The classification of combat spells and the nature of the Dark Arts
The classification of combat spells and the nature of the Dark Arts
What does it actually mean to say that a spell is a curse - or for that matter, Unforgivable or Dark? With reference to Snape, what can we say about somebody who is said to know many curses, or to be interested in the Dark Arts?
Sirius's claim that schoolboy Snape was famous for his interest in the Dark Arts and that that was why James hated him is highly questionable: James does not produce this as a reason for his bullying Severus (only "he exists"), and we see James start to pick on him on their first day, when he knows nothing about him except that he wants to be in Slytherin. Nor is the statement that Severus started at Hogwarts knowing more curses than half the seventh years as significant as it seems: if he knew more curses than only half the seventh years he knew the same number as, or fewer than, the other half, and Harry, who is such a DADA expert, enters what should have been his seventh year knowing eight curses (Diffindo, Reductor, Petrificus totalus, Locomotor mortis, Sectumsempra, Cruciatus, Imperius and Avada Kedavra) - and then only if you include the three Unforgivables, which he has not yet successfully cast. Therefore, saying that Severus started at Hogwarts knowing more curses than half the seventh years presumably means he knew five or six curses: not the vast arsenal often imagined in fanon.
Nevertheless, it does suggest an interest in offensive magic, and we know that as an adult Snape did have a reputation for being interested in the Dark Arts, because he himself refers to it in conversation with Bellatrix. What does this mean in terms of his behaviour and character? Are curses, or the Dark Arts, necessarily evil?
"Curse" certainly doesn't just mean that the spell has some sort of harmful effect or can be used aggressively: jinxes and hexes also do that. It doesn't mean that the spell only has a harmful effect, because the Reductor Curse could presumably be used for mining. And it doesn't mean that the spell is considered evil, because Locomotor mortis is apparently on the Hogwarts syllabus.
Part of the problem is that wizards clearly use all these spell-terms as inconsistently as scientists use the word "species". [Technically, a species is meant to be a group of organisms who can interbreed with each other but not with the members of any other group - but some scientists still classify dogs, wolves and the many different varieties of jackal as different species out of habit, even though we now know they can all interbreed with each other.]
I would suggest, as a working hypothesis, that a curse is a spell which has an at least potentially harmful effect and which is unusually strong in some way - so the name is a safety-rating and a warning. Petrificus totalus, for example, seems to be remarkable for the fact that it doesn't come off until someone specifically lifts it, whereas Impedimenta, which is similar in its effects but is classed as a jinx, wears off on its own in about a minute, and most spells do seem to fade out on their own eventually. Knowledge of curses is not per se a bad thing, anymore than the use of a chainsaw is necessarily a bad thing: it would depend on what curses they were and how responsibly they were used.
As for hexes and jinxes, they seem to be combat or prank spells which are less powerful than a curse. They are clearly different classes of spells because they are frequently referred to as a contrasting pair, e.g.:
| 'So we've expanded into a range of Shield Cloaks, Shield Gloves ...' '... I mean, they wouldn't help much against the Unforgivable Curses, but for minor to moderate hexes or jinxes ...' [HBP ch. #06 p. 116]The more Harry pored over the book, the more he realised how much was in there, not only the handy hints and short cuts on potions [cut] but also the imaginative little jinxes and hexes scribbled in the margins [cut] [cut] There had been a hex that caused toenails to grow alarmingly fast (he had tried this on Crabbe in the corridor, with very entertaining results); a jinx that glued the tongue to the roof of the mouth (which he had twice used, to general applause, on an unsuspecting Argus Filch); [HBP ch. #12 p. 223/224] |
In what way do they differ? In PS, Hermione speaks of a jinx requiring the caster to maintain eye-contact. That makes a certain amount of sense for the Impediment Jinx: we see it used by Harry on a giant Blast-Ended Skrewt, and by Sirius on Severus during the bullying scene, and both times the spell wears off very fast. This could potentially be because the caster did not maintain eye-contact, although the comment about it in GoF makes it sound as if its wearing off fast is a thing over which the caster has no control.
| 'I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I've read all about them! You've got to keep eye contact, and Snape wasn't blinking at all' [PS ch. #11 p. 141]'Panting, Harry pushed himself away from it and ran, hard, in the opposite direction -- the Impediment Jinx was not permanent, the Skrewt would be regaining the use of its legs at any moment [GoF ch. #31 p. 543] |
Other references, though, make it clear that Hermione cannot possibly be right to say that jinxes require continuous eye-contact to work, unless the term "jinx" is being used extremely loosely by everyone else.
We see McGonagall take Harry's Firebolt to check it for jinxes placed there by its sender - who clearly does not still have eye-contact with the broom. In GoF Hermione puts a Jelly-Legs Jinx on Harry and then has to spend ten minutes looking up how to take it off again as he staggers round the room: she cannot simply lift it by ceasing to look at him. Levicorpus is said to be a jinx, and again it requires to be specially released. Ron quotes a wizarding superstition - "Jinx by twilight, undone by midnight" - which makes it clear that in general a jinx which fades out after only a few hours is considered to be weak.
In OotP the loyalty spell which booby-traps poor Marietta is a jinx (Hermione's own word for it) which Hermione has placed on the parchment which they all signed when they joined the DA. Again, this is clearly something Hermione embedded in the parchment and then left there: it does not require her to maintain eye-contact. Alicia's jinxed eyebrows keep on growing. St Mungo's has a department to deal with "Unliftable jinxes, hexes, incorrectly applied charms, etc.", and we see or hear of jinxed shoes which bite and go on biting, of jinxed toilets which have to be dealt with by the Ministry, of an Anti-Disapparition Jinx used by Dumbledore to confine prisoners and a Stretching Jinx which might explain a permanent change in someone's height. None of these requires the caster to remain present in order to maintain the spell.
