Contact:
This page uses images which re-size to maintain a constant appearance across all browsers and resolutions. Please allow scripts or ActiveX controls to run if asked.
Sectumsempra - weapon or tool? Classification of combat spells Curses Hexes and jinxes Unforgivables The nature of Darkness Appendix: "Dark" references in canon
Sectumsempra and the nature of curses: an examination of what Sectumsempra actually does, what class of spell it is, and what makes a spell a Dark spell, a curse, a hex etc..
N.B.: this essay originally formed part of the much longer piece But Snape is just nasty, right?, but I decided to split it away into its own file because side arguments of this kind were making the main essay unwieldy and hard to follow, and because it's an interesting topic in its own right.
Much of our understanding of Snape as a teenager depends on whether Sirius is right about his having been heavily interested in the Dark Arts, whether that actually means that he was performing openly evil acts, and what we can understand from his signature-use of Sectumsempra. Did he invent this spell or merely use it, and is it an obviously over-the-top, vicious weapon or a reasonable means of defence?
If the Latin is to be taken literally, "Sectumsempra" means something like "to amputate every time", "to cut every time" or "to wound every time". However, JK Rowling's use of Latin in spells is erratic. In the Tickling Charm Rictusempra, which makes people laugh convulsively, the "sempra" bit appears to mean "all the time" rather than "every time". So Sectumsempra may mean something like "always cuts" or "cut always", depending on how precise the Latin is.
It was found written in the margin of schoolboy-Snape's Advanced Potion-Making book with the note "for enemies". We do not know whether young Severus invented the spell himself, or only learned it and wrote it down.
The evidence that Snape actually invented Sectumsempra is that the name can be rendered loosely as "Sever Forever" (that is, as a play on the name Severus); that it was written down in his Potions book and that during the running battle at the end of HBP he accuses Harry of using his own spells, plural, against him when Harry tries to use both Sectumsempra and Levicorpus - although it is Levicorpus which prompts this accusation.
On the other hand, although it is written down in his book it seems to have no workings-out or instructions with it, as his other spells do. Harry certainly assumes that it was a spell which the Half-Blood Prince had learned, rather than one he had invented, which he would hardly do if there were workings-out with it: he may or may not have been right about that, but it raises the possibility that JKR herself intended it to be a spell Snape had got from elsewhere.
[cut] he noticed the corner of a page folded down; turning to it, he saw the Sectumsempra spell, captioned 'For Enemies', that he had marked a few weeks previously. [HBP ch. #24; p. 484]
What had the Prince been thinking to copy such a spell into his book? [HBP ch. #24; p. 491]
'Will you stop harping on about the book!' snapped Harry. 'The Prince only copied it out! It's not like he was advising anyone to use it! For all we know, he was making a note of something that had been used against him!' [HBP ch. #24; p. 495]
When we see Snape use what certainly appears to be Sectumsempra to defend himself from James during the underpants incident, he casts it non-verbally, so the Marauders don't hear what the spell is called, and yet in DH Lupin identifies a spell cast by Snape as Sectumsempra and says it was always a speciality of his: yet, he says nothing to suggest that Snape actually invented the spell. It sounds as if Sectumsempra is known to Lupin in a general way: hence, it may be a spell which Snape used rather than one which he invented.
That's not absolute proof, of course, because Lupin knew Levicorpus by name yet didn't know Snape had invented it, or didn't admit to knowing. But it does mean that it's perfectly possible Snape didn't invent Sectumsempra: just took it up because of the coincidence of the name.
If he didn't invent it, why would he accuse Harry of using spells of his own invention, plural, against him? Perhaps because even though he got it from elsewhere he had adapted it for his own use. Or perhaps in the heat of the moment he is speaking loosely. He knows Harry tried to use Levicorpus (although we don't know how he knows, since it's a non-verbal spell - perhaps Harry's lips move!) against him, and that's a spell which he invented. He knows Harry tried to use Sectumsempra against him, and it's certainly his in the sense of being his signature-spell and coming from his notes. He almost certainly knows Harry used his Langlock spell on Filch (twice). People don't always speak 100% accurately, and perhaps 'You dare use my own spells against me, Potter?' was just easier to say than 'You dare use one of my own spells against me, and use another of them against Filch, and use a spell which, even though I didn't invent it, I still regard as mine against me, Potter?'
Alternatively, he might just be speaking in anticipation. Harry has just tried to use two spells from Snape's book, at least one of which Snape invented, so Snape may simply be warning him off from trying any more in the next few minutes.
What kind of a spell is Sectumsempra?
"Sectumsempra" means something like "to cut every time" or "to amputate every time". We learn in DH that if it is used to actually cut a body part off, that body part can't be replaced. That could be taken to mean that Sectumsempra is an especially vicious curse which was specifically designed to amputate body parts in a way which prevents their regrowth. However, it seems from Remus's comments on George's injury that this is common to all amputations which result from a curse, of any kind:
It's possible that Remus was going to say "...not when it's been cursed off with Sectumsempra", and was interrupted: but if that was what JK intended, you'd think she'd at least have left a "with" or a "by" on the end of that partial sentence. Molly then goes on to say:
So, we can say that Sectumsempra is a curse, because any amputations caused by it are permanent; but we can be quite certain that permanent amputation is not a special, unique feature of Sectumsempra. Molly's comment could be taken to mean that the spell which removed George's ear must be definitely Dark, although Remus's comment implies that any curse would do the same, and we know some curses are taught at Hogwarts: Locomotor mortis seems to be taught in class, since they all recognise it in first year and Draco is openly looking for somebody to practise it on, and Petrificus totalus and Reductor are readily available in the library.
Confusingly, we are told that Eloise Midgen cursed her own nose off and it was able to be re-attached. Assuming that the term "cursed" is being used accurately here, this could be evidence that not all curses cause permanent amputation, but only those curses classified as "Dark" (which would mean Sectumsempra was Dark). On the other hand, we have seen Madam Pomfrey deal efficiently with some pretty serious injuries, and yet she was able to re-attach Eloise's nose only with difficulty ("in the end"), and rather badly. So we can at least say that probably all curses that can cause amputation tend to cause permanent amputation, unless you are very skilled and lucky.
'Well -- you know,' said Ron, shrugging. 'I'd rather go alone than with -- with Eloise Midgen, say.' 'Her acne’s loads better lately -- and she’s really nice!' 'Her nose is off-centre,' said Ron. [GoF ch. #22; p.344]
In addition, Rowling has said the following about magical healing:
That "... the consequences of curses ... could be ... permanent" seems to confirm that any curse which causes amputation will tend to cause permanent amputation.
The definition of what is and isn't considered Dark Magic is never explained: often it just seems to mean "a curse I don't approve of". Even "curse" has never been satisfactorily defined, but we can certainly say that not all curses are regarded as evil, since some appear to be on the Hogwarts curriculum, and are certainly performed without censure
It's possible that when Molly said the injury was due to Dark Magic she meant something clearly bad, not the sort of curse which would ever be taught at Hogwarts, and Remus was going to say "...not when it's been cursed off with Sectumsempra". But since there seems no reason why JK should set out deliberately to obscure this point if she were trying to make it, it's at least as likely that Remus meant what we heard him say - that any curse which caused an amputation would have the same effect, including the ones sanctioned by the school - and Molly was speaking sloppily and using "Dark Magic" as a synonym for "curse". [It is more likely that Molly is speaking sloppily than that Remus is, because Remus is knowledgeable enough about DADA to teach it.]
There are other references which suggest that Dark Magic injuries are especially hard to heal. When Bill is injured by Greyback, Lupin says:
That could be taken to mean that any wound made by a curse will never heal, but so far as we know these wounds made by Greyback weren't made by curses at all - they are physical tooth or nail marks. I take "cursed wound", as opposed to "curse wound", to mean the wound itself, which was made by a Dark creature (false!Moody refers to 'Dark creatures -- [cut] Boggarts, Red Caps, Hinkypunks, Grindylows, Kappas and werewolves'), has something actively cursed about it. Moody's extensive scars, for example, were presumably caused by curses, but there's no suggestion that they are still suppurating.
Harry, who is meant to be a DADA expert, commenting on the ruin of his parents' house, says:
which strongly suggests that it's the involvement of Dark Magic in the wound itself which makes it hard to heal.
And of course we have the evidence of Dumbledore's arm, attacked by the curse which Tom Riddle placed on his father's ring. The curse we are told could not be halted, but only confined to his hand "for the time being".
So, we know that any "Dark" curse which can cause amputation will do so permanently, and this may well also be true of curses which are considered "Light" enough to be on the Hogwarts curriculum, such as Locomotor mortis. Nor is this even very noteworthy, because although regeneration of amputated parts may be possible in some cases, it certainly isn't the case that magic can always regenerate a lost part, unless it's been cursed off. The outgoing Care of Magical Creatures master, Professor Kettleburn, had lost two and a half limbs and they had presumably been torn or bitten, not cursed off.
We also have evidence that injuries from curses or creatures classed as "Dark" are very hard to heal, and that this goes further than just not being able to replace amputated body-parts. Bill has not suffered an amputation, he has lesions on his face: but we are told that these wounds probably won't heal properly because they are cursed. Yet, from what we are told they weren't made with a wand - they are physical injuries directly inflicted by a Dark creature.
Some people have interpreted the fact that Snape used a "counter-curse" to heal Draco after Harry cut him as meaning that even simple, non-severing wounds made with Sectumsempra won't ever heal unless you know a specific and obscure counter-spell: that is, that they behave somewhat like Bill's cursed wounds.
