Dark Magic Doth Never Prosper, Part II
Part II contains:
Drawback to Not Teaching the Dark Arts
Harry: Seriously Evil Wizard Coming Through?
Blood/Death Magic, Lily’s Sacrifice, and Albus (The White One)
Why Teach that Dark = Evil?
Historical Considerations
DRAWBACK TO NOT FORMALLY TEACHING THE DARK ARTS
There’s one obvious drawback to not teaching the Dark Arts explicitly at Hogwarts. It means that Hogwarts alumni may not have been trained properly to identify them. Which, if the Dark Arts are in fact potentially dangerous to the practitioner, is a serious concern.
Even the Patronus charm, after all, might be dangerous if overused. Consider what happens to Muggles who overuse the drug Ecstasy-serotonin depletion, resulting in depression.
Of course, most witches and wizards in their day-to-day life seem to use a very limited repertoire of spells. Most of the Dark spells taught at Hogwarts are for defense, which doesn’t really come up that often (and long-term spiritual/perceptual damage is a smallish concern when one’s under attack by a Lethifold or Death Eater). (But it’s disturbing that the broken-by-Dementors, insanely-loyal-to-Voldemort parricide Barty could successfully impersonate retired Auror Moody-it seems that a career spent using combat magic may have scarred Alastor’s soul worse than his body.)
And while Hogwarts had a decent DADA instructor, probably students were taught how to identify what magic might be mentally/spiritually dangerous, whether it was being called the Dark Arts or not. But how long has it been since Hogwarts has had one of those?
The greatest danger is to members of the third group. Group one knows they’re studying something potentially dangerous and (one hopes) how to recognize the dangers. And indeed, the only Durmstrang alumnus we really see is obviously uncorrupted by his years of study. Group two knows that there’s magic out there which, while not evil per se, and therefore not called Dark by them, is still dangerous to (over)use.
But group three thinks that Dark means evil. Which means that if a member of that group encounters magic that is not self-evidently Evil and is not TAGGED for them as Dark, he/she will likely decide it ISN’T Dark, and therefore isn’t dangerous. In fact, we actually see that happen in canon with Harry. Several times.
Of course, most magic folk seem singularly uncreative, and don’t go exploring magic they’re not being taught in class.
Which brings us to the Marauders (and possibly to the Weasley twins).
Consider the Marauder’s Map, which was characterized by Severus as “plainly full of Dark Magic.” Lupin demurred, claiming it was, “Childish, but surely not dangerous… a joke.” (PoA, “Snape’s Grudge”) This does not actually address the question, if one concedes that an object can be not intended to be dangerous, a joke, and still Dark.
Even Harry noticed that it met Arthur’s definition of a suspicious object that thinks for itself. Now observe Harry’s subsequent decision-making process. He determined that the Map wasn’t Dark (despite, as Whitehound points out, requiring a solemn oath of wrong-doing to use) because “he [Harry] only wanted to use it to get into Hogsmeade, it wasn’t as though he wanted to steal anything or attack anyone… and Fred and George had been using it for years without anything horrible happening….” (PoA, “The Marauder’s Map”)
Useful for committing crimes, but also for other things, no immediately apparent harm to the user, so it couldn’t possibly be Dark.
And what does the Map do, besides insult authority figures and teach children to open secret passages so they can explore forbidden dangers? It tracks people without their knowledge, possibly without their being able to block, and it can’t be fooled by any physical transformation (the Animagus spell, Polyjuice). Identity magic. Yep, the Map is Dark all right. The scariest thing is, Lupin may honestly not realize this.
[By the way, why didn’t the Marauders give this technology to the Ministry? Or if they didn’t trust the Ministry, to Albus? A map like this of Knockturn Alley would have been highly useful in tracking contacts of suspected or known DE’s…. Well, that’s simple. The Marauders were more dedicated to covering their own arses than defeating Voldie; releasing the Map’s technology might have implicated them in their former wrongdoing. Lupin in PoA all over-no wonder Sirius took for granted that Remus would stay quiet about the tunnels and his Animagus form. He knew Remus already HAD consented to concealing potentially critical knowledge from the head of the Order. The Marauders had discussed the dangers of letting Albus know everything they had gotten up to at school.]
[Peter, on the other hand, didn’t mention the Map to his master because he didn’t know enough about how it had been made. Would you really want to say to the Dark Lord that, uh, you’d watched part of the process but didn’t understand too much, and couldn’t recreate it? To a master Legilimens who has no compunction about tearing someone’s mind apart, if he decides that an unblockable surveillance device was more valuable than the information Pete was bringing in spying?]
Consider next the Animagus transformation. We know that it requires neither wand-waving nor incantation, that it is not taught at Hogwarts, and that it’s dangerous to attempt. And it involves the transformation of a person into an animal, permanently, until the person either wills to transform back or a specific counterspell is performed. And like werewolves, Animagi are supposed to register with the Ministry. Will-based, alters the very physical identity, known to be dangerous to attempt (probably therefore inconsistent results on attempts), effects irreversible without a specific counter or an act of will…. Mm-hmm.
Moreover, what does it do to one’s psyche to spend a lot of time as an animal, with that animal’s instincts overwhelming one’s human mind-or reinforcing the more bestial parts of one’s nature? I broke off that question into a separate essay, “James the Stag.” My conclusion was that spending a lot of time as a beast probably didn’t generally aid one to develop one’s highest human attributes. And on reflection I’d guess too that the younger you started, the less formed your personality, the more likely you are to be influenced negatively.
Finally, we know that by Fifth Year, the Marauders were using some of Severus’s homemade spells without, apparently, knowing that they were his. Severus was a Dark wizard, both by their (subsequent) estimation and by his reaction to Lily’s outburst over Mulciber. That is, Sev had made some formal study of Dark magic, was willing to use it judiciously, and didn’t see why he shouldn’t say so. His spell Sectumsempra is apparently classifiable as a curse; I would argue that so is Levicorpus. It doesn’t, apparently, wear off by itself, and it requires a specific countercurse to lift, not just a “Finite Incantatem”. And while Harry thinks of it as a joke (like Lupin called the Map), Hermione points out that the Death Eaters used it horrifically against Muggles at the World Cup. If so, the Marauders were using Sev’s Dark magic without accrediting it as such.
And remember Whitehound’s observation that Harry spent much of his magical career relying heavily on a known Dark artifact (the third Deathly Hallow)? So had James.
[Note, by the way, that Harry first used the cloak to try to research Flamel-i.e. as part of a misguided but noble attempt to foil a suspected crime. But Harry immediately branched out to using it for satisfying selfish desires (looking in the Mirror), and soon for sneak attacks on others (Draco in PoA) and general spying.]
If the Marauders, who “always hated the Dark Arts,” had been using them extensively all along without recognizing them as such, they could have been slowly doing themselves severe perceptual/spiritual damage. So, to a lesser extent, might the Weasley twins.
Jodel claims that the first symptom of “Dark Arts Dementia” is “a progressive ‘hardening’ of the subject’s capacity for empathy.” Does that sound like a criticism any fan has ever made of the Marauders or the Weasley bullies?
Or, indeed, sometimes of Harry?
HARRY: SERIOUSLY EVIL WIZARD COMING THROUGH?
Was Harry a Dark wizard? The Weasley twins mocked the notion in PoA, but the Weasleys are among those who conflate “Dark” with “seriously Evil.” What do others say?
“I should remind you that when Potter first arrived at Hogwarts there were still many stories circulating about him, rumors that he himself was a great Dark wizard, which was how he had survived the Dark Lord’s attack.” Severus to Bellatrix (HBP, “Spinner’s End”) As Whitehound points out, these are two Dark Arts specialists talking to each other; it apparently made sense to them to posit that a toddler could save himself from a murder attempt by an instinctive/natural use of Dark magic. Which reaffirms that using Dark magic is not intrinsically wicked; if Harry (rather than Lily) HAD instinctively made Riddle’s murderous spell rebound, would anyone really care to say the baby did something evil? Even if doing this showed the baby’s intuitive mastery of Dark magic?