To some extent "jinx" is used as a catchall term for minor to medium-level combat spells: on the train at the end of GoF we are told that Draco and co. get hit with a "jumble of jinxes" for example, and then later that they are "lying on the floor, covered in hex marks". Harry clearly thinks of Langlock as "a jinx that glued the tongue to the roof of the mouth", and differentiates it from the toenail-growing thing, which is a hex; but Ron later refers to Langlock as a hex. But it's unlikely that Hermione, Dumbledore or St Mungo's would be so imprecise, so there's no doubt that "jinx" is applied to spells which do not require continuous eye-contact.
The simplest explanation for this anomaly is that when Hermione said "I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I've read all about them! You've got to keep eye contact" she was speaking imprecisely. She meant to convey: "I know this is a jinx because I've read up about jinxes and I recognise this particular one, which requires eye-contact". That would explain why the particular jinx or type of jinx which she imagines (wrongly) that Snape was using requires continuous eye-contact while others clearly do not: but it would still leave us not knowing what makes a jinx a jinx or a hex a hex.
When we hear hexes referred to they are nearly always spells which directly affect or change the body: the Bat-Bogey Hex, the Stinging Hex, the hexes which gave Marietta textual pimples and Crabbe giant toenails and Hermione overlarge teeth, knocked out Kingsley and Dawlish, and turned Neville into a canary. James and Sirius were punished for using an illegal hex which caused somebody's head to swell to twice its normal size. A book called Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed lists hexes for instant scalping, pepper breath, horn tongue....
Every time we see a hex mentioned and its effect is described, it affects the body directly, except in one or possibly two cases. During the running battle after Dumbledore's death, Snape is said to use a hex on Harry's wand to cause it to shoot away out of Harry's reach - although as the hex isn't named that could conceivably be a sloppy use of language. Or perhaps hexes can affect wands because they are so intimately linked to the owner, and as such almost living. But also when McGonagall and Flitwick examine Harry's broom, McGonagall says that Flitwick is concerned that there might be a named hex, the Hurling Hex, on it. If this is a hex which would make the broom throw Harry off, it would definitely break the pattern of hexes being combat spells which affect the body - but it may be that the Hurling Hex would make Harry himself hurl, i.e. vomit, or hurl the broom away from himself in midair.
It's certainly not the case that hexes cause changes in the body and jinxes don't. Alicia's overgrown eyebrows were ascribed to a jinx, not a hex, and Morfin Gaunt was accused of performing "a jinx or hex on the said Muggle, causing him to erupt in highly painful hives." During the Triwizard Tournament Sirius advises Harry to "Practise Stunning and Disarming. A few hexes wouldn't go amiss either", which suggests that Stunning isn't a hex, and Harry explicitly classifies Langlock as a jinx.
It is possible, at least, that hexes interface with the body in some direct way. Jinxes can also affect the body but do it by some other means, some different form of interface, and they can also - unlike hexes - be used on non-living things such as toilets or pieces of parchment. That would explain why Hermione put a jinx on the DA's membership list, but the jinxed list then put a hex on anybody who betrayed the group.
What makes an Unforgivable unforgivable? False!Moody classes them with "illegal Dark curses", but it's surely not that the spells are especially evil in their effect. Whilst it is difficult to think of benevolent uses for Crucio, there must be plenty of benign uses for Imperio - calming the violent or suicidal, for example, or controlling prisoners much more humanely than with Dementors. And Reductor would probably kill you just as dead as Avada Kedavra, if it hit you squarely.
It may be that these spells are special because there are no counter-spells to them: false!Moody certainly says that there are no counter-curses to Avada Kedavra, and no blocking it, although in fact we see during the fight at the Ministry that it can be blocked and deflected by physical barriers. Or it may be that they are considered to corrupt the user, because they have to put so much of their own will into them. Bellatrix says that you have to really mean the Unforgivables to make them work, and false!Moody that you have to put a lot of force into Avada Kedavra, so it may be that these spells are seen as personally damaging because you can't work them just by waving a wand and saying the right words: you have to really will to kill, to hurt, to control.
Of course, a certain amount of will goes into many spells. We see for example that Scourgify behaves quite differently when James uses it to choke Severus with soap, and when Tonks uses it to banish most of the dirt from Hedwig's cage, with no sign of any soap: so clearly the caster's intention modifies the spell. James's intention in using Scourgify was nearly as vicious as Bellatrix's intention with Crucio, and there must be a similar kind of mental input into Obliviate, since we see Hermione use it to remove several minutes from the memories of the two Death Eaters in the café in DH, an unknown wizard use it to delete a few seconds from the Muggle caretaker at the World Cup and Lockhart try to use to to wipe large chunks from the minds of Harry and Ron, all with the same single word.
However, it may be that if you do the right words and wand-work for Obliviate, memory-wiping will be primed to happen whether the caster feels strongly about it or not, and then the caster simply tweaks it; rather than needing to have a passionate desire to destroy someone's memory in the way that - according to Bellatrix - the successful caster of Crucio has to have a passionate desire to hurt.
On the other hand, Bellatrix is a lunatic whose word can't be taken as gospel, and Draco appears to have cast Crucio on Rowle, the big blond Death Eater, quite successfully with no motive except not to have Voldemort Cruciate him. We know that the Imperius Curse caused the Ministry a great deal of trouble, and that at times the Ministry has authorised the use of Unforgivables by its own operatives. So it may be that the decision to ban these particular spells was purely political: the Ministry of Magic doesn't want individual witches and wizards casting Unforgivables for the same reason that the Muggle government doesn't want private citizens to own Exocet missiles.
