What Lies In Darkness: Does Dark Magic Have To Be Solely Evil?
Alternate Title: Fanwank Ahoy!
We've all read fanfics that claim that the Dark Arts have many good uses, and that anyone who claims all Dark wizards are solely into the nasty stuff are intolerant idiots. Unfortunately, that line of argument tends to be followed by the ones preaching this breaking out the actual nasty stuff, rather undermining the argument. Other fans claim that the Dark Arts are purest evil, nothing good can come out of them, and J.K. Rowling might as well have just slapped a big "EVIL!" sticker on the whole lot. I'm about to discuss ways in which Dark Arts might be unpleasant magic, but still have benevolent uses.
I concede that all Dark Magic shown in canon is abhorrent stuff, and that there's no evidence in canon for the Dark Arts being more than the catch-all term for evil magic. Well, I take that back - on very rare occasions, it can be gallant of one. However, Harry's gallantry aside, we are shown the Unforgivables, Sectumsempra, Nagini stuffed inside the body of Bathilda Bagshot, the resurrection ritual in the graveyard, the curse upon the Gaunt ring, Horcruxes, and so on and so forth… a veritable smorgasbord of atrocity. Terrible, terrible things - upon that, we can all agree.
However, what are our actual parameters for the Dark Arts? We never get a clear answer on this, which is part of why fanon takes such liberties. Are "dark" emotions required to cast its spells? Is it a wild and dangerous form of magic, where the caster gambles everything he or she is in a bid for power without equal? Is it the equal and opposite to non-canonical "Light Magic"? Is it a conduit to raw, earthly magic connected to the darkest side of human nature and bloody rites practiced long before the dawn of enlightened civilization? Is it connected to those 'Old Ways' Voldemort mentioned? What is it?
Fire Emblem 6/Fire Emblem 7's version of Dark Magic, "elder magic", is of the wild and dangerous variety; notably, many practitioners are reduced to soulless shells, stripped of all personality, memory, and identity by a river of darkness. Of the rest, at least one became spectacularly corrupted - though his body remained undamaged, his personality was reduced to a twisted mockery of its former self, his memory of ancient times went completely out the window, and his identity centered solely around the accumulation of even more power. (I feel like I ought to make a joke about the federal government at this point, but I'll resist.) But the magic is not really evil - it is possible to use the power thus accumulated in the service of a good cause. The entire issue, except in that one spectacular case, is the risk to the practitioner.
To go into further detail, the magic seems to focus on calling up Eldritch Powers Beyond Mortal Ken, and it often takes the form of some sort of black sludge in spell animations, so it wouldn't seem to be innocuous stuff. The known effects of some Dark Magic spells are oodles of low-attack-speed damage, leeching the life from an opponent, taking off half an opponent's life bar from halfway across the map, and completely ignoring an opponent's resistance - further confirming that these are some, ah, impressive forces with which one is tampering. On the other hand, its non-combat effects apparently include holding off a snowstorm (unsuccessfully), lengthening one's life, creating magical barriers, teleporting from one place to another, sealing and unsealing legendary weapons, reviving someone from the dead, and possibly yanking a twerp rather hard by his collar (or whatever happened in the Sophia/Ray C support), so not all its uses are malevolent.
Obviously, this can't be translated strictly into Harry Potter terms, but it's an example of magic of dubious origin being used for both good and evil purposes. Under this variant, the issue with Dark wizards in HP would actually be that the vast majority of them were incompetent and acquired corrupted personalities as a result, which is why Dark Arts is synonymous with 'Heeeeey, let's go torture Muggles for kicks!' and 'We just got held off by six teenagers with dubious Defense Against The Dark Arts educations - should we commit hari-kari now, or after the Dark Lord is through with us?' Thus, a competent Dark wizard could actually pull off staying good while using the Dark Arts, but would constantly live balancing on a razor's edge.
The "raw, earthly power" take is often (ab)used in stories which hypothesize that the Old Ways have something to do with pagan European religions. As it then counts as some sort of wonky Divine Magic, the only unusual thing about Dark Magic then is that there's no chance of Arcane Spell Failure if the Death Eaters start wearing heavy armor… congratulations if you get the reference. At any rate, there's definitely no reason why Dark should strictly mean evil in this case. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you could still cast healing spells if your Cleric took Evil as one of her two domains, right?
Of course, one would then have to explain why Dark Magic got the name and reputation it did, since I doubt it's because the first spells and rituals in that category worked better at nighttime. (Grudging kudos to any author with the sheer chutzpah to claim that, though - haven’t seen any yet, but it's only a matter of time.) This is where most such stories start whistling loudly, hand-waving, and falling into more logical fallacies than the average presidential debate, because the authors actually do want to use all that murder-torture-compulsion stuff, but want it to seem ~justified~ first. Myself, I don't see the problem with saying that it can be the means to truly horrific ends, and those who abused it gave it its modern monstrous reputation… but oh well.