Nor were Death Eaters the only ones to think this. After Harry had revealed himself to be a Parselmouth in CoS, consider what Hufflepuff Ernie Macmillan had to say:
“No one knows how he survived that attack by You-Know-Who. I mean to say, he was only a baby when it happened. He should have been blasted into smithereens. Only a really powerful Dark wizard could have survived a curse like that…. That’s probably why You-Know-Who wanted to kill him in the first place. Didn’t want another Dark Lord competing with him. I wonder what other powers Potter’s been hiding?” (PoA, “The Dueling Club”)
Note that Ernie was 12 here, and never presented as the world’s foremost innovative thinker, so he must be parroting what he’d previously heard from his nine-generation-Pureblood, Voldemort-hating family. So among those in the know on both sides, Harry has been associated with Dark Magic ever since he acquired that scar.
Look at attitudes towards Harry over time. If the WW thought Harry’s supposed use of Dark magic to survive Riddle to be intrinsically evil, they should have been worried about replacing one Dark Lord with a worse. Was there any sign that ANYONE in the WW regarded infant Harry as a possible Rosemary’s Baby? Not a one, neither in the celebrations overheard by Vernon Dursley, nor in child-Harry’s encounters with oddly-dressed strangers, nor in Harry’s trip to Diagon Alley…. True, some former DE’s wondered if they could rally around him as a new Dark Lord. But the kid’s politics turned out to be impossible, and Snape assured his former fellows that the boy’s abilities had been grossly overrated.
But in fact Harry did turn out to have a natural affinity for combat spells and for will-based magic (such as the Patronus charm and resisting the Imperius)-in fact, didn’t he get an “O” in exactly one of his OWLs? Remind me of which one, will you?
And Harry’s a Parselmouth-famous Dark wizard Salazar Slytherin’s signature ability, long associated with Dark magic. Let’s look closely at everyone’s reactions to that fact. While the school was under siege by someone claiming to be the Heir of Slytherin, many of the other students feared and mistrusted Harry.
Yet, oddly, we see no sign that any ADULTS did; apparently both the staff and the Ministry accepted Dumbledore’s assurances that the known Parselmouth on site was not responsible for the attacks. And the Ministry still did not send anyone in to interrogate Harry after Dumbledore had been ousted. Nor did the Acting Headmistress question the child. Among knowledgeable adults, apparently, being a Parselmouth wasn’t enough to link one to the Heir of Slytherin’s attacks.
Most tellingly, look at Draco’s reaction. Draco did NOT react to Harry’s display of Parseltongue by falling on him as a brother-in-spirit and Slytherin’s obvious heir. His attitude seemed to have been more, “So fine, Potter’s a Dark wizard; my father was right all along. It figures. But the tosser’s still not on my side, and Granger’s best friend certainly isn’t the one opening Slytherin’s Chamber. Wish I knew who it was….”
After Harry had dispatched the Basilisk, of course he was again a hero to much of the school. And he apparently continued generally popular until GoF, when people thought he’d cheated to get into the Tournament.
But-he was still a known Parselmouth. Moreover, while the details were hazy (more accurately, various, and changing colorfully at each retelling), everyone knew that Harry’s first year, he made it through a maze of magical hazards, confronted You-Know-Who possessing Quirrell (or was it Quirrell trying to steal the Stone?), and won. His second year he slew the Basilisk. His third, Harry fell afoul simultaneously of a raging werewolf, You-Know-Who’s chief lieutenant, and a pack of Dementors, and escaped.
Among the former DE’s, Snape was assiduously spinning away Harry’s various triumphs as due to luck and more talented friends rather than innate ability. What was everyone else thinking?
Well, we saw what they were thinking when Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire, didn’t we? Let’s put this in perspective, shall we? Had Susan Bones’ name popped out of the Goblet, would anyone in the WW have assumed that SUSAN had engineered the cheat?
Anyone who credited that Harry had cheated his way into the Triwizard Tournament implicitly declared that s/he believed Harry to be capable-not only morally but magically-of deceiving or coercing a powerful and ancient magical object which had been specifically designed to resist such interference.
And there was no one at all whose first reaction to this argument was “Don’t be silly.” Even Dumbledore asked before he believed Harry innocent.
Later that year, of course, Skeeter, to discredit Harry, brought up Harry’s Parseltongue abilities again, instructing her readers that serpents were associated with the “worst kind of Dark Magic and … evildoers [emphasis mine],” and speculating that Harry might use Dark Arts to win the Triwizard.
Skeeter was appealing to groups one and two here, arguing that Harry might use Dark Magic unacceptably. (For anyone in group three, calling Harry Dark was already saying that he was evil; no need to add “worst” or “evildoers.”)
To recapitulate: the evidence for believing Harry to have a natural facility for Dark magic grew over time. He survived Voldemort; he was a Parselmouth; he showed an increasing aptitude for combat spells and will-based magic (excepting, of course, Occlumency, which he wanted not to master-during the whole of his lessons, he thought of his connection to Voldemort as an information source more than a liability).
Despite this evidence of Harry’s being Dark, Harry’s public reputation fluctuated according to what people believed of his intentions, reliability and sanity. When people thought he was mentally unstable or using Dark powers to cheat, to threaten his classmates, or to get attention, they feared them. When they thought he was directing those powers against Voldemort, they trusted in them and him.
BLOOD/DEATH MAGIC, LILY’S SACRIFICE, AND ALBUS (THE WHITE ONE)
Before we move on to Dumbledore, I’m going to argue that it WAS a great work of Dark Magic that saved Harry’s life on Halloween 1981.
Lily’s.
Who would have been horrified (Dark-Arts-Detester that she was) to hear it called that.
Consider. In my world, the world of readers, a cursory perusal of The Golden Bough establishes that a widespread form of ritual magic in ancient times was ritual human sacrifice, which is certainly Dark magic by all definitions. The death of a scapegoat, and even sometimes mass murder, were used ritually to protect the community.
Yet the most potent form of death magic was ritual SACRIFICE, e.g. of the sacred kings who died voluntarily for the protection of their people--either yearly, for the fertility of the land, or in times of crisis (war, pestilence, drought, etc.) The one who sacrificed him/herself to save others might be ritually butchered by a trusted associate, might ritually suicide, or in wartime might go into battle unarmed/unarmored to be killed by the enemy (the lack of arms/armor making this a sacrificial death-offering rather than simply death-in-battle).
Lily’s self-sacrifice, Dumbledore’s death at his liege’s wand, Harry’s presenting himself wandless to Riddle, were in fact works of Dark Magic, ritual sacrifices. Highly effective works of Dark Magic, which worked to confer protection on others: Lily’s, for example, conferred long-term protection on her child. I think that besides Tom’s original inability to touch Harry, the protection acted rather like an attenuated Felix (which protected Lily’s son from destruction, not necessarily giving him luck in other contexts).
Dumbledore’s death, then, conferred similar protection and luck specifically on the Horcrux hunt, and Harry’s ‘death’ (or perhaps Headmaster Snape’s death) conferred protection on the defenders of Hogwarts.
Harry’s constant dumb luck makes more sense if it was magically-conferred by his mother’s (and later, by Dumbledore’s) sacrifice.
So Lily, who thought that Dark Magic was intrinsically evil, saved her child’s life through an (inadvertent, we are told) act of Dark Magic. Which was set up for her by a known Dark wizard, who persuaded Voldemort-who was incapable of appreciating the power of sacrifice-to offer Lily the choice of stepping aside….
Now, let’s think a moment about the Dark ritual Riddle used to rebirth himself. Into a potions base in a stone cauldron, were dropped, “Bone of the father, unknowing given... Flesh of the servant, willing given… Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken.” So three-magically powerful number-different human-body ingredients (bone, flesh, and blood), three different relationships (blood kin, service, and enmity) and three types of volition (ignorance, willing sacrifice, and force). Not just three, but three times three.