And finally - what makes a Dark spell Dark? "Dark" in this context doesn't just mean "evil". There doesn't seem to be any intrinsic reason why Imperiusing somebody should be much more evil than Confunding them or deleting or modifying their memories, which is regarded as perfectly normal and acceptable. Furthermore, in Rowling's foreword to the Tales of Beedle the Bard we are told that Beedle "mistrusted Dark Magic", as one among a list of ostensibly admirable and liberal attitudes, and then that Dumbledore "held very similar views". According to Draco, the Dark Arts are actually taught at Durmstrang, and although Durmstrang seems to be regarded warily, Hogwarts and Beauxbatons are reasonably happy to associate with it. If Dark magic were overtly evil, merely "mistrusting" it would be a bit limp, and you'd expect Durmstrang to be a pariah. And we know that the wizarding world believes that it is possible for a 15-month-old baby to already be a powerful Dark wizard.
The terms "Dark Arts", "Dark Magic" and "Dark magic" (which may or may not all be the same thing) are obviously used as sloppily in the wizarding world as "curse" or "jinx" - the mere fact that any defensive or combat magic taught at Hogwarts seems to be classed as Defence Against the Dark Arts shows us that. In this context, "Dark Arts" seems to just mean "aggressive magic". It could just be that they are serious, adult combat-spells, differing from the jinxes and hexes that students try on each other the way a gun differs from a child's catapult. But the references to wounds caused by Dark magic not healing properly, whilst slashes caused by Sectumsempra - which can clearly be used as a fairly serious combat-weapon - heal easily, suggest that when the term is used properly, it is some intrinsic quality in how the magic works which makes it Dark; not its combat-potential, nor its evilness or otherwise.
[The fact that the "Defence Against the Dark Arts" class only peripherally involves actual defence against actual Dark Arts would be pretty typical, in my experience. When I was at school in the '70s there was a strange class called "Personal Hygeine" which in fact was a mixture of heavy-duty human anatomy and physiology, dietary advice and sex-education.]
Given what we are told about unhealing wounds caused by Dark magic, and the powerful curse on Dumbledore's arm, which strengthens over time and can at best only be contained for a while, one possibility is that Dark magic feeds on some energy source - the caster, or the victim, or something else external or even demonic - in order to fuel itself and keep itself going. Imperio, properly cast by an expert, certainly seems to keep running for a very long time with little maintenance.
The idea of a possibly-demonic power source may at first glance seem out of place in the Potterverse: but Dementors certainly seem to be demons in the Muggle sense of the word, and the creatures in the Fiendfyre behaved like living entities, not just pictures. They could be malign spiritual entities - "demons" - or the sort of spirit real-world witches call fire-elementals. Of course, so do the wizarding chess-pieces behave like living souls - but they too may contain some sort of trapped spirit, or the locally-created spirit psychics call a "thought-form". In the Western ritual magical tradition Muggle-type wizards believed that they could work magic by summoning both angels and demons. Spells worked through demons weren't necessarily evil - the power could be used for healing magic, for example - but they were always risky to the caster.
Alternatively, Red Hen suggests that Dark magic is magic which is linked to some sort of primal chaos. Wounds caused by it could be hard to heal because being touched by that chaos disrupts the patterns of the patient's own magic around the wound, or because the patient's morphic field has been corrupted. That would work because it would make it hard for healing magic to be brought to bear on them. In that case you'd expect the wounds might eventually heal on their own: but with neither magical nor Muggle antisepsis, scarring and persistent oozing would indeed be a likely result.
The idea that wounds caused by Dark magic don't heal because the curse that caused the wounds refuels itself and keeps on working, or alternatively that the injury is chaotic in nature and causes some kind of localised unravelling of the energy in the patient's cells, might explain why Bill Weasley's werewolf injuries won't heal properly. The wound is infected with lycanthropy and the lycanthropy acts like a sort of demon in itself, or like a virus, something quasi-alive which is trying to spread, to make Bill into a werewolf; but it can't do so because the "viral load" generated by Greyback in his human form isn't great enough to break through some sort of protective barrier. And the were-self itself, the mania which drives the fully-transformed werewolf to rend and kill, might be seen as some sort of demonic possession.
Snape calls the Dark Arts "many, varied, ever-changing and eternal [cut] unfixed, mutating, indestructible [cut] flexible and inventive", and teaches the sixth-year DADA class using a book called Confronting the Faceless. When compared with the apparently slow pace of the development of official spells in the wizarding world (leaving their "technology" lagging decades behind that of Muggles in many ways), this again suggests that Dark magic may be an actual different class of magic, which bypasses the rigid restraints of wand-gestures and spell-words. We see Dumbledore do magic - in the Horcrux cave, for example - apparently just by pointing his wand and willing something to happen, without a formal spell: we now know that this was probably because he was using the Elder Wand, and it may be that the Wand is a kind of Dark magic facilitator.
Eduardo Ribeiro II on Quora has made the following interesting suggestion, which fits well with the evidence: "Maybe Dark magic operates on different source of power/energy. And that source brings damage to the wizard that uses it. For example: Dark Wizards cannot conjure patronuses.//Like regular magic is FM band and Dark magic uses AM. And the human soul is not fit for the AM band." This would explain why Dark magic is generally regarded with some alarm and yet doesn't appear any more evil than regular magic, and how a baby could be a Dark wizard.
