Disarming spell WAS: Re: Wandlore and more

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185447

-jkoney: <snip>
> We are told that Snape knew more dark curses as a first year than 
most of the older students. So him having a dark curse as his 
signature curse is very believable.
>
Carol responds:

Obviously, we don't agree, but there's no point in my repeating the
same arguments a second time, so I've snipped most of your post even
though I disagree with it. I just want to say that sirius Black never
said that severus knew more *Dark* curses when he came to school than
most seventh years. For one thing, most seventh years don't know or
used Dark spells (at least, not until Carrow became DADA teacher).
what he said was "curses." YMMV, but I take "curses" in this context
to mean schoolboy hexes and jinxes like those he invented as HBP
(Sectum Sempra excepted), especially given that he was eleven years
old at the time. And if he had cast Sectum Sempra at school, leaving
his victim lying in a pool of blood like Harry after Draco cast that
same spell, he'd have been expelled.

Look at the spells he invented: Muffliato, a harmless charm that lets
kids talk to each other without being heard. (Even Hermione ended up
adding that one to her repertoire.) Langlock, the tonggue-tying hex
that Harry thought amusing to cast on Filch. Levicorpus, which was
only unfunny when James and Sirius used it against Severus in
combination with a number of other spells when they attacked him two
against one unprovoked.

I wouldn't go accusing the eleven-year old Sev, best friend of Lily
Potter, of knowing Dark magic. She would never have remained his
friend for more than six years (age nine or ten to age sixteen) if
that had been the case. I suspect that, like Hermione, they learned
spells after they got their schoolbooks and practiced them together.
Where either of them would have learned "curses," I don't know unless
Severus's mother taught them. And wouldn't she have gotten in trouble
for casting spells around a Muggle?

At any rate, hexes and jinxes qualify as minor curses according to
JKR, and I'm pretty sure that's all he knew at age eleven. And I'm not
sure that the eleven-year-old Sirius Black remembers tallies with the
one we see in "The Prince's Tale." He might well have picked up some
of the "curses" Sirius Black remembers from older students (not
necessarily Slytherins) at Hogwarts. Again, if he'd gone around
practicing Dark Magic as a first year, he wouldn't have been Lily's
friend for long.

Carol, who still thinks that Lupin was mistaken about Sectum Sempra
being Snape's signature curse or both he and Black would have known
long before GoF that Snape had been a DE