The evidence in the books as to whether or not counter-curses and counter-jinxes are specific counters to specific spells is conflicting. On the one hand we have:
He groped for the potion book and riffled through it in a panic, trying to find the right page; at last he located it and deciphered one cramped word underneath the spell: praying that this was the counter-jinx, Harry thought Liberacorpus! with all his might. [HBP ch. #12; p.225]
On the other hand we find:
'If there is an attack,' said Dumbledore, 'I give you permission to use any counter-jinx or -curse that might occur to you.' [HBP ch. #04; p.59]
That certainly sounds as though counter-spells are spells in their own right, which may just happen to counteract the effect of another spell. And although it did take Snape three passes with the "counter-curse" to heal Draco, his doing so is later directly compared with the way Dumbledore heals his own purely physical knife-wound in the Horcrux cave, which suggests that Snape's "counter-curse" was probably just a straightforward healing spell for closing cuts:
That is, the healing of the wounds caused by Sectumsempra is specifically likened to the healing of a wound caused by an ordinary, physical knife. Nor is it the case that Sectumsempra results in abnormal scarring. Snape tells Draco that his wounds won't scar so long as they are treated promptly with dittany, a standard wizarding treatment for wounds which seems to be a magically-enhanced version of a traditional Muggle remedy [see footnote for details], and which we see used both on the venom-free bite which Nagini gives Harry at Godric's Hollow, and on the burns and scalds the trio sustain during the raid on Gringotts. Molly seems to close George's wound with little difficulty, and Draco's wounds are specifically contrasted with the unhealing scars which Bill suffers after being attacked by Greyback.
Yes, Bill's wounds are ragged, having been created by human (sort-of) teeth or nails, so you'd expect them to be a bit harder to heal than a straightforward cut. But according to Lupin - who for several reasons ought to know what he's talking about - it's the cursed-wound aspect which will make them very hard to heal, and Harry mentally contrasts that with Sectumsempra. All of this strongly indicates that aside from the no-regrowth-after-amputation aspect, Sectumsempra creates normal, readily healable cuts which are in contrast with Bill's cursed, abnormal wounds.
We also see that George's severed ear bleeds ferociously - as wounds on and around the scalp generally do - and the fact that the blood is scarlet means a significant arteriole has been cut. Yet Molly, unaided as far as Harry knows, is able to stop the bleeding in about twenty minutes, and the resulting wound is described as "clean". There's a hole there because George's earhole is now laid bare to the world but there's no suggestion the wound is still bleeding, or even raw and painful, since George gropes at it just for amsuement. We're not given any reason to think that Molly is a top-level, expert healer, nor that she would know some secret counter-curse otherwise known only to Snape, so this is more evidence that apart from the amputation aspect, Sectumsempra wounds heal cleanly and readily.
'[cut] it was all I could do to keep George on the broom after he was injured, he was losing so much blood.' [cut] [cut] Mrs Weasley had staunched the bleeding now, and by the lamplight Harry saw a clean, gaping hole where George's ear had been. [DH ch.#05; p.66]
'How do you feel, Georgie?' whispered Mrs Weasley. George's fingers groped for the side of his head. 'Saint-like,' he murmured. [DH ch.#05; p.67]
It appears, then, that wounds caused by truly Dark magic shouldn't heal at all, or at best should scar badly. Yet even though Harry cut Draco very badly, Snape reckoned he shouldn't be scarred at all, and the method he recommended to prevent scarring was simply dittany, not some huge piece of magic. We also see, during the underpants incident, that Severus cut James's face with what looks like Sectumsempra, and yet Sirius never suggested Severus had scarred James for life - which you'd think he would comment on if he had - nor did Harry notice a scar in later photographs of his father.
Therefore, we cannot be certain that the fact that Sectumsempra is a curse and can cause permanent amputation means that it is especially Dark. If anything, the fact that wounds caused by Sectumsempra but which stop short of amputation can be healed without leaving a mark is evidence that it isn't very Dark. The logic seems to be: not all curses are classed as Dark; all curses which can cause amputation are liable to cause permanent amputation; curses which can cause physical wounds and which are classed as Dark cause unhealable wounds or permanent scarring even from injuries which stop short of amputation; Sectumsempra causes permanent amputation but does not otherwise cause permanent scarring or unhealing wounds; Sectumsempra is a curse, but not a Dark curse.
Against this, Snape himself called Sectumsempra "such Dark magic" when Harry slashed Draco. But it's not clear whether he knew at once which spell Harry had used - Sectumsempra can hardly be the only cutting spell in existence - and he also called the Marauder's Map "plainly full of Dark Magic", on the basis of it having insulted him. This suggests that he may call things "Dark" in order to be melodramatic - or that the term can be applied to quite mild things. In the second part of this essay I examine what we can derive from canon about what the various terms used to describe combat spells actually mean, and show that "Dark" has at least two meanings, and possibly several. One of the possible meanings is "illegal" and another is "dangerous", so Snape may mean that Harry's reckless uncontrolled use of the spell - the specific piece of magic he has just performed - is Dark, rather than that the spell is Dark whenever and however used.
We certainly cannot assume that Sectumsempra was invented in order to cause permanent amputation. Indeed, we can assume that it wasn't, since this seems to be a common feature of all curses which can cause traumatic injury, and therefore there would be no reason to invent a special spell for it.
The name "Sectumsempra", therefore, almost certainly doesn't mean "amputate permanently", since that is a feature which is apparently common to many curses. It would be like inventing a revolutionary new pen and then calling it "makes marks on paper". Nor is it likely to mean "to amputate every time" - for the same reason, and also because it patently doesn't amputate every time.
We see it [probably] used by Snape on James; by Harry on Draco; by Harry on several Inferi and by Snape on George. We also have Lupin's statement that "Sectumsempra was always a speciality of Snape's." How does Lupin know this?
We know from Sirius that Snape had so little of a reputation as a Death Eater that there wasn't even any definite rumour at the time that he was one, so he wasn't stalking around Britain carving people up. He'd hardly have been using it as a teacher, unless it was as a chopping-knife, and although there's some evidence that Snape has carried out a few daring rescues in his time (he tells Dumbledore that since changing sides, he has watched people die only if he couldn't save them) and it's just about possible Lupin was involved in that, the most likely time and place for Lupin to have seen Snape "always" using Sectumsempra was at school. If so, he evidently didn't do anything drastic enough with it to get expelled - or even to get into serious trouble, as far as we are ever told - so, again, if he used it on people he used it to nick them, possibly within the confines of a duelling club, not carve them up. We've seen Sectumsempra used four times, one of them on multiple subjects (the Inferi), and we know that Snape must have used it several more times in order to establish it as his speciality, but as far as we know it only causes an amputation once in all those incidents (and that of a body-part not containing bone). It may be that JKR herself meant the name to mean "to amputate every time", but if so the spell is seriously misnamed, and we have to look at what else it could reasonably mean. It could be that Sectumsempra "cuts every time" in the sense that whenever it's used it draws blood from someone (whether or not they're the intended target); like the cursed swords beloved of fantasy, which once drawn cannot be re-sheathed until they've tasted blood. It's the sort of sinister-yet-romantic idea which might appeal to the sort of Gothy kid who would call himself the Half-Blood Prince, especially if he read a lot of Swords'n'Sorcery novels, and it would explain how adult!Snape managed to cut George's ear off by accident. Another possible interpretation is that it simply means "the knife which never needs sharpening" - bearing in mind JK Rowling's propensity for bad puns based on British product-names (Spell-o-tape, Ethelred the Ever-Ready etc.) and the fact that Staysharp is a famous brand of kitchen knife. As such, it might have been intended as a weapon from the first, or it might originally have been a household tool which Severus later re-designated "for enemies": perhaps, indeed, a kitchen or Potions-lab. knife, or a literal penknife for trimming quill pens (real feather quills need to be re-cut every couple of pages). We do know Sectumsempra equates to a knife rather than a sword or an axe, unless it were a very lightweight sword. It's true that Harry thinks that it cuts Draco as if it were a sword, but that seems to be because it cuts him in a long sweeping slash from a distance, rather than because of the nature of the injuries - that, or Harry has no idea what a sword would do. Draco was unarmoured, and whilst thick folds of cloth will slow a sword down, he was cut across his bare face and his chest, where his robes should be lying pretty flat. Harry swung at Draco with Sectumsempra in a panic, with all his considerable force. The resultant cuts are described as "deep" and they required three passes to heal them, which probably means they went right through skin and into muscle; but Draco was not disembowelled, beheaded or cut in half, nor so far as we can tell were any of his bones cloven or snapped, nor - despite being cut across the chest - was there any rush of clear fluid indicating that the membranes around his lungs had been breached, so the cuts were nothing like as deep as they would have been if made with a sword - unless it was a very light sword, or the very tip of a sword at the edge of its range, which would cause similar injuries to a knife anyway. [Or unless it was very blunt, of course. A blunt sword would do less damage because Draco's robes would impede it - but there seems no reason why a magic blade should be blunt, especially when we see it give James a razor-flick, not a bruising tear.] Of course, you could inflict these sort of comparatively shallow injuries with even a very big sword if you used just the tip if it, and that may be what Harry is thinking of - that he cut Draco from several feet away as if he had slashed across him with the far point of a sword he held in his hand. But we see that Sectumsempra can be used from considerably more than an arm-plus-sword's length away - it's very unlikey that Snape was only five feet away from the target when he aimed at a Death Eater and hit George, for example, unless he's a spectacularly bad shot - so the fact that it makes shallow cuts when used at about a sword's length away is not because the target is too far away to hit "properly". If it was designed to make the sort of wounds you make when you belt someone with a sword at close quarters, it could presumably do so at a distance too: and if it only makes knife (or sword-point) wounds when it is operating over the partial width of a bathroom - well within its range - then it almost certainly does so at close quarters too. 'SECTUMSEMPRA!' bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly. Blood spurted from Malfoy's face and chest as though he had been slashed with an invisible sword. He staggered backwards and collapsed on to the waterlogged floor with a great splash, his wand falling from his limp right hand. 'No --' gasped Harry. Slipping and staggering, Harry got to his feet and plunged towards Malfoy, whose face was now shining scarlet, his white hands scrabbling at his blood-soaked chest. 