The examples which Snape shows the students are also signficant. Snape does appear to be talking about something spookier and more Gothic than just combat spells, and the examples he picks are Cruciatus, the Dementor's Kiss and Inferi - one spell and two creatures, or a specific act by a creature, or perhaps the act of controlling or dealing with those creatures. Later on, the Carrows will teach Dark Arts, and their lessons include Cruciatus and Fiendfyre. So that's a spell which (according to Bellatrix) requires an especial infusion of will in order to operate; the devouring of the very soul by a quasi-demonic embodiment of clinical depression which feeds on pain and sucks out memories (and which the Ministry was happy to employ, until the Dementors turned on them), or the act of directing a Dementor to do so; a zombie, or the act of animating and/or directing the zombie; and an all-consuming fire driven by demonic - and apparently sentient - monstrous forms. These are all things which deal in some way with soul and spirit and will.
The idea that Dark magic is chaos magic - as contrasted with the organised magic of prescribed spell-words and wand-gestures - would be admirably simple and clear, and it would fit very well with Snape's speech and with the idea that wounds caused by Dark magic are infected with some sort of progressive unravelling. But I lean towards the idea of Dark magic as a kind of specialised manipulation of energy on the level of the soul, because that fits better with the inclusion of Inferi and the Dementor's Kiss under the banner of Dark magic, and because it ties in unhealing, werewolf-created wounds with the quasi-demonic, possessing nature of the unmodified werewolf itself.
Tom Riddle is called the Dark Lord, and we see that from an early age he had a particular talent for wandlessly manipulating people's minds. He is able to possess animals - including at least one human animal - when he has no body or voice, let alone a wand, and he uses up their energy from within. His great passion is immortality - getting power over the movement and destination of the soul. The potion which he uses to protect the locket Horcrux is something which manipulates memory and emotion.
Dark magic seems to be a thing which can be intrinsic to a person's nature and can be done wandlessly, defensively and without any evil intent - or any conscious intent, really - since Snape tells Bellatrix that there were rumours about Harry having survived Voldemort's attack (when he was fifteen months old) because he was a great Dark wizard, and Bellatrix evidently finds this feasible. Snape presumably regards it as plausible too or he wouldn't say it, since he is trying to sound convincing.
| 'I should remind you that when Potter first arrived at Hogwarts there were still many stories circulating about him, rumours that he himself was a great Dark wizard, which was how he had survived the Dark Lord's attack. Indeed, many of the Dark Lord's old followers thought Potter might be a standard around which we could all rally once more.' [HBP ch. #02 p. 35/36] |
He's not just saying that toddler!Harry might have been a powerful wizard who had the potential to become powerfully Dark: if he's speaking at all accurately then he's saying that Harry might have already been a powerful Dark wizard when he was fifteen months old, and that that was how he survived the Killing Curse. So it must be possible for a pre-verbal infant to do wandless Dark magic, and it must be possible for a piece of magic which had no motive except to protect an infant from murder to be considered Dark. Ergo, when the term is used precisely "Dark" cannot mean "intentionally evil" or "obviously loathesome": it has to be some intrinsic quality in the magic itself, whoever it is used by and whatever it is used for.
So what about Harry's survival might make people think he had performed Dark magic? He did (or rather, in fact, Lily did) something which was powerfully destructive, which disembodied and vaporized somebody and which did the supposedly impossible by magically-deflecting Avada Kedavra. And not just reflecting it back on the caster, either, because what happened to Voldemort was a lot more spectacular than just being Avada-ed dead. [In practice that was probably because a spell which could not be survived hit a man who could not die - but Snape doesn't know about the Horcruxes, so what he's saying has to sound feasible on the basis of what he does know.] So it would seem Harry was thought to be a great Dark wizard because he did something powerful and dangerous which broke the laws of normal, controlled wand-magic and did the supposedly undoable, and which disembodied one soul and saved another.
This could fit with the idea that Dark magic is some kind of energy-manipulation. They may feel that Harry vaporized Voldemort because he somehow turned Voldemort's own magic back on itself, and that that's what makes Harry's supposed defensive action Dark magic.
Alternatively, Red Hen suggests that if Dark magic means chaos-magic, all involuntary, wandless magic performed by children is Dark magic, although it's not usually called that. That would mean that when Snape spoke of the possibility of Harry being a great Dark wizard, he meant one with a talent for wandless, instinctive manipulation of power.
So why would Dark magic become inextricably linked with evil in the popular wizarding imagination - as it seems to be? Perhaps because it's so dangerous and so disapproved-of that only people with a reckless disregard for risk-taking and for rules would use it, and hence historically Dark magicians have tended to be psychopathic or psychotic - or perhaps because handling magic which deals with spirit and energy and will, or with chaos, has a high risk of driving them psychotic. Then the evil or mad things which they did would become associated in the popular mind with Dark magic even if, in fact, they were simply warped adaptations of more mundane spells and potions.
There's also a political or socially-manipulative edge to the term. Although it doesn't neccessarily equate to "evil" in the usual sense, it often seems to mean "any magic I don't approve of" - or even "any magic performed by people I don't approve of".
Dumbledore's notes in Beedle the Bard only add to the confusion. He speaks of the wizard Godelot who "advanced the study of Dark Magic by writing a collection of dangerous spells" which was published as Magick Moste Evile. He goes on to say, with reference to to the Elder Wand, that "a hypothetical wand that had passed through the hands of many Dark wizards would be likely to have [cut] a marked affinity for the most dangerous kinds of magic."
