Dark Magic and Snape / Dark Creatures

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 161560

> Carol:
> <snip> Once you've cast a single Unforgiveable, whether it's
> Imperius, Cruciatus, or AK, you've sentenced yourself to Azkaban.
> There's nothing whatever to deter you from casting as many 
additional
> Unforgiveables as you choose, assuming that your moral standards are
> shaky or nonexistent, and presumably it gets easier each time. 

a_svirn:
Even so, I would have to weigh the pleasure and profit I get from 
killing and torturing against the possibility of being caught (this 
time around) and sent to Azkaban. What's more, there wouldn't be 
anything else to stop me. 

> Carol:
> I think it's quite helpful, at least for a start. Dark magic is,
> apparently, magic performed with the intent to harm <snip>

a_svirn:
That's sounds awfully vague. I mean, any curse is designed to cause 
harm (and, I imagine, quite a few *counter-curses* also). Besides, 
you don't even have to use curses to cause harm. Suppose Zabini's 
mother tuned her lovers into porcelain figurines and kept them on her 
dressing table. Would it be a "cool piece of transfiguration" or dark 
magic? 

> Carol:
or some other evil
> motive--for example, the unnatural extension of life or denial of
> death--which, BTW, requires harm to others, blood from one living
> person, flesh from another, and bone from a dead man. The other
> restorative potion (the one that created Fetal!mort) required 
unicorn
> blood, which involves the death of something innocent. <snip>

a_svirn:
Yes, I thought that's what the Dark Arts are supposed to be 
about: "meddling with affairs of death", theft of death, death 
eating, immortality, horcruxes, etc.  At least it makes sense 
historically – that's what necromancy was about and, although it 
actually derives from *nekros* – `dead' in the Middle Ages it was 
often understood as "negromancy" – black magic. But this is a very 
special branch of knowledge, and it quite lives out the 
Unforgivables, Sectumsempra, werewolves etc.  

> Carol:
 In contrast, memory charms, however much we all despise them,
> were not created and are not normally used with the intent to harm. 

a_svirn:
We don't know with what intent they were invented. Maybe the chap who 
invented them genuinely thought that there is nothing wrong with 
violating other people's minds. Then again, maybe the chap who 
invented Imperius thought there is nothing wrong with violating other 
people's wills. The fact is they are being used to cause harm on 
regular basis. 

> Carol:
In
> fact, they're often used (condescendingly, to be sure) to "help"
> Muggles <snip>

a_svirn:
Well, I am sure "Aunt Elladora" Black hacked off her elves' heads for 
their own good too. Something should have had to be done to put them 
out of their misery. 

> > Carol:
> > Maybe Dark magic has the potential to corrupt the user, to turn 
him
> > evil or to lead him into an obsession with some unnatural goal, 
such
> > as immortality or control over others' minds.
> > 
> > a_svirn:
> > Maybe. But it seems to me that this hypothesis it at odds with 
your 
> > earlier statement about the importance of intent. Is Voldemort 
dark 
> > because he *means* to be dark, or has he just sort of tumbled into
> it without really meaning to? 
> 
> Carol:
> In his case, he was already corrupted by Dark magic, or by the 
desire
> to perform it, before he even knew he was a wizard. But I think that
> someone like Barty Jr. would become progressively more evil (or
> psychotic) the more Unforgiveables he performed. Surely, helping to
> Crucio the Longbottoms into insanity required intent to harm but 
also
> harmed Barty himself in some way. We talk about "hardened 
criminals,"
> but they don't start out hardened, however much they desire to harm
> others. 

a_svirn now:
No. But they became hardened because they wanted to harm others in 
the first place. You don't get corrupted because some stuff is simply 
irresistible. You get corrupted because you yourself are 
susceptible.  

> Carol:
They have to act on those desires first, and for Barty and the
> other Death Eaters, and potentially for Draco and even Harry, the
> Unforgiveable Curses provided the means to the end. They succumbed 
to
> the temptation to use them and so they fell into evil, perhaps
> irredeemable evil (which is why I'm so concerned for snape now that
> he's cast an AK, but that's another thread).

a_svirn:
This is all very well, but do we need slap a "dark" label to the 
Unforgivables just because they provide the means to the end? You can 
kill without the unforgivables, for that matter you can kill even 
without magic at all. It's murder itself that counts not the way you 
accomplish it.