'No -- I didn't --' Harry did not know what he was saying; he fell to his knees beside Malfoy, who was shaking uncontrollably in a pool of his own blood. Moaning Myrtle let out a deafening scream. 'MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!' The door banged open behind Harry and he looked up, terrified: Snape had burst into the room, his face livid. Pushing Harry roughly aside, he knelt over Malfoy, drew his wand and traced it over the deep wounds Harry's curse had made, muttering an incantation that sounded almost like song. The flow of blood seemed to ease; Snape wiped the residue from Malfoy's face and repeated his spell. Now the wounds seemed to be knitting. [cut] When Snape had performed his counter-curse for the third time, he half-lifted Malfoy into a standing position. 'You need the hospital wing. There may be a certain amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we might avoid even that ... come ...' [cut] [cut] [Harry] stood up slowly, shaking, and looked down at the wet floor. There were bloodstains floating like crimson flowers across its surface. [HBP ch. #24; p. 489/490] Initially Harry sees a lot of blood coming from Draco, but a little blood goes a long way, and when he gazes at the scene after Draco has been removed - which is probably less than three minutes after he was cut - he sees water on the floor with some blots of blood floating in it: not a sea of blood. Blood is said to spurt from the wounds at the first blow but after that the text speaks of a "flow" of blood, and there's nothing in the description to suggest a spurting arterial wound. Draco was still able to walk as soon as he was healed, without being given Blood-Replenishing Potion, and he did not show any signs of physiological (as opposed to psychological) shock due to blood-loss: which again suggests he hadn't lost a huge amount of blood, and his wounds were not terribly deep. [Violent shaking can be a symptom of physiological shock, but of septic shock (physiological shock due to overhwhelming infection), not of haemorrhagic shock (physiological shock due to bleeding) or hypovolemic shock (physiological shock due to a severe fall in circulatory volume, usually due to bleeding but can be due to e.g. fluid-loss from burns). It has been suggested that Draco's shaking might have been due to hypoxia - oxygen-starvation of the brain - caused by blood-loss; but the convulsions of hypoxia occur after the brain has been starved of oxygen for more than five minutes, and Draco's shaking was immediate. They should also be preceded by unconsciousness, and there's no sign that Draco lost consciousness to any significant extent: he goes from scrabbling at his chest to being up and walking with no sign of Snape having to wake him up in between. Ergo, the shaking was due to psychological, not physiological shock.] Later on in HBP we see Harry use Sectumsempra to defend himself against Inferi. Given that he is fighting for his own and Dumbledore's life, we can reasonably assume that he used the spell as hard as he could, and this time he knew he was trying to cut with it - yet again, the cuts seem to be comparatively shallow and cause no amputations, so far as we are told. Still slashing at the air with his wand, Harry yelled, 'Sectumsempra! SECTUMSEMPRA!' But though gashes appeared in their sodden rags and their icy skin, they had no blood to spill: they walked on, unfeeling, their shrunken hands outstretched towards him, and as he backed away still further he felt arms enclose him from behind, thin, fleshless arms cold as death [HBP ch. #26; p. 538] We are told that the things have "thin, fleshless arms", so there isn't even much in the way of padding for the spell to cut into before it hits bone - and yet all it seems to cut is skin and cloth. Harry's expectation, and possibly the author's, seems to be that if the spell worked properly on Inferi it would bleed them - not chop them up. We also see Snape use a slicing hex on James in the bullying scene in OotP. It's not absolutely clear that this is Sectumsempra since he produces it non-verbally, but JKR's purpose in that scene was presumably to establish a link between Snape and slicing hexes which would later been seen to have been a clue to the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, and Lupin says Sectumsempra was always a speciality of Snape's - so it would be very strange if he just happened to be using a completely different hex here. And again, although it gashes James's cheek it doesn't slice his cheek right open, or damage bone, so here too the action of Sectumsempra is that of a fairly short-bladed knife - albeit a knife which can be projected several feet. It has been suggested that Snape meant to do James a mortal injury with a slashing, sword-like spell and simply missed. But apart from the fact that we are told that he aimed straight at James, James was more or less in a line between Snape and Lily, so if Snape had been taking a great hack at James with a spell of which he was in uncertain control, he would have put Lily in danger. Since we know he will risk death or Azkaban rather than knowingly endanger Lily, we must assume that he was in complete control of his slicing hex and knew it, and that it did just what it was meant to do. We do see Snape aim it at a Death Eater's wand-hand in an attempt to protect Remus, but we aren't told whether he thought it would amputate the hand, or just slash it badly enough to make the target drop his wand. On the whole I would suggest he just meant to slash it. Cutting the guy's hand off would get Snape into more trouble if the spell was traced to him, and would attract attention from Muggles below: and whilst the real Death Eaters might not care about that, Snape was very angry when Harry and Ron attracted Muggle attention by allowing the flying Ford Anglia to be seen. This incident also re-confirms that when Snape gave James a little flick with Sectumsempra, that was exactly what he meant to do. The incident of George's ear shows that if Sectumsempra misses its intended target it keeps going until it hits something else, as a thrown knife would do. If Snape had aimed a heavy shot at James, missed him and only barely clipped him when he had intended serious injury, the rest of the spell would have kept going until it hit something else - and since Snape was on the ground, aiming at somebody standing, the shot wouldn't have just gone into the ground. But there's no suggestion of anyone or anything else being hit, or of any spell-energy crackling into the sky. Ergo, the spell did what he meant it to do. So, we can say that Sectumsempra is a curse, but we can also say with reasonable confidence that it's probably not a Dark curse, except in the mild sense of being illicit or potentially dangerous. It cuts quite shallowly, even when used with considerable force, and can be dialed back to give just a little flicking wound. It was not designed specifically to cause permanent amputation - which is a feature common to all curses which can cause amputation at all. Indeed, it may well have been designed not to cause amputation. We see Harry take a great swing at Draco and at several Inferi, and we have no evidence that the invisible blade cut into bone in either case: in the case of the Inferi we are specifically told that the wounds cut their skin, with no mention of anything deeper, despite them having little or no fleshy padding between skin and bone. This suggests that Sectumsempra may have some sort of built-in safety feature to prevent it from cutting bone. That would make sense if its main use was as a laboratory or kitchen chopping-knife: a limitation to prevent it from cutting bone would protect the user, and one to prevent it from cutting anything above a certain hardness would protect the chopping-board. Its name, "to cut [or amputate] every time", or perhaps "cut always" if JKR is using "sempra" in the sense in which she uses it in "Rictusempra", therefore does not mean "cuts bits off permanently" but something else, possibly "the knife which never needs sharpening". As such, it may well have originated as a tool, and only been re-designated as a weapon after young Severus felt that his life was actually in danger from the Marauders. For reasons explained in the main essay But Snape is just nasty, right?, there is canon evidence that werewolves are immune to spells which create magical effects, such as Petrificus totalus, but can be affected by spells which have a directly physical influence, such as conjured manacles - or, arguably, magically-created physical wounds. Sectumsempra was found written in a book we know Severus was using in fifth year, when he had every reason to think he might be attacked by a werewolf. Nor would it be the only example of a tool being able to cut humans. Diffindo is a standard severing spell which we see Harry using to split open Cedric's schoolbag, to attempt to free Ron from the brain-tentacles, to split ice and even to remove a book-cover, yet in DH Hermione's hand shakes as she is trying to cut Ron free of a rope, and the spell slices open his jeans and makes a deep cut in his knee. Clearly, you could use this standard spell as a weapon if you wanted to, and it seems at least as injurious as Sectumsempra, yet no-one suggests that Diffindo is Dark Magic. It's the use Severus puts Sectumsempra to, and the fact that he designates it "for enemies", which makes it seem more sinister than Diffindo. So why use Sectumsempra instead of Diffindo? On the face of it, it certainly looks as if it may be because Sectumsempra is easier to control (Snape gives James a tiny little controlled flick, Hermione gashes Ron by accident) and has built-in safety features. Also, perhaps, Sectumsempra cuts more reliably and it is in this sense that it is designed "to cut always", since we see that when using Diffindo Harry fails to cut the brain-tentacles. We can say, therefore, that young Severus was a boy who was willing to carry a knife, and to use it. He had serious reason to think his life might be in danger but we also see him use it when his life was not in danger (when he cut James), albeit that he was under attack. On the other hand, the person he cut was part of a gang who had threatened his life before, so it was understandable that he might feel panicked by this fresh attack even though it was less dangerous. The injury we see him inflict is very minor, and since he was aiming straight at the target it seems he intended it to be minor. Even though Sectumsempra is a blade which can be projected at a distance and which potentially can cause amputation, there are good reasons to think that it has built-in safety features which prevent it from cutting bone: so in terms of aggression it's equivalent to carrying a penknife or a small razor, rather than a Bowie or Stanley knife, and there is at least some suggestion that Severus only started "carrying" that knife after he had cause to think his life was in danger from someone who was immune to most other forms of defence. Footnote: dittany in Muggle medicine The name "dittany" refers to three herbs: Cunila origanoides, a.k.a. C. mariana, called in English Common Dittany or Stone Mint; Dictamnus albus, called White Dittany or Burning Bush, and Origanum dictamnus or Dittany of Crete. Common Dittany can be used to make an antiseptic and a tea for treating headaches and fevers; White Dittany has similar properties and is also used in Chinese medicine to treat disorders of the skin and the gut; and Dittany of Crete is not much used nowadays but has a long medical history in the Classical world, and was probably the inspiration for JKR's use of dittany in the books.. Herbalpedia has this to say about Dittany of Crete: Mentioned in Charlemagne’s list of herbs, dittany was popular in medieval times as a medicinal herb. Hippocrates recommended it for stomach and digestive system diseases, rheumatism, arthritis and used it to regulate menses, to tone and heal. The species name dictamnus is derived from the mountain Dicte on the island of Crete, one of the mountains on the island where dittany of Crete grows. "Dittany" in the common name is also derived from this. In ancient times dittany of Crete was famous for its alleged property of expelling weapons imbedded in soldiers. Wild goats were reputed to seek out the plant after being struck by arrows; the goats were thought to eat the plant, and the arrows would fall out immediately. Shepherds saw this and would then ingest and later make compresses of the leaves to heal open wounds. In the tale of the Trojan wars by Virgil, the hero Aeneas was severely wounded by a deeply imbedded arrow that could not be extricated. His mother Venus went to Mount Ida on the island of Crete and retrieved some dittany of Crete, which was applied to the wound, causing the arrow to drop out and the wound to cure immediately. In ancient times it was believed that a snake would allow itself to be burned to death rather than cross the path of dittany of Crete. The locals called it also "eronda" which means love for its aphrodisiac properties. Popular in Minoan Crete and Ancient Greece, it was considered a highly therapeutic plant. 