So, Godelot called his own spells "evile", but Dumbledore calls Godelot's spells, and the magic practised by Dark wizards in general, merely "dangerous". It may help to note that when Harry met Sybill Trelawney outside the Room of Requirement near the end of HBP, she claimed to have been "brooding upon certain Dark portents", and she also warns Umbridge that she has sensed "something dark ... some great peril ..." in relation to her. That sounds as though "Dark" can mean ominous, sinister, threatening rather than wilfully cruel. Since evil can also be used in that way - people speak of evil portents, "an evil day", even "an evil smell" when they mean something unpleasant, rather than of ill intent - that may be the sense in which Godelot's magic was "evile". It would explain how come Dumbledore called Godelot's "moste evile" spells merely "dangerous" rather than morally revolting.
That leads to a possibility that Dark magic is, quite simply, any magic which is very dangerous to the person, especially any magic whose harmful effects are very hard to reverse. It could be that it's not so much the case that wounds inflicted by Dark magic are very hard to heal but, rather, that any spell which inflicts wounds which are very hard to heal is de facto classed as "Dark" because it causes wounds which are very hard to heal. If we treat "Dark" as more or less a synonym for "dangerous", then Sectumsempra would be Dark magic in Harry's hands because he used it dangerously, but probably not Dark when young!Severus gave James a careful little flick with it.
It's possible that the term "Dark Magic" is used as broadly in the Potterverse as "Black Magic" is in the real world. At one extreme "Black Magic" can be applied to gruesome rituals of murder and torture, or the summoning of demons (in the Muggle occult sense - negative spiritual entities - rather than the more corporeal things such as Grindylows and Kappas which are called "demons" in Fantastic Beasts). Witches usually use it of any magic which is used in a selfish, harmful way - not just ill-wishing people but things like using magical influence to try to get a promotion you're not entitled to, for example. But we also sometimes use "Black Magic" to mean something mysterious, exciting and alluring: quite apart from the chocolates there's a 1940s song called That Old Black Magic in which the magic in question is consensual sexual love.
However, even if the wizarding world uses the term "Dark Magic" rather loosely to mean "dangerous magic", that still leaves unexplained the way in which Snape speaks of the Dark Arts as if they are a special, and specially fluid, class of magic: added to which is JKR's footnote in Beedle saying that Necromancy is "the Dark Art of raising the dead. It is a branch of magic that has never worked". If it's never worked it can't really be dangerous, except possibly to the practitioner and their immediate neighbours (unless that's how Inferi are usually created - by Necromancers, by accident - in which case it could get very dangerous indeed). It is, however, a spiritual manipulation, and conceivably a chaotic one.
In view of one of Dumbledore's comments in Beedle, duj suggests that Dark Magic could be magic which is illegal in the sense of breaking one of Adalbert Waffling's Fundamental Laws of Magic. We don't know what they are, except for the first - which is a warning against tampering with matters of the life-force and the soul, which would fit what we see of a lot of magic labelled as Dark.
It may well be, in fact, that "Dark" in the magical sense generally just means "transgressive", and that what is being transgressed - and even whether doing so is neccessarily a bad idea - varies wildly. That would make the Dark Lord the leader of a cult of anarchy or nihilism.
Let's have a closer look at how Dark Magic, Dark magic and the Dark Arts are portrayed in the books. At the foot of this page you will find an appendix which lists all the instances where Dark magic of any kind is mentioned in a way which conveys any information, although I have omitted a few where e.g. the same book-title was mentioned twice, or the term "Dark wizard" was used repeatedly in the same conversation without any change in meaning. What can we gather from this that we may not have already considered?
To begin with, it's definite canon that the term "Dark" has at least two meanings when applied to magic, one much broader and more colloquial than the other, because Xenophilius Lovegood says "there is nothing Dark about the Hallows -- at least, not in that crude sense." Devices described as "Dark detectors" may detect Dark wizards, Dark magic and Dark objects, including shrunken heads, but their primary function seems to be to detect anybody who is dishonest or secretive, even in very petty ways, and anybody who is ill-disposed towards the owner. We see two references to Dark portents, where "Dark" just seems to mean literally ill-omened.
We see references to Dark Magic, Dark magic and dark magic, which may or may not all be the same thing, to Dark wizards and to the Dark Arts. There are also references to Dark Force, apparently related to the Dark Arts: wrongly believing that Quirrell is guarding the Philosopher's Stone and Snape is trying to steal it, Harry suggests that Quirrell will have erected an "anti-Dark Arts spell" to keep Snape from the Stone, and Ron later refers to the same putative spell as an "Anti-Dark Force spell". Lockhart is said to be an honorary member of the Dark Force Defence League, and claims to have dedicated his life to "the eradication of the Dark Forces". The Ministry leaflet which advises families on how to protect themselves from Death Eaters likewise refers to them as Dark Forces.
The term "Dark Lord" seems to be applied only to Tom Riddle, who is variously described as the most feared and/or most powerful Dark wizard for a hundred years, the greatest dark sorcerer of all time and as the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time, followed by Grindelwald. Grindelwald himself is simply called a Dark wizard, so "Dark Lord" may be, like "Voldemort", simply an inflated nickname which Tom Riddle has given himself, rather than the name of a known rank or position.
Against this, Ernie Macmillan, having discovered that Harry is a Parselmouth, says that Voldemort may have tried to kill Harry because he "Didn't want another Dark Lord competing with him" - although he may be misusing the term. Also, Snape comments to Bellatrix that "many of the Dark Lord's old followers" had thought that Harry might prove to be a great Dark wizard, and as such "a standard around which we could all rally" - the fact that he appeared to have killed Voldemort not withstanding. Whether this is true or not, it has to be something Snape thought would sound credible to Bellatrix.