The "dark" emotions take is closest to HP canon, as far as I know, and is the hardest to work around. After all, it's hard to heal someone with wrath, or defend someone with envy. Still, Dark spells could be used for good purposes - wrath-fueled offensive spells slung at someone trying to kill your friends, revenge-fueled spells lashing out against an oath-breaker, deceit-fueled spells used to keep your foes from learning your family's location… (I frankly believe Hermione's spell upon the DA sign-up parchment was Dark - long-lasting pustule scars upon someone's face lands squarely in the 'malicious' category.) The power would taint, but the usage could still be for a good cause. Arguably, a great deal of Muggle "defensive" weaponry is Dark, unless you'd like to tell me why an AK-47 is nicer than the Wizarding AK, which kills instantly and painlessly, or why nuclear missiles are less nasty than… just about any magic we've heard of, frankly.
For the most part, however, this likely comes as close to "solely evil" as you can get without hauling out Eragon-esque babies-on-pikes sledge-hammering of the author's messages. And Paolini himself later reversed his stance on the Urgals, so even that would be insufficient to fix a moral absolute. If you want to use this with a good or neutral character, emphasize that it is incredibly tempting to slide into a never-ending storm of rage, thoughtlessness, and madness or whirlpool of deceit, cruelty, and treachery, so the character in question needs to be careful. All things have a price.
Let's suppose, for a moment, that Dark Arts are just generally malicious spells that cause either lack of free will, hideous pain, or body-horror stuff aplenty. Ah - but that doesn't seal off good uses, either! Chemotherapy is basically a matter of poisoning the body of the patient in an effort to poison the cancer more - if there was ever such a thing as "Dark healing", that would be it. And if we want to talk about body-horror mutilation, tearing out portions of the body to substitute unnatural devices in their place is a classic, yet that's exactly what people do with artificial hearts, artificial hips, and all those sorts of things. Need I even talk about taking organs from corpses to insert them into the bodies of living people, which will immediately attack the unnatural invasion unless subdued with great and powerful potions? Necromancy, surely!
Indeed, one could distinguish 'Dark' healing from 'Light' healing in a story by Dark healing putting unusual strain on the system, causing excruciating pain, inducing horrific side effects, or needing additional spells or potions to keep it stabilized. In which case… ah, dear, there goes a good deal of our Muggle medical profession. (And no, childfree members of the f-list, I did not intentionally tailor those descriptions to pregnancy and childbirth - but I'll admit, looking over that list, that they do fit. Oops.) So, if you would find all such magic reprehensible - no exceptions - never educate yourself too well about biology. Don't plan on having kids, either.
As for the "Old Ways" explanation (which would seem to be partly supported by Voldemort's preaching in the graveyard in Goblet of Fire), this leaves us right where we started, since we never learned what those "old ways" were, either! So… ah… I resort to showing one possible fanon interpretation. In a story I urgently need to resume writing, I stated that "a great deal of [the old ways] had been judged to be Dark and abandoned by greater wizarding society", and so I desperately need to come up with a reason why… Here's what I've worked out:
Much that falls under the classification of Dark Magic fits a more savage, tribal society than the Wizarding world currently has. The "SNEAK"-pustule curse, for instance, would actually be Dark by the current definitions, but downright mild compared to the Old Ways - oath-breakers deserved whatever happened to them. Likewise, if someone did serious injury to your kin, you were not only allowed but obligated to take bloody vengeance. On the less outright nasty side, spells like the ones involved in the Dark Mark were perfectly normal ways of sealing loyalty to a patron, Unbreakable Vows were far more commonplace, and blood magic could be used to bind people in all sorts of ways. So, ah… the Wizarding world used to be far more slanted towards a dark-fantasy world than it is today.
As the strength of the magical government grew and Azkaban came to be used as a punishment for just about any crime, however, the right of punishment shifted from the wronged party to the government, and many of these Old Ways were banned as outright inhumane. The penalty for breaking contracts was regulated and reduced to fines, censure, and the like, loyalty to a master was made a matter of a word-of-honor oath and a legal contract, and so on and so forth. Hence, the way things are today.
Under this version, whether Dark Arts are brutal savagery or commonplace, neutral magic really depends upon the values of society. They have many decent uses - the wrongness comes in when one draws a line and says 'This level of punishment is appropriate for wrongdoing, this and no further,' because the Dark Arts do not have that cut-off. Also, Dark Arts-based contracts have this interesting tendency to mold those bound under them into forms more pleasing to them and less likely to break them… but enough about imprinting.
So those are several different possible answers to "What IS Dark Magic?", and several attempted negative answers to "Does it have to be solely evil?". You may or may not find my arguments convincing, but I attempted to make them such. (Except for "raw, earthly magic", where I only made bad D&D jokes - seriously, it's equating Dark wizards and witches as Druids, there's nothing more to say. Nagini is obviously just an Animal Companion gone horribly wrong, and Parseltongue is the Animal Empathy skill with a house-rule focus on snakes.) As a theoretical fan of stories that offer a more complex look at the Dark Arts, I feel obliged to defend their concept, if not their execution.