And the willing sacrifice was not actually just of “flesh,” which could have been satisfied by Peter’s cutting a hunk of meat off the fleshy part of his thigh-Peter had to MUTILATE himself, sacrificing his wand hand (with no guarantee of getting a working prosthesis, either-which means he may also have been symbolically offering his magic).
So using blood, flesh, and bone (human ingredients) can be a Dark magic; combining ignorance, voluntary sacrifice, and involuntary submission to greater force (aspects of volition) can be Dark magic; using different types of interpersonal relationships to power a spell can be Dark magic.
Now let’s return to Dumbledore. Who told Harry (OotP, “The Lost Prophecy”) “I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only surviving relative… She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you [emphases mine].”
Harry’s safety at Four Privet Drive wasn’t an automatic side-effect of Lily’s sacrifice, it was the effect of ancient magic that Dumbledore performed.
Albus performed this charm without, you will note, the Dursleys’ prior permission. Or knowledge. Petunia took Harry in, endangering herself and her family, and she hated having to do it. Ignorance, voluntary sacrifice, and coercion, all in the person of Petunia. Harry’s ‘blood’ kin. Who went on to treat him, some accuse, as a servant and an enemy.
[Might that even be another reason why Dumbledore never took any magical steps to lighten the Dursleys’ resentment at having to house their nephew? I’d argued (“Keeper of the Keys”) that Albus wanted Harry to be abused/neglected to make him emotionally vulnerable to Dumbledore’s manipulations, but this might be another factor. What if Albus’s own protective charm relied on Petunia’s unwilling acceptance of the situation-both the acceptance and the reluctance being key? Maybe Dumbledore’s protective spell would have weakened if Harry’s unwilling, ignorant, and sacrificing ‘blood’ shelterer, Petunia, had become more willing or less ignorant.
[Indeed, even if one rejects the three-fold aspect, consider that the charm protecting Harry is built on sacrifice. It’s not a sacrifice to live with someone you love; it’s a privilege. It IS a sacrifice to give houseroom to someone you fear and dislike and who endangers your loved ones. So possibly the force of Albus’s charm was built not only on Lily’s sacrifice, but on Lily’s sister’s-which would evaporate if Petunia were ever allowed or made to like her nephew.]
The charm Albus placed upon Harry for his protection involved sacrifice, blood, and will. Dark magic.
It’s also apparent that Albus never, to the end of his life, gave up his Quest for the Deathly Hallows. In fact, claiming the Stone, the second dark Hallow, was what sealed his death. We already know the Hallows to be Dark artifacts in at least some sense; Luna’s dad made that plain. But in fact, two of them are arguably also Dark in the sense that the Dark=Evil group uses the term. The Suicide Stone-excuse me, the Resurrection Stone-shows the wielder shades, apparently of the beloved dead, who trick or coax the wielder into joining them-in death. (I wrote my analysis of the Suicide Stone without having read Dumbledore’s commentary in Beedle. Imagine my shock when Dumbledore’s analysis of the Stone’s effects paralleled mine. Which made giving the Stone to someone, knowing its effect, attempted murder. Nice, Dumbledore, bequeathing that Snitch to Harry.)
Then there’s the first Hallow: an artifact which rejoices in the title “The Deathstick,” which prefers to be passed by murder (though simple violence is grudgingly accepted), and whose immediate effect on its possessor is apparently to encourage hubris.
Which may, I say most grudgingly, explain some things about Albus. By the time we readers first met him, he’d been using that thing daily for nearly forty years. By the time Harry did, it had had nearly fifty years to influence him.
Not that it had affected him in any way, oh no: just ask him! Albus could control it. Unlike all of the former owners, evil Dark wizards all who allowed themselves to become further corrupted by it. The fact that Albus, having decided that the Deathstick was absolutely unsafe to give into ANYONE else’s use, (no one besides him being of a caliber to resist its temptations, one infers), never even CONSIDERED just destroying the damned thing, instead coming up with an unworkable plan dependent on his “dying undefeated” to break its power, is completely irrelevant.
(I had previously privately speculated that the Elder wand might be both addictive and corrupting, rather like Sauron’s Ring-and again, Albus’s commentary in Beedle rather confirmed my analysis. So what was Albus doing clinging to the thing? Well, I did say that its immediate effect was to amplify the bearer’s hubris.)
Now, if you were a semi-sentient piece of wood, bent on corrupting your new owner, who was (or considered himself to be) both the most powerful and the most intelligent wizard on the planet, but who was badly scarred by a traumatic event when he was seventeen which left him afraid alike of violence, of taking responsibility, and of allowing himself to love, how would you try to influence him?
You wouldn’t try to induce in him a sudden taste for the Cruciatus or a passion for dueling; it wouldn’t work well, and Albus would detect that he was being subjected to an external influence.
How about…. Reinforce his passivity, his tendency not to act when action was obviously needed. Reassure him that ‘waiting and seeing’ was statesmanlike. Reinforce his aloofness, and whisper in his ear that not caring about people (being impartial, considering the big picture) was a virtue. (We are talking, after all, about the wizard who sincerely seemed to think that his worst misstep with Harry was that “I cared about you too much.”-OotP, “The Lost Prophecy”) Remind him that he’s so much smarter than everyone else, there’s no point, really, in sharing information with them. Ever. They should just do what he says, because he knows better than everyone. And when something goes wrong with one of his plans, it’s clearly because other people just didn’t act the way they should’ve if they’d obeyed him properly….
Even Albus’s tolerance of bullying might be partly traced to the wand. His love for Gellert showed that his natural bent was for charming, bright, good-looking ‘bad boys.’ Reinforce his sympathy for that type of bully over their victims, and what would you get? Albus didn’t allow violence in himself, no, but he certainly allowed it in his school. In fact, his policies apparently rather encouraged it. We never saw anyone truly grow out of bullying at Hogwarts (we thought for a times that James had, but canon makes clear that James instead simply learned to hide his bullying when that was to his advantage). We did, however, see former victims learn bullying or aggressive behavior under the headmaster’s tutelage (Severus, Harry, Hermione).
The Albus we criticize may not have been the man who disarmed his ex-lover in 1945. Though one must always bear in mind Albus’s original errors in dealing with a certain young orphan preceded his possession of-or by-the Deathstick.
But then, I do postulate that the Deathstick works by amplifying its possessee’s existing flaws.
Finally, let’s take a quick look at Dumbledore’s Chocolate Frog card. For what, in fact, was Dumbledore chiefly noted?
Defeating a (another) Dark wizard, discovering the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and work on alchemy with the only known creator of the Philosopher’s Stone.
Combat, blood magic, alchemy, fascination with immortality.
Check, check, check, and check.
Not evil, necessarily, in fact the inclusion of alchemy strongly suggests the reverse, but Albus was unquestionably a powerful Dark wizard. And his Chocolate Frog card said so, to anyone who had a clue as to what the Dark Arts really comprise.
Although of course the Dark=Disapproval group members (most of the contemporary Wizarding public) would only ever HINT at using that term when on the outs with him. And never if they might face Albus’s possible reprisal. Group three, the Dark=Evil group, would faint at such a heretical suggestion.
And Group one, the Dark=a Discipline group, would stare blankly at you for saying it. You mean this was ever in doubt?
WHY ENCOURAGE THE VIEW THAT DARK=EVIL?
So why would Dumbledore encourage his closest followers to misconstrue the Dark Arts as intrinsically evil?
One reason might be found by taking another look at those followers who clearly did receive that message: Gryffindors all.
When dealing with a certain brand of teenage Gryffindors, hungry for admiration and determined to prove their bravery, telling them that a branch of magic is dangerous is practically inviting them to dive into it. Telling them that it’s reprehensible, that anyone who dabbles in it is evil and should be hated and held in contempt, might work.