The surviving Death Eaters couldn't know in advance what politics Harry would hold, and indeed as the son of two Order members, one of them Muggle-born, it seems unlikely they could ever have expected his politics to be much like Tom's: it seems to be his innate Darkness, as some sort of inborn quality, which they were hoping to rally round, rather than a specific political agenda. There is a suggestion here, then, that Voldemort occupied some sort of ceremonial position as head and champion of a particular branch of magic or a particular approach to magic: whether or not the title "Dark Lord" had been applied to any other holders of that position.
Rita Skeeter suggests that Ariana might have been killed in a "Dark rite", and there's a definite ritual element to the Dark Magic used to resurrect Tom, although we don't know whether the ritual was actually necessary or not, or to what extent Rita was just being melodramatic. Tom's resurrection involves the use of a stone cauldron and is reminiscent of Celtic myths about a "cauldron of rebirth" which could revive dead soldiers, although they were stricken dumb (which actually sounds like an attempt to rationalise the symptoms of head-injury patients). There is a suggestion there that Dark Magic may be related to Muggle ritual magic, and/or that it may have a religious component.
Joining Voldemort's forces is several times referred to as going over to "the Dark side", and Barty Crouch Jnr at one point refers to Voldemort's followers as "the Dark Order". This latter may be some sort of joke, however, as he had just spent ten months masquerading as a former member of the Order of the Phoenix and working with other, genuine former members who probably tried to reminisce about old times with him. Rosmerta says that Sirius - whom she must know was very reckless and disruptive, even if she doesn't know what a bully he was - was the last person she would have expected to go over to the Dark side, which somewhat argues against the Dark = chaotic theory. Hagrid says that when someone goes over to the dark side, nothing and no-one matters to them any more - which sits oddly with the passionate devotion many Death Eaters have to their Lord. Possibly Hagrid means that nothing and no-one from their former life matters to them any more because they have, in a very literal way, forsaken all others - although there too he is wrong, considering the care Regulus and the Malfoys and even the Carrows continue to show for their families.
It is said that the Dark Mark can only be cast with a wand, and that only the Death Eaters ever knew how to cast it. This is questionable, since Horace Slughorn implies that he had forgotten to cast the Dark Mark in order to make his fake death-scene look more convincing, rather than that he had been unable to do so.
Voldemort himself, and his followers, are assumed to be interested in/good at the Dark Arts, and to be Dark wizards. Bellatrix claims to have learned the Dark Arts, including spells of great power, directly from Voldemort, and we see that Karkaroff, a former Death Eater, is keen to promote the study of the Dark Arts at Durmstrang (although the memory of the Dark wizard Grindelwald is not very popular there). Harry and co. expect the Death Eaters to be able to perform Dark Magic. Draco considers that as a Death Eater he will not need to know how to defend himself against the Dark Arts, which suggests he thinks of them as something the Death Eaters do to other people, not something some rival might want to do to them - or that he thinks that membership, or the Dark Mark, will protect him from attack. He is however only sixteen at the time.
In point of fact, we see that any action of any kind which benefits "the Dark side" is itself classed as Dark, however anodyne the act itself is: either that, or one of the meanings of "Dark" is simply "illegal". We can surmise this because Ludo Bagman was tried for passing information to Voldemort's forces, and Dumbledore - who was present at the trial and hence knows what he was tried for - says that he "has never been accused of any Dark activity since". The implicatiion is that he is referring to the scene which he knows Harry just witnessed, in which Bagman was accused of passing information, as being an example of previous "Dark activity" by him - that is, that passing information to "the Dark side" itself qualifies as "Dark activity".
The idea that Dark Magic or Dark Arts can be defined, at least in some contexts, as illegal magic would explain the attitude of Barty Crouch Snr. Otherwise, he must be not only an enormous hypocrite but stupid or mad to say, as he does say, "I trust you remember the many proofs I have given, over a long career, that I despise and detest the Dark Arts and those who practice them?" - considering that he himself authorised the use of the Unforgivables by his own men, and we see definite evidence that Cruciatus at least is classed as a Dark Art, and all the Unforgivables are described as "Dark curses". If the Unforgivables are classed as Dark spells because they are illegal, then as soon as he authorised them they ceased to be Dark when used by the Ministry.
It would explain why the Malfoys are searched for Dark objects, why passing on Dark artefacts in your will is illegal and why protecting people from Dark wizards seems to be the Ministry's job, and why the Aurors are repeatedly described as Dark wizard-catchers - as if there was no other crime in the wizarding world. If Dark Magic, at least in this context, equates to illegal magic, and Dark wizards are simply wizards who act illegally, then anybody in whom the Aurors are interested would de facto be a suspected Dark wizard. But that begs the question of why Knockturn Alley is able to continue to sell Dark Arts supplies openly. Is it possible that Knockturn Alley is outwith the Ministry's jurisdiction - perhaps owned by the goblins at Gringotts?
It also leaves one to wonder how Durmstrang could be teaching the Dark Arts, since presumably what they are teaching is legal as far as they are concerned. Perhaps they are teaching magic which hasn't been ratified by some central council. In Beedle, Dumbledore speaks of the Ministry as regulating Dark Magic, rather than banning it as such.
Perhaps, rather than being outright illegal, Dark magic and the Dark Arts are unauthorised magic. Then there would be degrees of Darkness, some legal if a little "fringe", some definitely not. Many of the items on sale in Knockturn Alley are historical curios, or perhaps lifestyle accessories - it's not clear whether the giant spiders on sale there are pets, for example, or sources of venom.
