan]

No: HPFGUIDX 31960

At 02:29 PM 12/19/01 -0500, Elizabeth Dalton wrote:
>Catherine Keegan wrote:>
> > BTW, what do you folks feel constitutes "the dark arts"?  I've been trying
> > to divide up what sorts of disciplines would make up a
> > curriculum.
<snippage of some cool comparisons of DADA vs. what might make up a Dark 
Arts curriculum.  Thanks loads, BTW.  My brain was not coming up with stuff>

>Parseltongue Literature (just kidding! ;)

Yeah, but there is probably a bunch of dark lit, too.  Hmmm... Perhaps 
their own version of Muggle studies wherein the perceptions of dark arts is 
checked out.

>Necromancy does sound like a good candidate for Dark Arts based on the 
>name, but
>it might depend on your definition of necromancy. Are you talking about
>communicating with the dead, raising the dead as servants, or laying the 
>undead
>to rest? Given that there are benign ghosts and dancing skeletons for 
>hire, what
>would a necromancer in the Potterverse *do*?

Actually, I've been wondering what one would do with a Dark Arts 
degree.  Surely there aren't too many niches for evil overlords.  I can 
almost see necromancy.  Uncle Charlie dies and hasn't finished up a bunch 
of stuff.  Aunt Martha has the local necromancer communicate with him and 
ties up the loose ends.  Awful lot of leeway to have the grief-stricken 
spouse/friend/lover get taken by an unscrupulous sort of wizard.

So, you go to Durmstrang and you learn a bunch of dark magic.  What are you 
going to do with it?  You're not a DE and you're not part of some Evil 
Overlord's minion hit squad.  Do you sort of stick all that knowledge into 
the back of your head and only use it to get rid of garden gnomes or do you 
occasionally succumb to getting even with the fellow who short changed you 
at the market with a nasty little hex or curse?  Or, do you find a nice 
little mob-like setting and become one of the "boys" and do a few hits here 
and there?  Maybe the graduates are the equivalents of the men who would 
fly in for the afternoon, do some business and leave on the evening 
plane?  Or, is it something that the bored and rich do because it's 
something that the family has always done?

Any way, some weird ideas while I'm waiting to go see LotR.

Catherine in California