Well, if that was Dumbledore’s intent, it worked. Sort of. The Marauders ‘hated the Dark Arts,’ after all.
And so did Harry. And Harry, of course, therefore confidently concluded that unfamiliar spells (the Prince’s) or objects (the Map, the cloak, the Suicide Stone) couldn’t possibly be Dark if they didn’t seem to him be obviously Evil. Moreover, Harry used magic that he KNEW to be unquestionably both Dark and Evil (the Cruciatus) without qualms once he knew that “being seduced by the Dark Arts” really meant joining Voldemort-for as long as Harry held on to hating Voldemort, NOTHING whatsoever that Harry DID could be considered truly Dark.
I suggested that the Marauders almost certainly had the same misconception, and used Dark magic without ever acknowledging what it was.
Moreover, their Dark=Evil belief allowed them to justify hating and attacking people who did admit to practicing Dark magic. Whether or not one considers Sirius’s contention that Snape had always been “up to his eyes in the Dark Arts” to be supported by the facts, Sirius clearly offered it to Harry as a justification for the Marauders’ attacks. In fact, it’s also clear that some in this group came to believe quite sincerely that avoiding “Dark” magic was such a proof of moral superiority that it very nearly didn’t matter what harm they actually did or what malice they intended.
“James always hated the Dark Arts!” Sirius trumpeted to Harry as proof of James’s essentially good and noble nature-for which assertion Sirius produced NO evidence from James’s actual actions. Similarly, “They don’t use Dark Magic, though,” Lily bleated in defense of the bullies who’d just nearly killed Sev.
But really, taken to the logical conclusion, if ‘Dark Magic’ really, truly, equalled ‘innately evil magic’ and vice versa, then NOTHING anyone could do while avoiding the use of Dark Magic could be as bad as ANYTHING someone did with it!
Your enemy gave you a nosebleed with a Dark spell; you tortured and killed her using a household charm? How wicked of her, while you (at worst) went a little overboard. Probably you were completely justified, though; after all, you were fighting someone who was absolutely EVIL. She was willing, after all, to use DARK MAGIC!!!
There are people in the Potterverse who seem to come perilously close to believing this.
HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
A quite interesting question on which canon gives us almost no evidence to base an answer is: WHEN did Hogwarts stop formally teaching the Dark Arts as a discipline?
We know that one of the Founders was famous for being a Dark wizard, so undoubtedly the Dark Arts were included in the original curriculum. In fact, if Jodel is correct that the more domesticated spells had yet to be developed, the Dark Arts WERE the original curriculum. We’ve generally assumed that it’s been a long time since it was taught formally at Hogwarts. (I gather some people assume Hogwarts stopped teaching the Dark Arts when Salazar took his Gobstones and went home.)
It’s possible that the old families like the Blacks wanted the subject withdrawn from the curriculum when Hogwarts started admitting more and more of those Muggle-borns and Half-Bloods; they might have wanted to reserve the Dark Arts to their own use. The fact that Durmstrang is apparently both the only school formally teaching it, and the only school restricting admission to Purebloods, might suggest that. However, we see from young Tom, that it’s still perfectly possible to research the Dark Arts at Hogwarts with outstanding success. Further, if the old Pureblood families were trying to manipulate the Hogwarts curriculum to privilege their scions, we should see more signs of that stratagem being successful. The best students in their respective years were apparently: Albus (halfblood); Tom (Muggle-raised halfblood); James & Sirius (old Pureblood families), Lily (Muggle-born), and Severus (halfblood raised in a Muggle neighborhood by a witch); Percy (old Pureblood family, but Ron certainly arrived at Hogwarts ignorant); Hermione (Muggle-born), Draco (old Pureblood family), and Harry-in DADA only-(Muggle-raised halfblood).
So if the innovation were instituted, probably in the nineteenth century, with the intent of privileging Purebloods over their inferiors, it apparently didn’t work.
But it might have been more recently, and for quite different reasons. It might even have been, comparatively speaking, very recently. What powerful wizard, who has been influential at Hogwarts since at least the late Nineteen-Thirties, speaks eloquently about his mistrust of the Dark Arts?
We know that the Headmaster has broad powers to revise the Hogwarts coursework, up to dropping a field of study altogether. (Headmaster Dumbledore told us he’d been planning to drop Divination; only his determination to keep Trelawney out of Voldemort’s hands once she’d made that prophecy made him retain the course and offer Trelawney the position.)
We know that the last-but-one Slytherin Headmaster, Professor Black, died in 1926 at the tender-for a wizard-age of 79, so quite probably in office or recently retired. And he was one of those Blacks, famous for their expertise in Dark magic. So in the early twentieth century a noted Dark wizard was acceptable as Headmaster. That doesn’t prove the Dark Arts were still offered, but it proves that they certainly were then respected. And if Phineas didn’t want his students taught one of his own areas of mastery, it was undoubtedly for the prejudiced reasons stated above: which, as I mentioned, we see no other indications of.
Galatea Merrythought almost had to have been Phineas’s hire. But we don’t know if her course was originally called “Magical Defense” or “DADA.” Somehow one rather imagines Phineas would agree with his descendent Draco that the idea that one needs protecting against the Dark Arts as a field is a joke. Now, against specific spells, conditions, objects, and/or users of the Dark Arts, yes….
Fast-forward two decades, to our next canon clue. Slughorn, when Tom asked about Horcruxes, asked if Tom was researching them for a DADA project, not a Dark Arts one. Slughorn further points out that that particular subject [Horcruxes] is banned and that a certain other professor is particularly fierce about the issue.
Might that same professor have persuaded Headmaster Dippet to revise the Hogwarts course offerings? We know that this professor subsequently swayed the Headmaster’s staffing decisions, and certainly canon-Dippet seems… amenable to influence.
If Albus, facing increasing pressure to settle his ex-lover’s hash, blamed the Dark Arts for Gellert’s going bad … and if he blamed young Tom’s more troubling predilections on his interest in the Dark Arts…
Albus, after all, had proved that he could handle the seduction of the Dark Arts, but he clearly couldn’t trust anyone else to, not even the brightest, not even those who seemed most his intellectual peers…. It would be protecting people to keep them from learning the Dark Arts. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.
So it’s entirely possible that Riddle’s shocking revision to the Hogwarts curriculum, instituting a course in the Dark Arts, was (in title) merely a return to a centuries-old tradition overset a half-century earlier. [Although, as I mentioned before, the actual contents of the course that year were perhaps not designed to further the students’ deepest educational needs. Pity: one would rather enjoy reviewing the Snape-designed ‘Dark Arts and Defense for Dunderheads’ curriculum.]
If the change were within Draco’s grandfather’s memory, this also makes sense of Draco’s expressed disdain for the Hogwarts-approved DADA course in CoS and HBP: it’s the exact same as Harry’s attitude to the Ministry-approved changes in OotP. Which, in turn, is the same as MY attitude when I moved from Minnesota to Florida at the age of 16 and discovered that years of Minnesota civics classes didn’t count towards Florida graduation requirements. Instead I was required to take a Florida course entitled “Americanism versus Communism,” which revoltingly combined pablum with the most unblushing propaganda.
But as Minerva tried to explain to Harry, as Snape tried to explain to Draco, in the current political climate seeming to swallow the propaganda du jour “is an act that is crucial to success.” Or at least not overtly questioning it; as Minerva phrased it, “Do you really think this is about truth or lies?”
And if the change were that recent, Group two probably comprises mostly people who’ve attended Hogwarts since then; say, those Hogwarts graduates under 65 who are not from Pureblood Dark families, and those whom they’ve influenced. Since Hogwarts started formally teaching that the Dark Arts are only something to Defend Against, not a discipline to master with caution.
And Group three might be extremely recent. We know of no one who incontrovertibly used the term “Dark” as synonymous for “deliberately, innately evil” except Lily, Sirius and his friends, the Trio, and Albus talking to his closest followers.
So Group three might even be as recent as the original Order of the Phoenix. Which, if true, is rather suggestive.
