[HPforGrownups] Dark Magic

[Kethryn]

No: HPFGUIDX 114319

>>cunning spirit -
Please forgive me if this has been discussed before -- wading through over a hundred 
thousand posts is a bit daunting...BUT has anyone here ever discussed
just what constitutes Dark Magic?

In the books we see plenty of scarey looking spells tossed around, including by mages 
who claim to be agin' Dark Magic.  James Potter's upside-down pantsing of Snape doesn't 
look very different from what the DEs were doing to the muggle Roberts family after the 
QWC.  And that Bat-Bogey Hex Ginny Weasley seems so adept at in OotP -- wowsers!!   
And nobody seems to scream "Dark Magic" whenever Draco's gang and The Trio start  
flipping hexes at one another.  What am I missing?


Kethryn -

I'm just going to theorize here for a bit so pardon me if I ramble.  Dark Magic, to me so far as we have been shown, are magics that are unforgivable or that severly distort or change (permanently) the natural order of things (imperious - removes free will, crucio - removes free will through agonizing pain, ak - kills you).  Obviously, there is a ton of cannon for the unforgivables so now I will wander off into the realm of the not quite cannon.  When I say spells (or potions) that change the natural order of things on a permanent basis, that would mean something like permanetly transforming a class mate into a slug with no reversal spell or potion to make it all better.  That would explain why those curses/hexes the kids use aren't punished (the kids, not the spells)...all the damage they inflicted (think Malfoy on the train going home) was easily reversed and no lasting damage was caused.  One could also presume that a love spell or potion that was not breakable or did not go away after a while would also be horribly dark magic because the spell/potion would take away the other person's free will.  As for the Death Eaters levitating the muggles, what they were doing was undeniably wrong but I'm not convinced they were using anything other than wingardium leviosa which is, in and of itself, a perfectly harmless spell that the DE's distorted into something else entirely.  The polyjuice potion, on the other hand, I can see that being considered darker magic (a somewhat dark gray) because you can abuse it so easily (well, easy enough if you can make the potion in the first place).

Dark magic has always been traditionally portrayed as raising or speaking to the dead (we'd have to rule out the speaking part, the ghosts would be offended if no one talked to them) but we haven't seen anyone doing that yet.  Of course, I rather doubt Voldemort has anyone in the otherworld that he would deign to talk to and he is the only one powerful and evil enough to do it.

I think, since we have heard nothing on that front other than the Unforgivable curses, that it is really the attitude of the weilder that determines whether it is dark magic or not.  The way I have been thinking about it in my mind is that the Unforgivable curses are like nuclear bombs (horribly evil nasty should be gotten rid of NOW) and all the other curses and hexes are guns (mostly harmless in the right hands...even good people can have accidents).  The polyjuice potion, in the wrong hands, I equate with a fully automatic machine gun that is fully loaded with armor piercing bullets tipped with uranium.  So maybe those books in the restricted section are more about the bad wizards and witches than about the actual spells they performed.  I dont know though but that seems a good a reason as any.  

Kethryn - who is not sure on this matter at all but wanted to throw that out there to see what everyone else would say.