Also in Beedle, Dumbledore speaks as if Dark equates to dangerous, but we see references to "Dark or dangerous" magic as if those were two different, if often linked, concepts. Dobby's description of the Malfoys as "bad Dark wizards" may mean that "bad" and "Dark" are two separate, independent qualities, or he may just mean that they are extra-Dark. That would, however, mean that being extra-Dark was seen as a bad thing to be, and we do see Horace describe Horcruxes as "very Dark".
Dark Magic cannot only be illegal magic, although that may be one of its meanings, because of the references to Dark Magic causing wounds which are very hard to heal. Bathilda's body also shows "unmistakable signs of injuries inflicted by Dark Magic", although in that case it's not clear whether that means that Dark Magic as a class leaves unmistakable injuries, or whether her injuries were characteristic of a particular curse known to be a Dark Magic one.
Harry has an intense awareness that the doe Patronus is not Dark Magic, and that could be taken to mean that Dark Magic is the antithesis of the doe. It's certainly an interesting comment on Snape. But Patroni per se are not necessarily good - Umbridge has a particularly strong one - and love potions, despite their potential to warp lives and subvert free will, are not seen as either Dark or dangerous.
| Things which are said to be the sort of thing a Dark wizard might well do, or that only a Dark wizard could do: |
| Break into Gringotts.Survive an attack by Voldemort/survive Avada Kedavra (it's not clear which is meant).
Send somebody a basilisk egg disguised as a birthday present. Fool Dumbledore. Animate corpses to create Inferi. Keep Baslisks. |
| Things which we see classed as probably requiring unspecified dark powers: |
| Breaking out of Azkaban. |
| Things which we see classed as Dark Arts: |
| Unspecified valuable artefacts belonging to the Malfoys.Cruciatus.
The Dementor's Kiss. Inferi. The cursed necklace which nearly killed Katie Bell - or the act of healing the damage caused by that curse. All we know is that Snape is called to heal her because of his knowledge of the Dark Arts. Usually, but not always, speaking Parseltongue. Fiendfyre. Removing your own heart and keeping it, still living, in a box - although we are told this is actually impossible. Necromancy. |
| Things which we see classed as dark arts: |
| Shrunken heads.Keeping giant black spiders (like the ones Hagrid has).
Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent (we're told that everything in Knockturn Alley is devoted to the dark arts, and that's where Hagrid goes for his slug-repellent). Breaking into the school. |
| Things we see classed as "the Darkest Art": |
| HorcruxesOther unspecified spells described as horrible, awful, evil. |
| Things which we see classed as Dark Magic, or as probably requiring Dark Magic to do: |
| Magically-interfering with the functioning of a broomstick.Petrifying Mrs Norris.
Opening the Chamber of Secrets. The Marauder's Map (on the face of it, based on the fact that it insults people, without knowing that it's a map cum surveillance device nor that it's activated by swearing a solemn oath of wrong-doing). Breaking out of Azkaban. Arguably, Polyjuice. Harry says that if he had seen his Time-Turned self without knowing who/what it was he would have thought there was "some Dark Magic going on", even though he of all people should be aware of the possibility that it would be someone else Polyjuiced as him. Using snakes, in some way not explained. The ceremony which Voldemort used to resurrect himself. A half-formed body, which JKR has implied was grown from an aborted foetus and which was nurtured at least partly on snake venom (viper venom, judging from how Nagini and the effects of her bite are described), was lowered under the surface of a clear, sparkling, heated liquid contained in a giant stone cauldron, reminiscent of ones which appear in Celtic folklore. To the liquid were added bone of the father, unknowingly given; flesh of a servant, willingly given, and blood of an enemy, forcibly taken - all with a ritualistic incantation, and described as old Dark Magic. Breaking through the wards on the Trio's tent. Duelling to the death. |
| Things which we see classed as Dark magic: |
| Horcruxes.Sectumsempra - or at least, the act of cutting somebody severely with a spell, since it's not clear if Snape actually knows which spell Harry had used, at that point.
Something Mulciber tried to do to Mary Macdonald, which Lily (who may or may not have seen it) thought was shocking and Severus (who definitely hadn't seen it) thought was just a bit of a laugh - although it's not clear whether he means the spell was a laugh or that Mulciber was only joking when he pretended to be going to use it. |
There doesn't seem to be an obvious difference between Dark Magic and Dark magic, so it's probably just an editing fault. Things described as dark arts seem milder than things described as Dark Arts, so there's a possibility that there's some real difference there, at least in quantity if not in kind.
The spells in the book Secrets of the Darkest Art are - according to Hermione - definitely evil. Dark Arts or dark arts, as opposed to the Darkest Art, range all the way from Cruciatus and the Dementor's Kiss down to keeping Dark creatures as pets, or even keeping Dark-sounding creatures away from your garden (humanely, too, since it's a slug-repellent, not a slug-poison). There is a tendency for the term to be applied to specific spells or specific physical objects - the Dark Arts sound like some sort of wizarding technology.
Dark Magic seems to be used for something a bit more general - for any dangerous duelling curse, for example, or any likely method for opening the Chamber - more than for specific spells and objects, although the difference is slight. It covers at least some old and ritualistic magic, and seems somewhat less like a technology than the Dark Arts, and more like a philosophical approach.
Snape, for what it may be worth, is said several times to be interested in the Dark Arts, and Draco is also said to be infatuated with them, but other than the vexed question of Sectumsempra, nobody ever accuses Snape of using or being interested in Dark Magic. That perhaps goes with his love of potions: he's interested in technical gadgetry rather than ritual.