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": Horcruxes Other 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. Appendix: the use of the adjective "Dark" to describe magic 'Now, yer mum an' dad were as good a witch an' wizard as I ever knew. Head Boy an' Girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get 'em on his side before ... probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin' ter do with the Dark Side.' [PS ch. #04; p. 45] The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble [PS ch. #05 p. 53] [cut]Professor Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945 [PS ch. #06; p. 77] '[Harry is] in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century. ' [PS ch. #06; p. 79] 'Did you hear about Gringotts? [cut] someone tried to rob a high-security vault.' [cut] [cut]'They haven't been caught. My dad says it must've been a powerful Dark wizard to get round Gringotts' [PS ch. #06; p. 80] 'They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side.' [PS ch. #06; p. 82] 'Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape.' [PS ch. #07; p. 94] Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown. [PS ch. #08; p. 105] 'Can't nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful Dark Magic' [PS ch. #11; p. 140] Unfortunately, you needed a specially signed note from one of the teachers to look in any of the restricted books and he knew he'd never get one. These were the books containing powerful Dark Magic never taught at Hogwarts and only read by older students studying advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts. [PS ch. #12; p. 145/146] '[cut]I reckon there are other things guarding the stone apart from Fluffy, loads of enchantments, probably, and Quirrell would have done some anti-Dark Arts spell that Snape needs to break through --' [PS ch. #13; p. 166] 'If Quirrell's told him how to break his Anti-Dark Force spell --' [PS ch. #15 p. 180] 'Haven't you heard what it was like when [Voldemort] was trying to take over? There won't be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He'll flatten it, or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! [cut] If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I'll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there. It's only dying a bit later than I would have done, because I'm never going over to the Dark Side!' [PS ch. #16 ; p. 196/197] At the age of one, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest dark sorcerer of all time, Lord Voldemort [CoS ch. #01; p. 09] He had emerged into a dingy alleyway that seemed to be made up entirely of shops devoted to the dark arts. The one he'd just left, Borgin and Burkes, looked like the largest, but opposite was a nasty window display of shrunken heads and, two doors down, a large cage was alive with gigantic black spiders. [CoS ch. #04; p. 45] '[cut] what were you doing down there [in Knockturn Alley], anyway?' 'I was lookin' fer a Flesh-Eatin' Slug Repellent,' growled Hagrid. 'They're ruinin' the school cabbages.' [CoS ch. #04; p. 45/46] For a few horrible seconds he had feared that the hat was going to put him in Slytherin, the house which had turned out more dark witches and wizards than any other [CoS ch. #05; p. 61] 'Me,' he said, pointing at it and winking as well. 'Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, third class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League' [CoS ch. #06; p. 77] 'No second year could have [Petrified Mrs Norris],' said Dumbledore firmly. 'It would take Dark Magic of the most advanced --' [CoS ch. #09; p. 108] 'Nonsense, O'Flaherty,' said Professor Binns in an aggravated tone, 'if a long succession of Hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses haven't found the thing---' 'But, Professor,' piped up Parvati Patil, 'you'd probably have to use Dark Magic to open [the Chamber of Secrets] --' 'Just because a wizard doesn't use Dark Magic, doesn't mean he can't, Miss Pennyfeather,' snapped Professor Binns. 'I repeat, if the likes of Dumbledore --' [CoS ch. #09; p. 115] But Harry, who had already heard of Slytherin house's reputation for turning out dark wizards, had thought desperately, 'Not Slytherin!' [CoS ch. #09; p. 116] 'I was a Seeker, too. I was asked to try for the National Squad, but preferred to dedicate my life to the eradication of the Dark Forces.' [CoS ch. #10; p. 123] '[cut] Harry Potter shone like a beacon of hope for those of us who thought the Dark days would never end, sir ...' [cut] [cut]'Dark deeds are planned in this place, but Harry Potter must not be here when they happen.' [CoS ch. #10; p. 134] 'Hannah,' said the stout boy solemnly, 'he's a Parselmouth. Everyone knows that's the mark of a Dark wizard. Have you ever heard of a decent one who could talk to snakes? They called Slytherin himself Serpent-tongue.' [cut] [cut]'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. He dropped his voice until it was barely more than a whisper, and said, '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?'' [CoS ch. #11; p. 148/149] 'You know the Ministry of Magic raided our Manor last week?' [cut] 'Yeah ...' said Malfoy. 'Luckily, they didn't find much. Father's got some very valuable Dark Arts stuff. But luckily, we've got our own secret chamber under the drawing room floor --' [CoS ch. #12; p. 167] 'You're the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher!' said Harry. 'You can't go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!' [CoS ch. #16; p. 220] '[Tom Riddle] disappeared after leaving the school ... travelled far and wide ... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable.' [CoS ch. #18; p. 242] 'Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of dark magic!' [CoS ch. #18 ; p. 242/243] They had been murdered, murdered by the most feared Dark wizard for a hundred years, Lord Voldemort. [PoA ch. #01; p. 10/11] 'Professor Snape's very interested in the Dark Arts,' he blurted out. [PoA ch. #08; p. 118] 'Do you know, I still have trouble believing it,' said Madam Rosmerta thoughtfully. 'Of all the people to go over to the Dark side, Sirius Black was the last I'd have thought ... I mean, I remember him when he was a boy at Hogwarts.' [PoA ch. #10; p. 151] 'But what if I'd given Harry to him, eh? I bet he'd've pitched him off the bike halfway out ter sea. His bes' friend's son! But when a wizard goes over ter the dark side, there's nothin' and no one that matters to em anymore ...' [PoA ch. #10; p. 154] 'Well?' said Snape again. 'This parchment [the Marauder's Map] is plainly full of Dark Magic.' [cut] 'Full of Dark Magic?' [Lupin] repeated mildly. 'Do you really think so, Severus? It looks to me as though it is merely a piece of parchment that insults anybody who reads it. Childish, but surely not dangerous?' [PoA ch. #14; p. 212] 'And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using dark arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it ...' [PoA ch. #18; p. 261] 'He's got dark powers the rest of us can only dream of!' Pettigrew shouted shrilly. 'How else did he get out of there? I suppose He Who Must Not Be Named taught him a few tricks!' [cut] 'If you don't mind me asking, how -- how did you get out of Azkaban, if you didn't use Dark Magic?' [PoA ch. #19; p. 270/272] 'But then I saw Peter in that picture ... I realised he was at Hogwarts with Harry ... perfectly positioned to act, if one hint reached his ears that the Dark Side was gathering strength again ...' [PoA ch. #19; p. 272] 'Harry, what do you think you'd do if you saw yourself bursting into Hagrid's house?' said Hermione. 'I'd -- I'd think I'd gone mad,' said Harry, 'or I'd think there was some Dark Magic going on --' [PoA ch. #21; p. 292] Harry had been a year old the night that Voldemort -- the most powerful Dark wizard for a century, a wizard who had been gaining power steadily for eleven years -- arrived at his house and killed his father and mother. [GoF ch. #02; p. 23] What he really wanted [to discuss why his scar was hurting] was [cut] an adult wizard whose advice he could ask without feeling stupid, someone who cared about him, who had had experience with Dark Magic ... [GoF ch. #02; p. 25] 'The Dark Mark's a wizard's sign. It requires a wand.' [GoF ch. #09; p. 119] 'You have now come very close to accusing the two people in this clearing who are least likely to conjure [the Dark] Mark! [cut] [cut] 'And 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?' Mr Crouch shouted [GoF ch. #09; p. 122] 'I read about [the Dark Mark] in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts.' [GoF ch. #09; p. 126] '[cut] it was only the Death Eaters who ever knew how to conjure [the Dark Mark]' [GoF ch. #09; p. 128] 'Ministry blunders ... culprits not apprehended ... lax security ... Dark wizards running unchecked ... national disgrace ... [GoF ch. #10; p. 131] 'He was an Auror -- one of the best ... a Dark-wizard-catcher,' he added, seeing Harry's blank look. 'Half the cells in Azkaban are full because of him. He made himself loads of enemies, though ... the families of people he caught, mainly ... and I heard he's been getting really paranoid in his old age. Doesn't trust anyone any more. Sees Dark wizards everywhere. [GoF ch. #11; p. 144] 'Father says Durmstrang takes a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. Durmstrang students actually learn them, not just the defence rubbish we do ...' [cut] 'Yes,' said Hermione sniffily, '[Durmstrang's] got a horrible reputation. According to An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe, it puts a lot of emphasis on the Dark Arts.' [GoF ch. #11; p. 147] Harry wondered whether Baddock knew that Slytherin house had turned out more Dark witches and wizards than any other. [GoF ch. #12; p. 158] '[Moody] Knows what it's like to be out there doing it,' said George impressively. 'Doing what?' said Harry. 'Fighting the Dark Arts,' said Fred. [GoF ch. #13; p. 183] 'Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tackling Dark creatures -- you've covered boggarts, Red Caps, Hinkypunks, Grindylows, Kappas and werewolves, is that right?' There was a general murmur of assent. 'But you're behind -- very behind -- on dealing with curses,' said Moody. 'So I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with Dark --' [GoF ch. #14; p. 186] 'Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you counter-curses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year.' [and then he shows them the Unforgivables] [GoF ch. #14; p. 187] 'I heard you recently got it into your head that one of your birthday presents contained a cunningly disguised basilisk egg, and smashed it to pieces before realising it was a carriage clock. So you'll understand if we don't take you entirely seriously ...' 'There are those who'll turn innocent occasions to their advantage,' Moody retorted in a menacing voice. 'It's my job to think the way Dark wizards do' [GoF ch. #17; p. 245/246] Moody had told them all during their last Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson that he preferred to prepare his own food and drink at all times, as it was so easy for Dark wizards to poison an unattended cup. [GoF ch. #19; p. 282] 'And since he got out, from what I can tell, he's been teaching the Dark Arts to every student who passes through that school of his. So watch out for the Durmstrang champion as well.' [GoF ch. #19; p. 291] When Lupin had lived here, you were more likely to come across a specimen of some fascinating new Dark creature he had procured for them to study in class. [GoF ch. #20; p. 299] On his desk stood what looked like a large, cracked, glass spinning top; Harry recognised it at once as a Sneakoscope, because he owned one himself, though it was much smaller than Moody's. In the corner on a small table stood an object that looked something like an extra-squiggly, golden television aerial. It was humming slightly. What appeared to be a mirror hung opposite Harry on the wall, but it was not reflecting the room. Shadowy figures were moving around inside it, none of them clearly in focus. 