The Map and Dark Magic was Re: Chapter Discussion: Prisoner of Azkaban Ch 18:

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 190441


> > Questions
> > 1. Lupin says the Marauders' map never lies, could this be a support for the
> > argument that the map does not have dark magic in it? Do you agree or disagree
> > with it?
> 
> Potioncat:
> Whoa, what a good question! As a group, we've had such a difficult time deciding what is Dark Magic and what isn't that my final answer is---darned if I know. But I'd say you have a really good point there.

Pippin:

Any harmful spell may be characterized as Dark Magic. In DADA class, the children are taught to defend themselves from  magic users who may attempt to hurt, control or terrify them. The trouble is, only moral cowards like Slinkhard (the author of Umbridge's DADA text)  would call it dark to take aggressive action in order to defend the innocent, while only one as lost to good as Voldemort would pretend that power needs no justification other than the strength to use it.

The pat answer is that there is no pat answer. The Dark Arts, as Snape says, are unfixed and mutating. What was innocent may become sinister, what was designed purely for selfish and sinister ends may be, with care, used to do good. 

The victims of a magical attack seldom  feel at the time that aggression against them was justified. Meanwhile the aggressors  nearly always intend their actions for the greater good, although in hindsight they may come to see that it was the greater good of a select and highly unsavory group to which they no longer wish to belong.

Steve:
It is not like the Map is or is capable of plotting and scheming, and conceiving
of the concept of deception. It simply reports the facts, though under the right
circumstances, it does so with a degree of sarcasm and humor, though those are
special circumstances and unrelated to reporting the location of people within
Hogwarts.

Pippin:
I'm afraid the Map is not quite as innocent  or powerless as that. Harry senses at once, even before he's seen it deceive Snape as to its true nature, that it is one of those magical devices that can think for itself. Certainly it doesn't pack the seductive punch of a Horcrux or the Hallows, but he knows it  was made not only to facilitate mischief making, but to encourage it. 

As the Twins point out, once you know your way around Hogwarts, you don't really need the Map. The Map, like the Diary, was intended as a record of its makers' achievements and to engage  others to follow in their footsteps, and it can make its user act as if he were under orders (see chapter 10.)

True, they are only orders to break school rules about going out of bounds, not to kill people or drive them out of the school as the Diary sought to do. The Marauders were only playing at being wicked, but I believe they were trifling with some very powerful and dangerous magic in order to do it. 


Pippin