The things which are said to be the sort of thing a Dark wizard would do, or to require Dark powers, include one specific, sinister and soul-related act - the raising of Inferi - but in general the acts associated with Dark wizards are clever, devious or Tricksterish rather than evil. They suggest that Dark wizards are seen as having a special angle, a way round problems. That might well make Snape a Dark wizard in that sense - but if so it would certainly also apply to the Twins, the Marauders and Dumbledore.
So, we know for sure that "Dark" as applied to magic has more than one meaning. There are hints that Dark Magic represents some sort of philosophical outlook on magic, a difference of approach, and that the Dark Lord stands for more than his politics. That might involve chaos-magic, or magic which deals with energy or with spiritual forces in some special way, but there's a distinct possibility that as far as the Ministry is concerned, Dark Magic is anything the Ministry hasn't authorised. The philosophical basis of Dark Magic could indeed be anarchy - intentionally doing things the Ministry hasn't authorised, in order to make a statement about freedom.
Although the various terms overlap and are used imprecisely, the Dark Arts seem to be the practical, applied side of Dark Magic, in the way that bouncing an opponent off a wall is the applied side of Japanese martial arts philosophies. Carried to extremes the Dark Arts/Dark Magic can get seriously nasty, but in their mild form they take in things which are merely irregular and unregulated - such as keeping an Acromantula in a school cupboard - or which show an ingenious disregard for other people's rules, such as breaking into or out of heavily-warded buildings. Whether or not they are chaotic in the sense of being magic which accesses some Primordial Chaos, and despite the Dark Lord's own rather controlling behaviour, Dark Magic and the Dark Arts would probably occupy the Chaotic Evil to Chaotic Neutral arc on the wheel of D&D-style alignments, possibly with slight excursions into Chaotic Good. Hagrid's slug-repellent, at least, seems to be a benign and useful product sold in a street where, we are told, everything on offer probably belongs to the Dark Arts.
Possibly the best explanation is that when applied to magic (as opposed to portents) "Dark" actually means "transgressive". It includes spells which are transgressive because they break Ministry rules, ones which are chaotic, ones which break one or more of Waffling's Fundamental Laws of Magic (especially the one about meddling with the soul) and anything the speaker thinks is Not Done. The crudest sense is often used to mean bad, evil, unnatural, and it is this sense which Xenophilius says does not apply to the Hallows. The narrowest sense is magic which breaks the Fundamental Laws of Magic and it is in this sense that Dark wounds are usually very hard to heal, because it includes both chaotic and spiritual manipulations of underlying energies. "Dark" also covers magic which the Ministry has more-or-less arbitrarily deemed to be against the mundane law, and some magic which is merely eccentric or weird or anarchic, unpredictably devious or felt in some way to be cheating.
Note, incidentally, that Xenophilius's comment that "there is nothing Dark about the Hallows -- at least, not in that crude sense" implies that they are somewhat Dark in the less crude sense - presumably, because they transgress magical laws or deal with energy in some particular way deemed to be Dark. If he's right about that, then both Harry and Dumbledore have spent much of their magical careers leaning heavily on the use of Dark objects - the Wand and the Cloak.
It's distinctly possible that Dark magic is addictive in some way, since it is spoken of as if it is something very tempting.
| 'He wouldn't give me the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, you know. Seemed to think it might, ah, bring about a relapse ... tempt me into my old ways.' [HBP ch. #02 p. 32]'I spun him a tale of deepest remorse when I joined his staff, fresh from my Death Eater days, and he embraced me with open arms -- though, as I say, never allowing me nearer the Dark Arts than he could help.' [HBP ch. #02; p. 36] |
Snape is lying, of course - Dumbledore wouldn't give him the job because it was cursed, as shown by the fact that he did give it to him once it became clear Snape would be changing jobs at the end of the year anyway - but again, it has to be a lie which will sound plausible to Bellatrix, so the idea of Dark magic as something tempting must be plausible. Again, that might be compatible with the idea that it draws energy from elsewhere - that energy-rush passing through the caster's magical senses could be very intoxicating - and/or that it enables the caster in some sense to ride chaos. It may be that it is dangerous because it draws energy from the caster themselves to the point of eventually devouring them, or progressively disrupts their mind and magic - which would make it the wizarding equivalent of a heroin addiction.
At any rate "Dark" can't just mean "obviously, intrinsically wicked", since Beedle is portrayed as a virtuous man and he - and by implication Dumbledore - merely "mistrusted" Dark magic, and two Dark Arts experts evidently think it possible for a toddler to use unconscious, wandless Dark magic to save himself from attack. The umbrella term "Dark Arts" encompasses things as apparently harmless as discouraging slugs, as well as some dangerous and/or evil practices such as Cruciatus. At least some Dark magic or Dark Arts appears to do something different, on the energy level, from most magic, and to be especially suited to manipulations on some kind of spiritual level.
We cannot say, therefore, that anyone who uses Dark Arts or Dark magic is neccessarily evil although they are certainly unconventional, are probably willing to break the law at least to some extent, and have an increased likelihood of being reckless (all of which fits Hagrid to a T). Some of them are evil, of course, and if you are a magic user and you want to be evil the Dark Arts are a good place to start, but as with curses it depends what you do with them, and theoretically at least it ought to be possible to use some of them for good ends as, indeed, we see Harry use Imperius to win the chance to destroy the cup Horcrux.
Rather than the Marauders' simplistic "Anybody who is into the Dark Arts is obviously evil", you can see that ambitious Slytherin teenagers, especially Goth types like Severus, might think "Others have fallen prey to weakness and temptation but I am different, I will be able to control this great power and harness it for good ends" - like the guy in Terry Pratchett's book Guards! Guards!, who thought he would be able to harness the power of a dragon to do good because of his great virtue and strength, and whose notebook was found with the last few pages charred away.
