Hating Dark Arts (was re James' essence...)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 154086

> Julie:
> It's still strange to me that James hated Snape so passionately
> for performing nasty curses (Dark Arts curses, presumably), while
> he was fine with hexing anyone who annoyed him. Does he really
> think it's fine to humiliate and hurt others as long as it's not an
> official "Dark" spell or hex? Does the label truly make the  difference?
>

Carol responds:
Usually I agree with you, Julie, but I'm at a loss to understand why
you would assume that the hexes that an eleven-year-old knew were
"presumably" Dark. For one thing, even as a teenager, the hexes and
jinxes he creates (with the exception of one which is almost certainly
created as retaliation against "enemies") are no darker than any other
hex or jinx we see in the hallways of Hogwarts, including Levicorpus,
the toenail jinx, Langlock (the tongue-locking jinx or hex), and
Muffliato, which is not only useful if you don't want to be overheard
but doesn't even inflict temporary damage or physical inconvenience
(other than buzzing in the ears) on the person it's cast on.
Hermione's Oppugno! (which I'm guessing means "attack") is much more
vicious. And there's nothing dark about bezoars or the potions hints
in the Teen!Snape's Potions book--or in his obvious interest in and
knowledge of DADA (*Defense Against* the Dark Arts), as evidenced by
his DADA OWL.

And I still have no idea where James Potter (as opposed to Sirius
Black) would have acquired any kind of personal hatred of the Dark
Arts. If Dark equals evil, I'd be willing to bet that the spells that
eleven-year-old Severus knew (and must have been casting, or know one
would know that he knew them) were more ingenious than Dark--clever
enough to call him to the attention of older Slytherins like Lucius
Malfoy, but by no means cruel by Hogwarts standards or he'd have been
kicked out of school.

I am, of course, speculating, but where is the evidence on which
you're basing your presumption--other than the biased statement of a
known enemy that he was "a little oddball up to his ears in the dark
Arts" that little Severus came to school knowing and casting Dark curses?

How many really Dark curses do we know of, anyway? Only the three
Unforgiveables, Sectumsempra (which Snape himself calls Dark but which
he had not yet invented), and possibly Morsmordre (Dark because of
what it stands for, a pledge to be the servant of an evil master)? I
would call the magic that Wormtail performed to restore LV first to
fetal form and then to his former body Dark, but surely
eleven-year-old Severus was not performing anything remotely
comparable. I would guess that the unknown spell that Dolohov used on
Hermione was also Dark, but it's unlikely that little Sevvy cast
anything that could kill a classmate, as Dolohov's spell could have
killed Hermione if it had been spoken, or so Madam Pomfrey seems to imply.

I'm guessing that Sevvy's repertoire of hexes and jinxes was a
combination of the spells that most seventh years would know and a few
he invented himself, but I very much doubt that he was a budding DE or
practitioner of Dark magic at age eleven, whatever Sirius Black might
say to the contrary twenty-odd years later of his longtime enemy, whom
he had recently learned was a former Death Eater. Neither Snape nor
Black had forgiven or forgotten what the other said in the Shrieking
Shack in PoA.

Is there any other evidence of Dark magic practiced by the first-year
student Severus Snape? Is there any evidence that it was this Dark
knowledge that caused James Potter to hate him?

Ask James himself. When Lily asks what Severus Snape has ever done to
him, James replies that he exists.

A Dark and deadly sin indeed.

BTW, I *do* think that the label makes a difference, but I don't think
that little Severus was comparable in the knowledge and practice of
Dark spells to the creator of an Inferius or a Death Eater controlling
others by means of the Imperius Curse or any other adult Dark wizard
(including himself in his Death Eater days if he created potions that
aided Voldemort's evil agenda). I doubt very much that his spells were
any Darker than James's (except that James, so far as we know, didn't
invent any of his own).

Carol, who absolutely agrees that James's hatred of Severus is strange
when he's so fond of casting hexes himself but does not think that
relative "Darkness" provides the explanation