Drawback to Not Teaching the Dark Arts
Harry: Seriously Evil Wizard Coming Through?
Blood/Death Magic, Lily’s Sacrifice, and Albus (The White One)
Why Teach that Dark = Evil?
Historical Considerations
DRAWBACK TO NOT FORMALLY TEACHING THE DARK ARTS
There’s one obvious drawback to not teaching the Dark Arts explicitly at Hogwarts. It means that Hogwarts alumni may not have been trained properly to identify them. Which, if the Dark Arts are in fact potentially dangerous to the practitioner, is a serious concern.
Even the Patronus charm, after all, might be dangerous if overused. Consider what happens to Muggles who overuse the drug Ecstasy-serotonin depletion, resulting in depression.
Of course, most witches and wizards in their day-to-day life seem to use a very limited repertoire of spells. Most of the Dark spells taught at Hogwarts are for defense, which doesn’t really come up that often (and long-term spiritual/perceptual damage is a smallish concern when one’s under attack by a Lethifold or Death Eater). (But it’s disturbing that the broken-by-Dementors, insanely-loyal-to-Voldemort parricide Barty could successfully impersonate retired Auror Moody-it seems that a career spent using combat magic may have scarred Alastor’s soul worse than his body.)
And while Hogwarts had a decent DADA instructor, probably students were taught how to identify what magic might be mentally/spiritually dangerous, whether it was being called the Dark Arts or not. But how long has it been since Hogwarts has had one of those?
The greatest danger is to members of the third group. Group one knows they’re studying something potentially dangerous and (one hopes) how to recognize the dangers. And indeed, the only Durmstrang alumnus we really see is obviously uncorrupted by his years of study. Group two knows that there’s magic out there which, while not evil per se, and therefore not called Dark by them, is still dangerous to (over)use.
But group three thinks that Dark means evil. Which means that if a member of that group encounters magic that is not self-evidently Evil and is not TAGGED for them as Dark, he/she will likely decide it ISN’T Dark, and therefore isn’t dangerous. In fact, we actually see that happen in canon with Harry. Several times.
Of course, most magic folk seem singularly uncreative, and don’t go exploring magic they’re not being taught in class.
Which brings us to the Marauders (and possibly to the Weasley twins).
Consider the Marauder’s Map, which was characterized by Severus as “plainly full of Dark Magic.” Lupin demurred, claiming it was, “Childish, but surely not dangerous… a joke.” (PoA, “Snape’s Grudge”) This does not actually address the question, if one concedes that an object can be not intended to be dangerous, a joke, and still Dark.
Even Harry noticed that it met Arthur’s definition of a suspicious object that thinks for itself. Now observe Harry’s subsequent decision-making process. He determined that the Map wasn’t Dark (despite, as Whitehound points out, requiring a solemn oath of wrong-doing to use) because “he [Harry] only wanted to use it to get into Hogsmeade, it wasn’t as though he wanted to steal anything or attack anyone… and Fred and George had been using it for years without anything horrible happening….” (PoA, “The Marauder’s Map”)
Useful for committing crimes, but also for other things, no immediately apparent harm to the user, so it couldn’t possibly be Dark.
And what does the Map do, besides insult authority figures and teach children to open secret passages so they can explore forbidden dangers? It tracks people without their knowledge, possibly without their being able to block, and it can’t be fooled by any physical transformation (the Animagus spell, Polyjuice). Identity magic. Yep, the Map is Dark all right. The scariest thing is, Lupin may honestly not realize this.
[By the way, why didn’t the Marauders give this technology to the Ministry? Or if they didn’t trust the Ministry, to Albus? A map like this of Knockturn Alley would have been highly useful in tracking contacts of suspected or known DE’s…. Well, that’s simple. The Marauders were more dedicated to covering their own arses than defeating Voldie; releasing the Map’s technology might have implicated them in their former wrongdoing. Lupin in PoA all over-no wonder Sirius took for granted that Remus would stay quiet about the tunnels and his Animagus form. He knew Remus already HAD consented to concealing potentially critical knowledge from the head of the Order. The Marauders had discussed the dangers of letting Albus know everything they had gotten up to at school.]
[Peter, on the other hand, didn’t mention the Map to his master because he didn’t know enough about how it had been made. Would you really want to say to the Dark Lord that, uh, you’d watched part of the process but didn’t understand too much, and couldn’t recreate it? To a master Legilimens who has no compunction about tearing someone’s mind apart, if he decides that an unblockable surveillance device was more valuable than the information Pete was bringing in spying?]
Consider next the Animagus transformation. We know that it requires neither wand-waving nor incantation, that it is not taught at Hogwarts, and that it’s dangerous to attempt. And it involves the transformation of a person into an animal, permanently, until the person either wills to transform back or a specific counterspell is performed. And like werewolves, Animagi are supposed to register with the Ministry. Will-based, alters the very physical identity, known to be dangerous to attempt (probably therefore inconsistent results on attempts), effects irreversible without a specific counter or an act of will…. Mm-hmm.
Moreover, what does it do to one’s psyche to spend a lot of time as an animal, with that animal’s instincts overwhelming one’s human mind-or reinforcing the more bestial parts of one’s nature? I broke off that question into a separate essay, “James the Stag.” My conclusion was that spending a lot of time as a beast probably didn’t generally aid one to develop one’s highest human attributes. And on reflection I’d guess too that the younger you started, the less formed your personality, the more likely you are to be influenced negatively.
Finally, we know that by Fifth Year, the Marauders were using some of Severus’s homemade spells without, apparently, knowing that they were his. Severus was a Dark wizard, both by their (subsequent) estimation and by his reaction to Lily’s outburst over Mulciber. That is, Sev had made some formal study of Dark magic, was willing to use it judiciously, and didn’t see why he shouldn’t say so. His spell Sectumsempra is apparently classifiable as a curse; I would argue that so is Levicorpus. It doesn’t, apparently, wear off by itself, and it requires a specific countercurse to lift, not just a “Finite Incantatem”. And while Harry thinks of it as a joke (like Lupin called the Map), Hermione points out that the Death Eaters used it horrifically against Muggles at the World Cup. If so, the Marauders were using Sev’s Dark magic without accrediting it as such.
And remember Whitehound’s observation that Harry spent much of his magical career relying heavily on a known Dark artifact (the third Deathly Hallow)? So had James.
[Note, by the way, that Harry first used the cloak to try to research Flamel-i.e. as part of a misguided but noble attempt to foil a suspected crime. But Harry immediately branched out to using it for satisfying selfish desires (looking in the Mirror), and soon for sneak attacks on others (Draco in PoA) and general spying.]
If the Marauders, who “always hated the Dark Arts,” had been using them extensively all along without recognizing them as such, they could have been slowly doing themselves severe perceptual/spiritual damage. So, to a lesser extent, might the Weasley twins.
Jodel claims that the first symptom of “Dark Arts Dementia” is “a progressive ‘hardening’ of the subject’s capacity for empathy.” Does that sound like a criticism any fan has ever made of the Marauders or the Weasley bullies?
Or, indeed, sometimes of Harry?
HARRY: SERIOUSLY EVIL WIZARD COMING THROUGH?
Was Harry a Dark wizard? The Weasley twins mocked the notion in PoA, but the Weasleys are among those who conflate “Dark” with “seriously Evil.” What do others say?
“I should remind you that when Potter first arrived at Hogwarts there were still many stories circulating about him, rumors that he himself was a great Dark wizard, which was how he had survived the Dark Lord’s attack.” Severus to Bellatrix (HBP, “Spinner’s End”) As Whitehound points out, these are two Dark Arts specialists talking to each other; it apparently made sense to them to posit that a toddler could save himself from a murder attempt by an instinctive/natural use of Dark magic. Which reaffirms that using Dark magic is not intrinsically wicked; if Harry (rather than Lily) HAD instinctively made Riddle’s murderous spell rebound, would anyone really care to say the baby did something evil? Even if doing this showed the baby’s intuitive mastery of Dark magic?