'Like my Dark detectors, do you?' said Moody, who was watching Harry closely. 'What's that?' Harry asked, pointing at the squiggly golden aerial. 'Secrecy Sensor. Vibrates when it detects concealment and lies ... no use here, of course, too much interference -- students in every direction lying about why they haven't done their homework. Been humming ever since I got here. I had to disable my Sneakoscope because it wouldn't stop whistling. It's extra-sensitive, picks up stuff about a mile around. Of course, it could be picking up more than kids' stuff,' he added in a growl. 'And what's the mirror for?' 'Oh, that's my Foe-Glass. See them out there, skulking around? I'm not really in trouble until I see the whites of their eyes. [GoF ch. #20; p. 299/300] 'Dobby could tell Harry Potter that his old masters were -- were -- bad Dark wizards!' [GoF ch. #21; p. 332] While many of the giants who served He Who Must Not Be Named were killed by Aurors working against the Dark side, Fridwulfa was not among them. [GoF ch. #24; p. 382] 'Put it this way, Potter,' Moody muttered finally, 'they say old Mad-Eye's obsessed with catching Dark wizards ... but Mad-Eye's nothing -- nothing -- compared to Barty Crouch.' [GoF ch. #25; p. 413] 'No, Barty Crouch was always very outspoken against the Dark side. But then a lot of people who were against the Dark side ...'[cut] [cut] [cut]'Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorised the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark side.' [GoF ch. #27; p. 456/457] 'Moody says Crouch is obsessed with catching Dark wizards,' Harry told Sirius. [GoF ch. #27; p. 460] 'I know Dumbledore's brilliant and everything, but that doesn't mean a really clever Dark wizard couldn't fool him --' [GoF ch. #27; p. 460] 'Snape's always been fascinated by the Dark Arts, he was famous for it at school. Slimy, oily, greasy-haired kid, he was,' Sirius added [GoF ch. #27; p. 460] 'Ludovic Bagman, you were caught passing information to Lord Voldemort's supporters,' [GoF ch. #30; p. 514] 'Er,' he said, 'Mr Bagman ...' '... has never been accused of any Dark activity since,' said Dumbledore calmly. [GoF ch. #30; p. 524] Parseltongue, the ability to converse with snakes, has long been considered a Dark Art. Indeed, the most famous Parselmouth of our times is none other than You-Know-Who himself. A member of the Dark Force Defence League, who wished to remain unnamed, stated that he would regard any wizard who could speak Parseltongue 'as worthy of investigation. Personally, I would be highly suspicious of anybody who could converse with snakes, as serpents are often used in the worst kinds of Dark Magic and are historically associated with evil-doers.' [cut] [cut]Some fear that Potter might resort to the Dark Arts in his desperation to win the Tournament [GoF ch. #31; p. 532] 'I knew that to achieve this [Voldemort's resurrection] -- it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight -- I would need three powerful ingredients.' [GoF ch. #33; p. 569] 'And both of us had the pleasure ... the very great pleasure ... of killing our fathers, to ensure the continued rise of the Dark Order!' [GoF ch. #35; p. 589] 'You're an Auror?' said Harry, impressed. Being a Dark-wizard-catcher was the only career he'd ever considered after Hogwarts. [OotP ch. #03; p. 52] 'In the old days he had huge numbers at his command: witches and wizards he'd bullied or bewitched into following him, his faithful Death Eaters, a great variety of Dark creatures. You heard him planning to recruit the giants; well, they'll be just one of the groups he's after.' [OotP ch. #05; p. 88] 'You have been frightened into believing that you are likely to meet Dark attacks every other day --' [OotP ch. #12; p. 219] 'You have been told that a certain Dark wizard has returned from the dead --' [cut] [cut] 'The Ministry of Magic guarantees that you are not in danger from any Dark wizard.' [OotP ch. #12; p. 220/21] When Lupin had occupied [the DADA office], it was likely you would meet some fascinating Dark creature in a cage or tank if you came to call. In the impostor Moody's days it had been packed with various instruments and artefacts for the detection of wrongdoing and concealment. [OotP ch. #13; p. 239] 'I ... I think I do see something ... something that concerns you ... why, I sense something ... something dark ... some grave peril ...' [OotP ch. #15; p. 282] [cut] he had found himself thinking about the spells that had served him best in his various encounters with Dark creatures and Death Eaters [OotP ch. #16; p. 295] 'And just look at these books!' said Hermione excitedly, running a finger along the spines of the large leather-bound tomes. 'A Compendium of Common Curses and their Counter-Actions ... The Dark Arts Outsmarted ... Self-Defensive Spellwork ... wow ...' [OotP ch. #18; p. 346] 'Hey, Harry, what's this stuff?' asked Dean from the rear of the room, indicating the Sneakoscopes and the Foe-Glass. 'Dark detectors,' said Harry, stepping between the cushions to reach them. 'Basically they all show when Dark wizards or enemies are around, but you don't want to rely on them too much, they can be fooled ...' He gazed for a moment into the cracked Foe-Glass; shadowy figures were moving around inside it, though none was recognisable. [OotP ch. #18; p. 346/347] Sirius and Lupin had given Harry a set of excellent books entitled Practical Defensive Magic and its Use Against the Dark Arts, which had superb, moving colour illustrations of all the counter-jinxes and hexes it described. [OotP ch. #23; p. 443] 'And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts, and James -- whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry -- always hated the Dark Arts.' [OotP ch. #590; p. 29] 'I was and am the Dark Lord's most loyal servant. I learned the Dark Arts from him, and I know spells of such power that you, pathetic little boy, can never hope to compete --' [OotP ch. #36; p. 715] '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 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] '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] Issued on Behalf of the Ministry of Magic PROTECTING YOUR HOME AND FAMILY AGAINST DARK FORCES The wizarding community is currently under threat from an organisation calling itself the Death Eaters. Observing the following simple security guidelines will help protect you, your family and your home from attack. 1. You are advised not to leave the house alone. 2. Particular care should be taken during the hours of darkness. Wherever possible, arrange to complete journeys before night has fallen. 3. Review the security arrangements around your house, making sure that all family members are aware of emergency measures such as Shield and Disillusionment Charms and, in the case of under-age family members, Side-Along-Apparition. 4. Agree security questions with close friends and family so as to detect Death Eaters masquerading as others by use of Polyjuice Potion (see page 2). 5. Should you feel that a family member, colleague, friend or neighbour is acting in a strange manner, contact the Magical Law Enforcement Squad at once. They may have been put under the Imperius Curse (see page 4). 6. Should the Dark Mark appear over any dwelling place or other building, DO NOT ENTER, but contact the Auror Office immediately. 7. Unconfirmed sightings suggest that the Death Eaters may now be using Inferi (see page 10). Any sighting of an Inferius, or encounter with same, should be reported to the Ministry IMMEDIATELY. [HBP ch. #03; p. 45/46] 'Rufus is a man of action and, having fought Dark wizards for most of his working life, does not underestimate Lord Voldemort.' [HBP ch. #04; p. 62] '[Inferi] are corpses,' said Dumbledore calmly. 'Dead bodies that have been bewitched to do a Dark wizard's bidding. Inferi have not been seen for a long time, however, not since Voldemort was last powerful ... he killed enough people to make an army of them, of course.' [HBP ch. #04; p. 63] 'My dear Horace,' said Dumbledore, looking amused, 'if the Death Eaters really had come to call, the Dark Mark would have been set over the house.' The wizard clapped a pudgy hand to his vast forehead. 'The Dark Mark,' he muttered. 'Knew there was something ... ah well. Wouldn't have had time, anyway.' [HBP ch. #04; p. 65/66] But Knockturn Alley, the side street devoted to the Dark Arts, looked completely deserted. They peered into windows as they passed, but none of the shops seemed to have any customers at all. Harry supposed it was a bit of a giveaway in these dangerous and suspicious times to buy Dark artefacts -- or at least, to be seen buying them. [HBP ch. #06; p. 120] 'If Malfoy wants something fixing, and he needs to threaten Borgin to get it done, it's probably something Dark or dangerous, isn't it?' [HBP ch. #07; p. 129] 'I have not asked you to take out your books,' said Snape, closing the door and moving to face the class from behind his desk; Hermione hastily dropped her copy of Confronting the Faceless back into her bag and stowed it under her chair. 'I wish to speak to you and I want your fullest attention.' [cut] 'The Dark Arts,' said Snape, 'are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.' Harry stared at Snape. It was surely one thing to respect the Dark Arts as a dangerous enemy, another to speak of them, as Snape was doing, with a loving caress in his voice? 'Your defences,' said Snape, a little louder, 'must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo. These pictures,' he indicated a few of them as he swept past, 'give a fair representation of what happens to those who suffer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse' (he waved a hand towards a witch who was clearly shrieking in agony) 'feel the Dementor's Kiss' (a wizard lying huddled and blank-eyed slumped against a wall) 'or provoke the aggression of the Inferius' (a bloody mass upon the ground). 'Has an Inferius been seen, then?' said Parvati Patil in a high-pitched voice. 'Is it definite, is he using them?' 'The Dark Lord has used Inferi in the past,' said Snape, 'which means you would be well-advised to assume he might use them again.' [HBP ch. #09; p. 168/169] 'Did you hear him talking about the Dark Arts? He loves them! All that unfixed, indestructible stuff --' 'Well,' said Hermione, 'I thought he sounded a bit like you.' 'Like me?' 'Yes, when you were telling us what it's like to face Voldemort. You said it wasn't just memorising a bunch of spells, you said it was just you and your brains and your guts -- well, wasn't that what Snape was saying? That it really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?' [HBP ch. #09; p. 172] '[cut] Filch ran over all of us with Secrecy Sensors when we got into the Entrance Hall. Any Dark object would have been found, I know for a fact Crabbe had a shrunken head confiscated. So you see, Malfoy can't have brought in anything dangerous!' [cut] [cut] There did not seem to be any way Malfoy could have brought a dangerous or Dark object into the school. [HBP ch. #11; p. 221/222] 'What does it matter if we're smuggling Dark stuff OUT?' demanded Ron, eyeing the long thin Secrecy Sensor with apprehension. 'Surely you ought to be checking what we bring back IN?' [HBP ch. #12; p. 228] 'She appears to have brushed the necklace with the smallest possible amount of skin: there was a tiny hole in her glove. Had she put it on, had she even held it in her ungloved hand, she would have died, perhaps instantly. Luckily Professor Snape was able to do enough to prevent a rapid spread of the curse --' [cut] [cut] 'Professor Snape knows much more about the Dark Arts than Madam Pomfrey, Harry. Anyway, the St Mungo's staff are sending me hourly reports and I am hopeful that Katie will make a full recovery in time.' [HBP ch. #13; p. 242/243] 'Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?' said Dumbledore. 'No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is.' [HBP ch. #13; p. 258] 'And he was a Parselmouth,' interjected Harry. 'Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although, as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy and domination. [HBP ch. #13; p. 259] 'Secrecy Sensors detect jinxes, curses and concealment charms, don't they? They're used to find Dark magic and Dark objects. They'd have picked up a powerful curse, like the one on that necklace, within seconds. But something that's just been put in the wrong bottle wouldn't register -- and anyway, love potions aren't Dark or dangerous --' [HBP ch. #15; p. 287/288] 'The Aurors are part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, I thought everyone knew that. They're working from within to bring down the Ministry of Magic using a combination of Dark magic and gum disease.' [HBP ch. #15; p. 299] 'What does it matter?' said Malfoy. 