[HPforGrownups] Draco is quite the wizard

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 160571

 Nicole:

>  But Harry somehow needs to learn it very quickly, and very well so the 
> Dark Lord can't "one up" him.
>  As much as we can't stand Draco, when it comes to the dark arts, he is 
> pretty good.  But do we know anything about his abilities to do something 
> other than dark magic or to do dark deeds?

Magpie:
Are all of those things particularly Dark?  He seems to be able to sometimes 
figure things out and fix things, not do really Dark Magic so terribly well. 
I can think of the Imperio, if he was the one to cast that on Rosemerta. 
His Crucio may have been effective or might have been like Harry's in the 
past--I tend to view Crucios cast by teenaged boys as more I HATE YOU!! 
spells.

I don't think Harry needs to learn Occlumency, since it seems like JKR 
considers it sort of one of his strengths that he can't do it.  Still I'm 
not quite comfortable with considering it Dark Magic.  It's a little too 
much like judging a personality type as bad.  Draco's natural ability to 
compartmentalize has been used badly by him to make him a bully he couldn't 
be otherwise, but it still seems a bit too much to consider it Dark Magic.

-m