Nor were Death Eaters the only ones to think this. After Harry had revealed himself to be a Parselmouth in CoS, consider what Hufflepuff Ernie Macmillan had to say:
“No one knows how he survived that attack by You-Know-Who. I mean to say, he was only a baby when it happened. He should have been blasted into smithereens. Only a really powerful Dark wizard could have survived a curse like that…. That’s probably why You-Know-Who wanted to kill him in the first place. Didn’t want another Dark Lord competing with him. I wonder what other powers Potter’s been hiding?” (PoA, “The Dueling Club”)
Note that Ernie was 12 here, and never presented as the world’s foremost innovative thinker, so he must be parroting what he’d previously heard from his nine-generation-Pureblood, Voldemort-hating family. So among those in the know on both sides, Harry has been associated with Dark Magic ever since he acquired that scar.
Look at attitudes towards Harry over time. If the WW thought Harry’s supposed use of Dark magic to survive Riddle to be intrinsically evil, they should have been worried about replacing one Dark Lord with a worse. Was there any sign that ANYONE in the WW regarded infant Harry as a possible Rosemary’s Baby? Not a one, neither in the celebrations overheard by Vernon Dursley, nor in child-Harry’s encounters with oddly-dressed strangers, nor in Harry’s trip to Diagon Alley…. True, some former DE’s wondered if they could rally around him as a new Dark Lord. But the kid’s politics turned out to be impossible, and Snape assured his former fellows that the boy’s abilities had been grossly overrated.
But in fact Harry did turn out to have a natural affinity for combat spells and for will-based magic (such as the Patronus charm and resisting the Imperius)-in fact, didn’t he get an “O” in exactly one of his OWLs? Remind me of which one, will you?
And Harry’s a Parselmouth-famous Dark wizard Salazar Slytherin’s signature ability, long associated with Dark magic. Let’s look closely at everyone’s reactions to that fact. While the school was under siege by someone claiming to be the Heir of Slytherin, many of the other students feared and mistrusted Harry.
Yet, oddly, we see no sign that any ADULTS did; apparently both the staff and the Ministry accepted Dumbledore’s assurances that the known Parselmouth on site was not responsible for the attacks. And the Ministry still did not send anyone in to interrogate Harry after Dumbledore had been ousted. Nor did the Acting Headmistress question the child. Among knowledgeable adults, apparently, being a Parselmouth wasn’t enough to link one to the Heir of Slytherin’s attacks.
Most tellingly, look at Draco’s reaction. Draco did NOT react to Harry’s display of Parseltongue by falling on him as a brother-in-spirit and Slytherin’s obvious heir. His attitude seemed to have been more, “So fine, Potter’s a Dark wizard; my father was right all along. It figures. But the tosser’s still not on my side, and Granger’s best friend certainly isn’t the one opening Slytherin’s Chamber. Wish I knew who it was….”
After Harry had dispatched the Basilisk, of course he was again a hero to much of the school. And he apparently continued generally popular until GoF, when people thought he’d cheated to get into the Tournament.
But-he was still a known Parselmouth. Moreover, while the details were hazy (more accurately, various, and changing colorfully at each retelling), everyone knew that Harry’s first year, he made it through a maze of magical hazards, confronted You-Know-Who possessing Quirrell (or was it Quirrell trying to steal the Stone?), and won. His second year he slew the Basilisk. His third, Harry fell afoul simultaneously of a raging werewolf, You-Know-Who’s chief lieutenant, and a pack of Dementors, and escaped.
Among the former DE’s, Snape was assiduously spinning away Harry’s various triumphs as due to luck and more talented friends rather than innate ability. What was everyone else thinking?
Well, we saw what they were thinking when Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire, didn’t we? Let’s put this in perspective, shall we? Had Susan Bones’ name popped out of the Goblet, would anyone in the WW have assumed that SUSAN had engineered the cheat?
Anyone who credited that Harry had cheated his way into the Triwizard Tournament implicitly declared that s/he believed Harry to be capable-not only morally but magically-of deceiving or coercing a powerful and ancient magical object which had been specifically designed to resist such interference.
And there was no one at all whose first reaction to this argument was “Don’t be silly.” Even Dumbledore asked before he believed Harry innocent.
Later that year, of course, Skeeter, to discredit Harry, brought up Harry’s Parseltongue abilities again, instructing her readers that serpents were associated with the “worst kind of Dark Magic and … evildoers [emphasis mine],” and speculating that Harry might use Dark Arts to win the Triwizard.
Skeeter was appealing to groups one and two here, arguing that Harry might use Dark Magic unacceptably. (For anyone in group three, calling Harry Dark was already saying that he was evil; no need to add “worst” or “evildoers.”)
To recapitulate: the evidence for believing Harry to have a natural facility for Dark magic grew over time. He survived Voldemort; he was a Parselmouth; he showed an increasing aptitude for combat spells and will-based magic (excepting, of course, Occlumency, which he wanted not to master-during the whole of his lessons, he thought of his connection to Voldemort as an information source more than a liability).
Despite this evidence of Harry’s being Dark, Harry’s public reputation fluctuated according to what people believed of his intentions, reliability and sanity. When people thought he was mentally unstable or using Dark powers to cheat, to threaten his classmates, or to get attention, they feared them. When they thought he was directing those powers against Voldemort, they trusted in them and him.
BLOOD/DEATH MAGIC, LILY’S SACRIFICE, AND ALBUS (THE WHITE ONE)
Before we move on to Dumbledore, I’m going to argue that it WAS a great work of Dark Magic that saved Harry’s life on Halloween 1981.
Lily’s.
Who would have been horrified (Dark-Arts-Detester that she was) to hear it called that.
Consider. In my world, the world of readers, a cursory perusal of The Golden Bough establishes that a widespread form of ritual magic in ancient times was ritual human sacrifice, which is certainly Dark magic by all definitions. The death of a scapegoat, and even sometimes mass murder, were used ritually to protect the community.
Yet the most potent form of death magic was ritual SACRIFICE, e.g. of the sacred kings who died voluntarily for the protection of their people--either yearly, for the fertility of the land, or in times of crisis (war, pestilence, drought, etc.) The one who sacrificed him/herself to save others might be ritually butchered by a trusted associate, might ritually suicide, or in wartime might go into battle unarmed/unarmored to be killed by the enemy (the lack of arms/armor making this a sacrificial death-offering rather than simply death-in-battle).
Lily’s self-sacrifice, Dumbledore’s death at his liege’s wand, Harry’s presenting himself wandless to Riddle, were in fact works of Dark Magic, ritual sacrifices. Highly effective works of Dark Magic, which worked to confer protection on others: Lily’s, for example, conferred long-term protection on her child. I think that besides Tom’s original inability to touch Harry, the protection acted rather like an attenuated Felix (which protected Lily’s son from destruction, not necessarily giving him luck in other contexts).
Dumbledore’s death, then, conferred similar protection and luck specifically on the Horcrux hunt, and Harry’s ‘death’ (or perhaps Headmaster Snape’s death) conferred protection on the defenders of Hogwarts.
Harry’s constant dumb luck makes more sense if it was magically-conferred by his mother’s (and later, by Dumbledore’s) sacrifice.
So Lily, who thought that Dark Magic was intrinsically evil, saved her child’s life through an (inadvertent, we are told) act of Dark Magic. Which was set up for her by a known Dark wizard, who persuaded Voldemort-who was incapable of appreciating the power of sacrifice-to offer Lily the choice of stepping aside….
Now, let’s think a moment about the Dark ritual Riddle used to rebirth himself. Into a potions base in a stone cauldron, were dropped, “Bone of the father, unknowing given... Flesh of the servant, willing given… Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken.” So three-magically powerful number-different human-body ingredients (bone, flesh, and blood), three different relationships (blood kin, service, and enmity) and three types of volition (ignorance, willing sacrifice, and force). Not just three, but three times three.