'Defence Against the Dark Arts -- it's all just a joke, isn't it, an act? Like any of us need protecting against the Dark Arts --' [HBP ch. #15; p. 303] '[Horcruxes] must be really advanced Dark magic, or why would Voldemort have wanted to know about them? [HBP ch. #18; p. 350] 'The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard's spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like a puppet to do the wizard's bidding.' [HBP ch. #21; p. 431] '[cut] you'd be hard-pushed to find a book at Hogwarts that'll give you details on Horcruxes, Tom. That's very Dark stuff, very Dark indeed,' said Slughorn. [HBP ch. #23; p. 464] '[cut] despite your privileged insight into Voldemort's world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort's followers!' [HBP ch. #23; p. 477] 'Apparently I underestimated you, Potter,' he said quietly. 'Who would have thought you knew such Dark magic? Who taught you that spell?' [HBP ch. #24; p. 490] [cut] it made a very nice change to be talked about because of something that was making him happier than he could remember being for a very long time, rather than because he had been involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic. [HBP ch. #25; p. 500] 'Now, I've been trying to find out a bit about who might make a hobby of inventing Dark spells --' [HBP ch. #25; p. 502] 'I was strolling along, brooding upon certain Dark portents I happen to have glimpsed ...' [HBP ch. #25; p. 505] 'No, I don't think that Bill will be a true werewolf,' said Lupin, 'but that does not mean that there won't be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely ever to heal fully,' [HBP ch. #29; p. 572] 'Pure-blood mother, Muggle father ... ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts' [HBP ch. #30; p. 594] He despised Malfoy still for his infatuation with the Dark Arts, but now the tiniest drop of pity mingled with his dislike. [HBP ch. #30; p. 596] 'But I can promise that anybody who still thinks Dumbledore was white as his beard is in for a rude awakening! Let's just say that nobody hearing him rage against You-Know-Who would have dreamed that he dabbled in the Dark Arts himself in his youth! [DH ch. #02; p. 27] [cut] Death Eaters, Dementors, maybe even Inferi, which means dead bodies enchanted by a Dark wizard [DH ch. #03; p. 35] '[cut] there's no chance of replacing his ear, not when it's been cursed off --' [DH ch. #05; p. 64] 'I can't make it grow back, not when it's been removed by Dark Magic.' [DH ch. #05; p. 66] 'This is the one that gives explicit instructions on now to make a Horcrux. Secrets of the Darkest Art -- it's a horrible book, really awful, full of evil magic.' [cut] [cut] 'So does it say how to destroy Horcruxes in that book?' 'Yes,' said Hermione, now turning the fragile pages as if examining rotting entrails, 'because it warns Dark wizards how strong they have to make the enchantments on them. From all that I've read, what Harry did to Riddle's diary was one of the few really foolproof ways of destroying a Horcrux.' [DH ch. #06; p. 89] 'The Decree for Justifiable Confiscation gives the Ministry the power to confiscate the contents of a will --' 'That law was created to stop wizards passing on Dark artefacts,' said Hermione, 'and the Ministry is supposed to have powerful evidence that the deceased's possessions are illegal before seizing them! Are you telling me that you thought Dumbledore was trying to pass us something cursed?' [DH ch. 07#; p. 104/105] 'Grindelvald. That is Grindelvald's sign.' 'Grindelwald ... the Dark wizard Dumbledore defeated?' [cut] [cut] Harry felt perplexed. It seemed incredibly unlikely that Luna's father was a supporter of the Dark Arts, and nobody else in the tent seemed to have recognised the triangular, rune-like shape. [DH ch. #08; p. 124] 'Rita Skeeter hinted that Professor Dumbledore was involved in the Dark Arts when he was young.' [DH ch. #08; p. 127] 'Borgin and Burke were experts on Dark objects, they would've recognised a Horcrux straight away.' [DH ch. #15; p. 237/238] The enchantments they had cast around themselves ought to be sufficient, in the near total darkness, to shield them from the notice of Muggles and normal witches and wizards. If these were Death Eaters, then perhaps their defences were about to be tested by Dark Magic for the first time. [DH ch. #15; p. 242] 'If it's a symbol of Dark Magic, what's it doing in a book of children's stories?' 'Yeah, it is weird,' said Harry. 'And you'd think Scrimgeour would have recognised it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff.' [DH ch. #16; p. 260] 'Maybe you can't rebuild it?' Harry replied. 'Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?' [DH ch. #17; p. 271] Now revealed for the first time, it calls into question everything that his admirers believed of Dumbledore: his supposed hatred of the Dark Arts, [DH ch. #18; p. 290] The name of Grindelwald is justly famous: in a list of Most Dangerous Dark Wizards of All Time, he would miss out on the top spot only because You-Know-Who arrived, a generation later, to steal his crown. As Grindelwald never extended his campaign of terror to Britain, however, the details of his rise to power are not widely known here. Educated at Durmstrang, a school famous even then for its unfortunate tolerance of the Dark Arts, [DH ch. #18; p. 290] And how did the mysterious Ariana die? Was she the inadvertent victim of some Dark rite ? [DH ch. #18; p. 293] 'They were the same age as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting their rise to power over the Muggles.' [DH ch. #18; p. 294] 'Maybe he did believe these things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to fighting the Dark Arts! Dumbledore was the one who stopped Grindelwald, the one who always voted for Muggle protection and Muggle-born rights, who fought You-Know-Who from the start and who died trying to bring him down!' [DH ch. #18; p. 295] [The silver doe] continued to step deliberately through the trees, and soon her brightness was striped by their thick, black trunks. For one trembling second he hesitated. Caution murmured: it could be a trick, a lure, a trap. But instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him that this was not Dark Magic. [DH ch. #19; p. 298] 'Witness that knuckle-headed young man at your brother's wedding,' he nodded at Ron, 'who attacked me for sporting the symbol of a well-known Dark wizard! Such ignorance. There is nothing Dark about the Hallows -- at least, not in that crude sense.' [DH ch. #21; p. 329] 'The Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, they crop up under different names through the centuries, usually in the possession of some Dark wizard who's boasting about them.' [DH ch. #21; p. 337] 'Finally, we regret to inform our listeners that the remains of Bathilda Bagshot have been discovered in Godric's Hollow. The evidence is that she died several months ago. The Order of the Phoenix informs us that her body showed unmistakable signs of injuries inflicted by Dark Magic.' [DH ch. #22; p. 356] More shops than ever were boarded-up, though several new establishments dedicated to the Dark Arts had been created since his last visit. [DH ch. #26; p. 424] 'Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defence Against the Dark Arts, except now it's just the Dark Arts. We're supposed to practise the Cruciatus Curse on people who've earned detentions --' [DH ch. #29; p. 462] 'Fiendfyre -- cursed fire -- it's one of the substances that destroy Horcruxes, but I would never, ever have dared use it, it's so dangerous. How did Crabbe know how to --?' 'Must've learned from the Carrows,' said Harry grimly. [DH ch. #31; p. 510/511] 'Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He's creepy! D'you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?' [cut] 'That was nothing,' said Snape. 'It was a laugh, that's all --' 'It was Dark Magic, and if you think that's funny --' 'What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?' demanded Snape. [cut] [cut] 'They don't use Dark Magic, though.' [DH ch. #33; p. 540/541] The creation of Basilisks has been illegal since medieval times, although the practice is easily concealed by simply removing the chicken egg from beneath the toad when the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures comes to call. However, since Basilisks are uncontrollable except by Parselmouths, they are as dangerous to most Dark wizards as to anybody else, [FB A-Z; p. 4] If [Beedle's] stories accurately reflect his opinions, he rather liked Muggles, whom he regarded as ignorant rather than malevolent; he mistrusted Dark Magic, and he believed that the worst excesses of wizardkind sprang from the all-too-human traits of cruelty, apathy or arrogant misapplication of their own talents. [cut] One modern-day wizard who held very similar views was, of course, Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore [BtB Introduction; p. xiii/xiv] There was once a handsome, rich and talented young warlock, who observed that his friends grew foolish when they fell in love, gambolling and preening, losing their appetites and their dignity. The young warlock resolved never to fall prey to such weakness, and employed Dark Arts to ensure his immunity. [BtB ch. #03; p. 45] Here, in an enchanted crystal casket, was the warlock's beating heart. [BtB ch. #03; p. 51] The hero in this tale, however, is not even interested in a simulacrum of love that he can create or destroy at will. He wants to remain for ever uninfected by what he regards as a kind of sickness, and therefore performs a piece of Dark Magic that would not be possible outside a storybook: he locks away his own heart. The resemblance of this action to the creation of a Horcrux has been noted by many writers. Although Beedle's hero is not seeking to avoid death, he is dividing that which was clearly not meant to be divided -- body and heart, rather than soul -- and in doing so, he is falling foul of the first of Adalbert Waffling's Fundamental Laws of Magic: Tamper with the deepest mysteries -- the source of life, the essence of self -- only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind. And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. [BtB ch. #03; p. 58/59] 6 The Cruciatus, Imperius and Avada Kedavra Curses were first classified as Unforgivable in 1717, with the strictest penalties attached to their use. [BtB ch. #04; p. 83] 1 {Necromancy is the Dark Art of raising the dead. It is a branch of magic that has never worked, as this story makes clear. JKR} [BtB ch. #05; p. 95] [cut] we remain incapable of raising the dead, and there is every reason to suppose that this will never happen. Vile substitutions have, of course, been attempted by Dark wizards, who have created Inferi,4 but these are ghastly puppets, not truly reawoken humans. [BtB ch. #05; p. 97/98] 4 {Inferi are corpses reanimated by Dark Magic. JKR} [BtB ch. #05; p. 98] In the days before there was a Ministry of Magic to regulate the use of Dark Magic, duelling was usually fatal. A full century later, another unpleasant character, this time named Godelot, advanced the study of Dark Magic by writing a collection of dangerous spells with the help of a wand he described in his notebook as 'my most wicked and subtle friend, with bodie of Ellhorn,6 who knows ways of magick moste evile'. (Magick Moste Evile became the title of Godelot's masterwork.) [BtB ch. #05; p. 101] [cut] a hypothetical wand that had passed through the hands of many Dark wizards would be likely to have, at the very least, a marked affinity for the most dangerous kinds of magic. [BtB ch. #05; p. 102]
We've seen Sectumsempra used four times, one of them on multiple subjects (the Inferi), and we know that Snape must have used it several more times in order to establish it as his speciality, but as far as we know it only causes an amputation once in all those incidents (and that of a body-part not containing bone). It may be that JKR herself meant the name to mean "to amputate every time", but if so the spell is seriously misnamed, and we have to look at what else it could reasonably mean.
