Counter Curses (was: What counts as Dark Magic? )

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 109407

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "iamvine" <eleanor at d...> wrote:

> This brings up an interesting point.  Does _anybody_ know where
> regular magic ends and Dark Magic begins?
(snip)
> Is Wilbert Slinkhard right to disapprove of counter-curses on
> the grounds that they are curses too?

Your whole question of What is Dark Magic is a great question to which
I don't know the answer, but I do know that Slinkhard is simply
*factually wrong*. In Potterverse, a counter-curse is NOT a curse; it
is a only a defense against a curse. 

One that comes immediately to mind is Fake!Moody teaching the about
the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra): "Not nice," he said calmly. "Not
pleasant. And there's no counter-curse. There's no blocking
it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting
right in front of me."

Also in GoF, we have Hermione helping Harry prepare for the Third
Task: "He was still having trouble with the Shield Charm, though. This
was supposed to cast a temporary, invisible wall around himself that
deflected minor curses; Hermione managed to shatter it with a well
placed Jelly-Legs Jinx. Harry wobbled around the room for ten minutes
afterwards before she had looked up the counter-jinx."

PS/SS: "At that moment Neville toppled into the common room. How he
had managed to climb through the portrait hole was anyone's guess,
because his legs had been stuck together with what they recognized at
once as the Leg-Locker Curse. He must have had to bunny hop all the
way up to Gryffindor tower.

Everyone fell over laughing except Hermione, who leapt up and
performed the countercurse. Neville's legs sprang apart and he got to
his feet, trembling."

And Quirrelmort's confession: ""No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your
friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set
fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with
you. Another few seconds and I'd have got you off that broom. I'd have
managed it before then if Snape hadn't been muttering a countercurse,
trying to save you."

In the latter three examples, the counter-curse removes the effects of
its specific curse (Jelly-Legs Jinx, Leg-Locker Curse, broomstick
curse). The broomstick example shows Snape's counter-curse can remove
the effects of Quirrelmort's curse while that curse is still being
cast. Presumably if the counter-curse was cast powerfully enough and
fast enough, it could remove the effects of the curse before they even
occured, thus serving to *block* the curse entirely. So Fake!Moody's
"no counter-curse, no way to block it" would be repetition for
emphasis.