And the willing sacrifice was not actually just of “flesh,” which could have been satisfied by Peter’s cutting a hunk of meat off the fleshy part of his thigh-Peter had to MUTILATE himself, sacrificing his wand hand (with no guarantee of getting a working prosthesis, either-which means he may also have been symbolically offering his magic).
So using blood, flesh, and bone (human ingredients) can be a Dark magic; combining ignorance, voluntary sacrifice, and involuntary submission to greater force (aspects of volition) can be Dark magic; using different types of interpersonal relationships to power a spell can be Dark magic.
Now let’s return to Dumbledore. Who told Harry (OotP, “The Lost Prophecy”) “I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only surviving relative… She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you [emphases mine].”
Harry’s safety at Four Privet Drive wasn’t an automatic side-effect of Lily’s sacrifice, it was the effect of ancient magic that Dumbledore performed.
Albus performed this charm without, you will note, the Dursleys’ prior permission. Or knowledge. Petunia took Harry in, endangering herself and her family, and she hated having to do it. Ignorance, voluntary sacrifice, and coercion, all in the person of Petunia. Harry’s ‘blood’ kin. Who went on to treat him, some accuse, as a servant and an enemy.
[Might that even be another reason why Dumbledore never took any magical steps to lighten the Dursleys’ resentment at having to house their nephew? I’d argued (“Keeper of the Keys”) that Albus wanted Harry to be abused/neglected to make him emotionally vulnerable to Dumbledore’s manipulations, but this might be another factor. What if Albus’s own protective charm relied on Petunia’s unwilling acceptance of the situation-both the acceptance and the reluctance being key? Maybe Dumbledore’s protective spell would have weakened if Harry’s unwilling, ignorant, and sacrificing ‘blood’ shelterer, Petunia, had become more willing or less ignorant.
[Indeed, even if one rejects the three-fold aspect, consider that the charm protecting Harry is built on sacrifice. It’s not a sacrifice to live with someone you love; it’s a privilege. It IS a sacrifice to give houseroom to someone you fear and dislike and who endangers your loved ones. So possibly the force of Albus’s charm was built not only on Lily’s sacrifice, but on Lily’s sister’s-which would evaporate if Petunia were ever allowed or made to like her nephew.]
The charm Albus placed upon Harry for his protection involved sacrifice, blood, and will. Dark magic.
It’s also apparent that Albus never, to the end of his life, gave up his Quest for the Deathly Hallows. In fact, claiming the Stone, the second dark Hallow, was what sealed his death. We already know the Hallows to be Dark artifacts in at least some sense; Luna’s dad made that plain. But in fact, two of them are arguably also Dark in the sense that the Dark=Evil group uses the term. The Suicide Stone-excuse me, the Resurrection Stone-shows the wielder shades, apparently of the beloved dead, who trick or coax the wielder into joining them-in death. (I wrote my analysis of the Suicide Stone without having read Dumbledore’s commentary in Beedle. Imagine my shock when Dumbledore’s analysis of the Stone’s effects paralleled mine. Which made giving the Stone to someone, knowing its effect, attempted murder. Nice, Dumbledore, bequeathing that Snitch to Harry.)
Then there’s the first Hallow: an artifact which rejoices in the title “The Deathstick,” which prefers to be passed by murder (though simple violence is grudgingly accepted), and whose immediate effect on its possessor is apparently to encourage hubris.
Which may, I say most grudgingly, explain some things about Albus. By the time we readers first met him, he’d been using that thing daily for nearly forty years. By the time Harry did, it had had nearly fifty years to influence him.
Not that it had affected him in any way, oh no: just ask him! Albus could control it. Unlike all of the former owners, evil Dark wizards all who allowed themselves to become further corrupted by it. The fact that Albus, having decided that the Deathstick was absolutely unsafe to give into ANYONE else’s use, (no one besides him being of a caliber to resist its temptations, one infers), never even CONSIDERED just destroying the damned thing, instead coming up with an unworkable plan dependent on his “dying undefeated” to break its power, is completely irrelevant.
(I had previously privately speculated that the Elder wand might be both addictive and corrupting, rather like Sauron’s Ring-and again, Albus’s commentary in Beedle rather confirmed my analysis. So what was Albus doing clinging to the thing? Well, I did say that its immediate effect was to amplify the bearer’s hubris.)
Now, if you were a semi-sentient piece of wood, bent on corrupting your new owner, who was (or considered himself to be) both the most powerful and the most intelligent wizard on the planet, but who was badly scarred by a traumatic event when he was seventeen which left him afraid alike of violence, of taking responsibility, and of allowing himself to love, how would you try to influence him?
You wouldn’t try to induce in him a sudden taste for the Cruciatus or a passion for dueling; it wouldn’t work well, and Albus would detect that he was being subjected to an external influence.
How about…. Reinforce his passivity, his tendency not to act when action was obviously needed. Reassure him that ‘waiting and seeing’ was statesmanlike. Reinforce his aloofness, and whisper in his ear that not caring about people (being impartial, considering the big picture) was a virtue. (We are talking, after all, about the wizard who sincerely seemed to think that his worst misstep with Harry was that “I cared about you too much.”-OotP, “The Lost Prophecy”) Remind him that he’s so much smarter than everyone else, there’s no point, really, in sharing information with them. Ever. They should just do what he says, because he knows better than everyone. And when something goes wrong with one of his plans, it’s clearly because other people just didn’t act the way they should’ve if they’d obeyed him properly….
Even Albus’s tolerance of bullying might be partly traced to the wand. His love for Gellert showed that his natural bent was for charming, bright, good-looking ‘bad boys.’ Reinforce his sympathy for that type of bully over their victims, and what would you get? Albus didn’t allow violence in himself, no, but he certainly allowed it in his school. In fact, his policies apparently rather encouraged it. We never saw anyone truly grow out of bullying at Hogwarts (we thought for a times that James had, but canon makes clear that James instead simply learned to hide his bullying when that was to his advantage). We did, however, see former victims learn bullying or aggressive behavior under the headmaster’s tutelage (Severus, Harry, Hermione).
The Albus we criticize may not have been the man who disarmed his ex-lover in 1945. Though one must always bear in mind Albus’s original errors in dealing with a certain young orphan preceded his possession of-or by-the Deathstick.
But then, I do postulate that the Deathstick works by amplifying its possessee’s existing flaws.
Finally, let’s take a quick look at Dumbledore’s Chocolate Frog card. For what, in fact, was Dumbledore chiefly noted?
Defeating a (another) Dark wizard, discovering the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and work on alchemy with the only known creator of the Philosopher’s Stone.
Combat, blood magic, alchemy, fascination with immortality.
Check, check, check, and check.
Not evil, necessarily, in fact the inclusion of alchemy strongly suggests the reverse, but Albus was unquestionably a powerful Dark wizard. And his Chocolate Frog card said so, to anyone who had a clue as to what the Dark Arts really comprise.
Although of course the Dark=Disapproval group members (most of the contemporary Wizarding public) would only ever HINT at using that term when on the outs with him. And never if they might face Albus’s possible reprisal. Group three, the Dark=Evil group, would faint at such a heretical suggestion.
And Group one, the Dark=a Discipline group, would stare blankly at you for saying it. You mean this was ever in doubt?
WHY ENCOURAGE THE VIEW THAT DARK=EVIL?
So why would Dumbledore encourage his closest followers to misconstrue the Dark Arts as intrinsically evil?
One reason might be found by taking another look at those followers who clearly did receive that message: Gryffindors all.
When dealing with a certain brand of teenage Gryffindors, hungry for admiration and determined to prove their bravery, telling them that a branch of magic is dangerous is practically inviting them to dive into it. Telling them that it’s reprehensible, that anyone who dabbles in it is evil and should be hated and held in contempt, might work.
Well, if that was Dumbledore’s intent, it worked. Sort of. The Marauders ‘hated the Dark Arts,’ after all.