It could be that Sectumsempra "cuts every time" in the sense that whenever it's used it draws blood from someone (whether or not they're the intended target); like the cursed swords beloved of fantasy, which once drawn cannot be re-sheathed until they've tasted blood. It's the sort of sinister-yet-romantic idea which might appeal to the sort of Gothy kid who would call himself the Half-Blood Prince, especially if he read a lot of Swords'n'Sorcery novels, and it would explain how adult!Snape managed to cut George's ear off by accident.
Another possible interpretation is that it simply means "the knife which never needs sharpening" - bearing in mind JK Rowling's propensity for bad puns based on British product-names (Spell-o-tape, Ethelred the Ever-Ready etc.) and the fact that Staysharp is a famous brand of kitchen knife. As such, it might have been intended as a weapon from the first, or it might originally have been a household tool which Severus later re-designated "for enemies": perhaps, indeed, a kitchen or Potions-lab. knife, or a literal penknife for trimming quill pens (real feather quills need to be re-cut every couple of pages).
We do know Sectumsempra equates to a knife rather than a sword or an axe, unless it were a very lightweight sword. It's true that Harry thinks that it cuts Draco as if it were a sword, but that seems to be because it cuts him in a long sweeping slash from a distance, rather than because of the nature of the injuries - that, or Harry has no idea what a sword would do.
Draco was unarmoured, and whilst thick folds of cloth will slow a sword down, he was cut across his bare face and his chest, where his robes should be lying pretty flat. Harry swung at Draco with Sectumsempra in a panic, with all his considerable force. The resultant cuts are described as "deep" and they required three passes to heal them, which probably means they went right through skin and into muscle; but Draco was not disembowelled, beheaded or cut in half, nor so far as we can tell were any of his bones cloven or snapped, nor - despite being cut across the chest - was there any rush of clear fluid indicating that the membranes around his lungs had been breached, so the cuts were nothing like as deep as they would have been if made with a sword - unless it was a very light sword, or the very tip of a sword at the edge of its range, which would cause similar injuries to a knife anyway.
[Or unless it was very blunt, of course. A blunt sword would do less damage because Draco's robes would impede it - but there seems no reason why a magic blade should be blunt, especially when we see it give James a razor-flick, not a bruising tear.]
Of course, you could inflict these sort of comparatively shallow injuries with even a very big sword if you used just the tip if it, and that may be what Harry is thinking of - that he cut Draco from several feet away as if he had slashed across him with the far point of a sword he held in his hand. But we see that Sectumsempra can be used from considerably more than an arm-plus-sword's length away - it's very unlikey that Snape was only five feet away from the target when he aimed at a Death Eater and hit George, for example, unless he's a spectacularly bad shot - so the fact that it makes shallow cuts when used at about a sword's length away is not because the target is too far away to hit "properly". If it was designed to make the sort of wounds you make when you belt someone with a sword at close quarters, it could presumably do so at a distance too: and if it only makes knife (or sword-point) wounds when it is operating over the partial width of a bathroom - well within its range - then it almost certainly does so at close quarters too.
Initially Harry sees a lot of blood coming from Draco, but a little blood goes a long way, and when he gazes at the scene after Draco has been removed - which is probably less than three minutes after he was cut - he sees water on the floor with some blots of blood floating in it: not a sea of blood. Blood is said to spurt from the wounds at the first blow but after that the text speaks of a "flow" of blood, and there's nothing in the description to suggest a spurting arterial wound. Draco was still able to walk as soon as he was healed, without being given Blood-Replenishing Potion, and he did not show any signs of physiological (as opposed to psychological) shock due to blood-loss: which again suggests he hadn't lost a huge amount of blood, and his wounds were not terribly deep.
[Violent shaking can be a symptom of physiological shock, but of septic shock (physiological shock due to overhwhelming infection), not of haemorrhagic shock (physiological shock due to bleeding) or hypovolemic shock (physiological shock due to a severe fall in circulatory volume, usually due to bleeding but can be due to e.g. fluid-loss from burns). It has been suggested that Draco's shaking might have been due to hypoxia - oxygen-starvation of the brain - caused by blood-loss; but the convulsions of hypoxia occur after the brain has been starved of oxygen for more than five minutes, and Draco's shaking was immediate. They should also be preceded by unconsciousness, and there's no sign that Draco lost consciousness to any significant extent: he goes from scrabbling at his chest to being up and walking with no sign of Snape having to wake him up in between. Ergo, the shaking was due to psychological, not physiological shock.]
Later on in HBP we see Harry use Sectumsempra to defend himself against Inferi. Given that he is fighting for his own and Dumbledore's life, we can reasonably assume that he used the spell as hard as he could, and this time he knew he was trying to cut with it - yet again, the cuts seem to be comparatively shallow and cause no amputations, so far as we are told.
We are told that the things have "thin, fleshless arms", so there isn't even much in the way of padding for the spell to cut into before it hits bone - and yet all it seems to cut is skin and cloth. Harry's expectation, and possibly the author's, seems to be that if the spell worked properly on Inferi it would bleed them - not chop them up.
We also see Snape use a slicing hex on James in the bullying scene in OotP. It's not absolutely clear that this is Sectumsempra since he produces it non-verbally, but JKR's purpose in that scene was presumably to establish a link between Snape and slicing hexes which would later been seen to have been a clue to the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, and Lupin says Sectumsempra was always a speciality of Snape's - so it would be very strange if he just happened to be using a completely different hex here. And again, although it gashes James's cheek it doesn't slice his cheek right open, or damage bone, so here too the action of Sectumsempra is that of a fairly short-bladed knife - albeit a knife which can be projected several feet.
It has been suggested that Snape meant to do James a mortal injury with a slashing, sword-like spell and simply missed. But apart from the fact that we are told that he aimed straight at James, James was more or less in a line between Snape and Lily, so if Snape had been taking a great hack at James with a spell of which he was in uncertain control, he would have put Lily in danger. Since we know he will risk death or Azkaban rather than knowingly endanger Lily, we must assume that he was in complete control of his slicing hex and knew it, and that it did just what it was meant to do.
We do see Snape aim it at a Death Eater's wand-hand in an attempt to protect Remus, but we aren't told whether he thought it would amputate the hand, or just slash it badly enough to make the target drop his wand. On the whole I would suggest he just meant to slash it. Cutting the guy's hand off would get Snape into more trouble if the spell was traced to him, and would attract attention from Muggles below: and whilst the real Death Eaters might not care about that, Snape was very angry when Harry and Ron attracted Muggle attention by allowing the flying Ford Anglia to be seen.
This incident also re-confirms that when Snape gave James a little flick with Sectumsempra, that was exactly what he meant to do. The incident of George's ear shows that if Sectumsempra misses its intended target it keeps going until it hits something else, as a thrown knife would do. If Snape had aimed a heavy shot at James, missed him and only barely clipped him when he had intended serious injury, the rest of the spell would have kept going until it hit something else - and since Snape was on the ground, aiming at somebody standing, the shot wouldn't have just gone into the ground. But there's no suggestion of anyone or anything else being hit, or of any spell-energy crackling into the sky. Ergo, the spell did what he meant it to do.
So, we can say that Sectumsempra is a curse, but we can also say with reasonable confidence that it's probably not a Dark curse, except in the mild sense of being illicit or potentially dangerous. It cuts quite shallowly, even when used with considerable force, and can be dialed back to give just a little flicking wound. It was not designed specifically to cause permanent amputation - which is a feature common to all curses which can cause amputation at all.
Indeed, it may well have been designed not to cause amputation. We see Harry take a great swing at Draco and at several Inferi, and we have no evidence that the invisible blade cut into bone in either case: in the case of the Inferi we are specifically told that the wounds cut their skin, with no mention of anything deeper, despite them having little or no fleshy padding between skin and bone. This suggests that Sectumsempra may have some sort of built-in safety feature to prevent it from cutting bone. That would make sense if its main use was as a laboratory or kitchen chopping-knife: a limitation to prevent it from cutting bone would protect the user, and one to prevent it from cutting anything above a certain hardness would protect the chopping-board.
Its name, "to cut [or amputate] every time", or perhaps "cut always" if JKR is using "sempra" in the sense in which she uses it in "Rictusempra", therefore does not mean "cuts bits off permanently" but something else, possibly "the knife which never needs sharpening". As such, it may well have originated as a tool, and only been re-designated as a weapon after young Severus felt that his life was actually in danger from the Marauders. For reasons explained in the main essay But Snape is just nasty, right?, there is canon evidence that werewolves are immune to spells which create magical effects, such as Petrificus totalus, but can be affected by spells which have a directly physical influence, such as conjured manacles - or, arguably, magically-created physical wounds. Sectumsempra was found written in a book we know Severus was using in fifth year, when he had every reason to think he might be attacked by a werewolf.