And so did Harry. And Harry, of course, therefore confidently concluded that unfamiliar spells (the Prince’s) or objects (the Map, the cloak, the Suicide Stone) couldn’t possibly be Dark if they didn’t seem to him be obviously Evil. Moreover, Harry used magic that he KNEW to be unquestionably both Dark and Evil (the Cruciatus) without qualms once he knew that “being seduced by the Dark Arts” really meant joining Voldemort-for as long as Harry held on to hating Voldemort, NOTHING whatsoever that Harry DID could be considered truly Dark.
I suggested that the Marauders almost certainly had the same misconception, and used Dark magic without ever acknowledging what it was.
Moreover, their Dark=Evil belief allowed them to justify hating and attacking people who did admit to practicing Dark magic. Whether or not one considers Sirius’s contention that Snape had always been “up to his eyes in the Dark Arts” to be supported by the facts, Sirius clearly offered it to Harry as a justification for the Marauders’ attacks. In fact, it’s also clear that some in this group came to believe quite sincerely that avoiding “Dark” magic was such a proof of moral superiority that it very nearly didn’t matter what harm they actually did or what malice they intended.
“James always hated the Dark Arts!” Sirius trumpeted to Harry as proof of James’s essentially good and noble nature-for which assertion Sirius produced NO evidence from James’s actual actions. Similarly, “They don’t use Dark Magic, though,” Lily bleated in defense of the bullies who’d just nearly killed Sev.
But really, taken to the logical conclusion, if ‘Dark Magic’ really, truly, equalled ‘innately evil magic’ and vice versa, then NOTHING anyone could do while avoiding the use of Dark Magic could be as bad as ANYTHING someone did with it!
Your enemy gave you a nosebleed with a Dark spell; you tortured and killed her using a household charm? How wicked of her, while you (at worst) went a little overboard. Probably you were completely justified, though; after all, you were fighting someone who was absolutely EVIL. She was willing, after all, to use DARK MAGIC!!!
There are people in the Potterverse who seem to come perilously close to believing this.
HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
A quite interesting question on which canon gives us almost no evidence to base an answer is: WHEN did Hogwarts stop formally teaching the Dark Arts as a discipline?
We know that one of the Founders was famous for being a Dark wizard, so undoubtedly the Dark Arts were included in the original curriculum. In fact, if Jodel is correct that the more domesticated spells had yet to be developed, the Dark Arts WERE the original curriculum. We’ve generally assumed that it’s been a long time since it was taught formally at Hogwarts. (I gather some people assume Hogwarts stopped teaching the Dark Arts when Salazar took his Gobstones and went home.)
It’s possible that the old families like the Blacks wanted the subject withdrawn from the curriculum when Hogwarts started admitting more and more of those Muggle-borns and Half-Bloods; they might have wanted to reserve the Dark Arts to their own use. The fact that Durmstrang is apparently both the only school formally teaching it, and the only school restricting admission to Purebloods, might suggest that. However, we see from young Tom, that it’s still perfectly possible to research the Dark Arts at Hogwarts with outstanding success. Further, if the old Pureblood families were trying to manipulate the Hogwarts curriculum to privilege their scions, we should see more signs of that stratagem being successful. The best students in their respective years were apparently: Albus (halfblood); Tom (Muggle-raised halfblood); James & Sirius (old Pureblood families), Lily (Muggle-born), and Severus (halfblood raised in a Muggle neighborhood by a witch); Percy (old Pureblood family, but Ron certainly arrived at Hogwarts ignorant); Hermione (Muggle-born), Draco (old Pureblood family), and Harry-in DADA only-(Muggle-raised halfblood).
So if the innovation were instituted, probably in the nineteenth century, with the intent of privileging Purebloods over their inferiors, it apparently didn’t work.
But it might have been more recently, and for quite different reasons. It might even have been, comparatively speaking, very recently. What powerful wizard, who has been influential at Hogwarts since at least the late Nineteen-Thirties, speaks eloquently about his mistrust of the Dark Arts?
We know that the Headmaster has broad powers to revise the Hogwarts coursework, up to dropping a field of study altogether. (Headmaster Dumbledore told us he’d been planning to drop Divination; only his determination to keep Trelawney out of Voldemort’s hands once she’d made that prophecy made him retain the course and offer Trelawney the position.)
We know that the last-but-one Slytherin Headmaster, Professor Black, died in 1926 at the tender-for a wizard-age of 79, so quite probably in office or recently retired. And he was one of those Blacks, famous for their expertise in Dark magic. So in the early twentieth century a noted Dark wizard was acceptable as Headmaster. That doesn’t prove the Dark Arts were still offered, but it proves that they certainly were then respected. And if Phineas didn’t want his students taught one of his own areas of mastery, it was undoubtedly for the prejudiced reasons stated above: which, as I mentioned, we see no other indications of.
Galatea Merrythought almost had to have been Phineas’s hire. But we don’t know if her course was originally called “Magical Defense” or “DADA.” Somehow one rather imagines Phineas would agree with his descendent Draco that the idea that one needs protecting against the Dark Arts as a field is a joke. Now, against specific spells, conditions, objects, and/or users of the Dark Arts, yes….
Fast-forward two decades, to our next canon clue. Slughorn, when Tom asked about Horcruxes, asked if Tom was researching them for a DADA project, not a Dark Arts one. Slughorn further points out that that particular subject [Horcruxes] is banned and that a certain other professor is particularly fierce about the issue.
Might that same professor have persuaded Headmaster Dippet to revise the Hogwarts course offerings? We know that this professor subsequently swayed the Headmaster’s staffing decisions, and certainly canon-Dippet seems… amenable to influence.
If Albus, facing increasing pressure to settle his ex-lover’s hash, blamed the Dark Arts for Gellert’s going bad … and if he blamed young Tom’s more troubling predilections on his interest in the Dark Arts…
Albus, after all, had proved that he could handle the seduction of the Dark Arts, but he clearly couldn’t trust anyone else to, not even the brightest, not even those who seemed most his intellectual peers…. It would be protecting people to keep them from learning the Dark Arts. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.
So it’s entirely possible that Riddle’s shocking revision to the Hogwarts curriculum, instituting a course in the Dark Arts, was (in title) merely a return to a centuries-old tradition overset a half-century earlier. [Although, as I mentioned before, the actual contents of the course that year were perhaps not designed to further the students’ deepest educational needs. Pity: one would rather enjoy reviewing the Snape-designed ‘Dark Arts and Defense for Dunderheads’ curriculum.]
If the change were within Draco’s grandfather’s memory, this also makes sense of Draco’s expressed disdain for the Hogwarts-approved DADA course in CoS and HBP: it’s the exact same as Harry’s attitude to the Ministry-approved changes in OotP. Which, in turn, is the same as MY attitude when I moved from Minnesota to Florida at the age of 16 and discovered that years of Minnesota civics classes didn’t count towards Florida graduation requirements. Instead I was required to take a Florida course entitled “Americanism versus Communism,” which revoltingly combined pablum with the most unblushing propaganda.
But as Minerva tried to explain to Harry, as Snape tried to explain to Draco, in the current political climate seeming to swallow the propaganda du jour “is an act that is crucial to success.” Or at least not overtly questioning it; as Minerva phrased it, “Do you really think this is about truth or lies?”
And if the change were that recent, Group two probably comprises mostly people who’ve attended Hogwarts since then; say, those Hogwarts graduates under 65 who are not from Pureblood Dark families, and those whom they’ve influenced. Since Hogwarts started formally teaching that the Dark Arts are only something to Defend Against, not a discipline to master with caution.
And Group three might be extremely recent. We know of no one who incontrovertibly used the term “Dark” as synonymous for “deliberately, innately evil” except Lily, Sirius and his friends, the Trio, and Albus talking to his closest followers.
So Group three might even be as recent as the original Order of the Phoenix. Which, if true, is rather suggestive.