Nor would it be the only example of a tool being able to cut humans. Diffindo is a standard severing spell which we see Harry using to split open Cedric's schoolbag, to attempt to free Ron from the brain-tentacles, to split ice and even to remove a book-cover, yet in DH Hermione's hand shakes as she is trying to cut Ron free of a rope, and the spell slices open his jeans and makes a deep cut in his knee. Clearly, you could use this standard spell as a weapon if you wanted to, and it seems at least as injurious as Sectumsempra, yet no-one suggests that Diffindo is Dark Magic. It's the use Severus puts Sectumsempra to, and the fact that he designates it "for enemies", which makes it seem more sinister than Diffindo. So why use Sectumsempra instead of Diffindo? On the face of it, it certainly looks as if it may be because Sectumsempra is easier to control (Snape gives James a tiny little controlled flick, Hermione gashes Ron by accident) and has built-in safety features. Also, perhaps, Sectumsempra cuts more reliably and it is in this sense that it is designed "to cut always", since we see that when using Diffindo Harry fails to cut the brain-tentacles.
We can say, therefore, that young Severus was a boy who was willing to carry a knife, and to use it. He had serious reason to think his life might be in danger but we also see him use it when his life was not in danger (when he cut James), albeit that he was under attack.
On the other hand, the person he cut was part of a gang who had threatened his life before, so it was understandable that he might feel panicked by this fresh attack even though it was less dangerous. The injury we see him inflict is very minor, and since he was aiming straight at the target it seems he intended it to be minor. Even though Sectumsempra is a blade which can be projected at a distance and which potentially can cause amputation, there are good reasons to think that it has built-in safety features which prevent it from cutting bone: so in terms of aggression it's equivalent to carrying a penknife or a small razor, rather than a Bowie or Stanley knife, and there is at least some suggestion that Severus only started "carrying" that knife after he had cause to think his life was in danger from someone who was immune to most other forms of defence.
Footnote: dittany in Muggle medicine
The name "dittany" refers to three herbs: Cunila origanoides, a.k.a. C. mariana, called in English Common Dittany or Stone Mint; Dictamnus albus, called White Dittany or Burning Bush, and Origanum dictamnus or Dittany of Crete. Common Dittany can be used to make an antiseptic and a tea for treating headaches and fevers; White Dittany has similar properties and is also used in Chinese medicine to treat disorders of the skin and the gut; and Dittany of Crete is not much used nowadays but has a long medical history in the Classical world, and was probably the inspiration for JKR's use of dittany in the books..
Herbalpedia has this to say about Dittany of Crete:
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.:
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.
'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Other unspecified spells described as horrible, awful, evil.
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.
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.
'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.
The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble [PS ch. #05 p. 53]
[cut]Professor Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945 [PS ch. #06; p. 77]
'[Harry is] in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century. ' [PS ch. #06; p. 79]
'Did you hear about Gringotts? [cut] someone tried to rob a high-security vault.' [cut] [cut]'They haven't been caught. My dad says it must've been a powerful Dark wizard to get round Gringotts' [PS ch. #06; p. 80]
'They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side.' [PS ch. #06; p. 82]
'Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape.' [PS ch. #07; p. 94]
Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown. [PS ch. #08; p. 105]
'Can't nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful Dark Magic' [PS ch. #11; p. 140]
Unfortunately, you needed a specially signed note from one of the teachers to look in any of the restricted books and he knew he'd never get one. These were the books containing powerful Dark Magic never taught at Hogwarts and only read by older students studying advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts. [PS ch. #12; p. 145/146]
'[cut]I reckon there are other things guarding the stone apart from Fluffy, loads of enchantments, probably, and Quirrell would have done some anti-Dark Arts spell that Snape needs to break through --' [PS ch. #13; p. 166]
'If Quirrell's told him how to break his Anti-Dark Force spell --' [PS ch. #15 p. 180]
'Haven't you heard what it was like when [Voldemort] was trying to take over? There won't be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He'll flatten it, or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! [cut] If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I'll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there. It's only dying a bit later than I would have done, because I'm never going over to the Dark Side!' [PS ch. #16 ; p. 196/197]
At the age of one, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest dark sorcerer of all time, Lord Voldemort [CoS ch. #01; p. 09]
He had emerged into a dingy alleyway that seemed to be made up entirely of shops devoted to the dark arts. The one he'd just left, Borgin and Burkes, looked like the largest, but opposite was a nasty window display of shrunken heads and, two doors down, a large cage was alive with gigantic black spiders. [CoS ch. #04; p. 45]
'[cut] what were you doing down there [in Knockturn Alley], anyway?' 'I was lookin' fer a Flesh-Eatin' Slug Repellent,' growled Hagrid. 'They're ruinin' the school cabbages.' [CoS ch. #04; p. 45/46]
For a few horrible seconds he had feared that the hat was going to put him in Slytherin, the house which had turned out more dark witches and wizards than any other [CoS ch. #05; p. 61]
'Me,' he said, pointing at it and winking as well. 'Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, third class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League' [CoS ch. #06; p. 77]
'No second year could have [Petrified Mrs Norris],' said Dumbledore firmly. 'It would take Dark Magic of the most advanced --' [CoS ch. #09; p. 108]
'Nonsense, O'Flaherty,' said Professor Binns in an aggravated tone, 'if a long succession of Hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses haven't found the thing---' 'But, Professor,' piped up Parvati Patil, 'you'd probably have to use Dark Magic to open [the Chamber of Secrets] --' 'Just because a wizard doesn't use Dark Magic, doesn't mean he can't, Miss Pennyfeather,' snapped Professor Binns. 'I repeat, if the likes of Dumbledore --' [CoS ch. #09; p. 115]
But Harry, who had already heard of Slytherin house's reputation for turning out dark wizards, had thought desperately, 'Not Slytherin!' [CoS ch. #09; p. 116]
'I was a Seeker, too. I was asked to try for the National Squad, but preferred to dedicate my life to the eradication of the Dark Forces.' [CoS ch. #10; p. 123]
'[cut] Harry Potter shone like a beacon of hope for those of us who thought the Dark days would never end, sir ...' [cut] [cut]'Dark deeds are planned in this place, but Harry Potter must not be here when they happen.' [CoS ch. #10; p. 134]
'Hannah,' said the stout boy solemnly, 'he's a Parselmouth. Everyone knows that's the mark of a Dark wizard. Have you ever heard of a decent one who could talk to snakes? They called Slytherin himself Serpent-tongue.' [cut] [cut]'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. He dropped his voice until it was barely more than a whisper, and said, '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?'' [CoS ch. #11; p. 148/149]
'You know the Ministry of Magic raided our Manor last week?' [cut] 'Yeah ...' said Malfoy. 'Luckily, they didn't find much. Father's got some very valuable Dark Arts stuff. But luckily, we've got our own secret chamber under the drawing room floor --' [CoS ch. #12; p. 167]
'You're the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher!' said Harry. 'You can't go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!' [CoS ch. #16; p. 220]
'[Tom Riddle] disappeared after leaving the school ... travelled far and wide ... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable.' [CoS ch. #18; p. 242]
'Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of dark magic!' [CoS ch. #18 ; p. 242/243]
They had been murdered, murdered by the most feared Dark wizard for a hundred years, Lord Voldemort. [PoA ch. #01; p. 10/11]
'Professor Snape's very interested in the Dark Arts,' he blurted out. [PoA ch. #08; p. 118]
'Do you know, I still have trouble believing it,' said Madam Rosmerta thoughtfully. 'Of all the people to go over to the Dark side, Sirius Black was the last I'd have thought ... I mean, I remember him when he was a boy at Hogwarts.' [PoA ch. #10; p. 151]
'But what if I'd given Harry to him, eh? I bet he'd've pitched him off the bike halfway out ter sea. His bes' friend's son! But when a wizard goes over ter the dark side, there's nothin' and no one that matters to em anymore ...' [PoA ch. #10; p. 154]
'Well?' said Snape again. 'This parchment [the Marauder's Map] is plainly full of Dark Magic.' [cut] 'Full of Dark Magic?' [Lupin] repeated mildly. 'Do you really think so, Severus? It looks to me as though it is merely a piece of parchment that insults anybody who reads it. Childish, but surely not dangerous?' [PoA ch. #14; p. 212]
'And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using dark arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it ...' [PoA ch. #18; p. 261]
'He's got dark powers the rest of us can only dream of!' Pettigrew shouted shrilly. 'How else did he get out of there? I suppose He Who Must Not Be Named taught him a few tricks!' [cut] 'If you don't mind me asking, how -- how did you get out of Azkaban, if you didn't use Dark Magic?' [PoA ch. #19; p. 270/272]
'But then I saw Peter in that picture ... I realised he was at Hogwarts with Harry ... perfectly positioned to act, if one hint reached his ears that the Dark Side was gathering strength again ...' [PoA ch. #19; p. 272]
'Harry, what do you think you'd do if you saw yourself bursting into Hagrid's house?' said Hermione. 'I'd -- I'd think I'd gone mad,' said Harry, 'or I'd think there was some Dark Magic going on --' [PoA ch. #21; p. 292]
Harry had been a year old the night that Voldemort -- the most powerful Dark wizard for a century, a wizard who had been gaining power steadily for eleven years -- arrived at his house and killed his father and mother. [GoF ch. #02; p. 23]
What he really wanted [to discuss why his scar was hurting] was [cut] an adult wizard whose advice he could ask without feeling stupid, someone who cared about him, who had had experience with Dark Magic ... [GoF ch. #02; p. 25]
'The Dark Mark's a wizard's sign. It requires a wand.' [GoF ch. #09; p. 119]
'You have now come very close to accusing the two people in this clearing who are least likely to conjure [the Dark] Mark! [cut] [cut] 'And 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?' Mr Crouch shouted [GoF ch. #09; p. 122]
'I read about [the Dark Mark] in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts.' [GoF ch. #09; p. 126]
'[cut] it was only the Death Eaters who ever knew how to conjure [the Dark Mark]' [GoF ch. #09; p. 128]
'Ministry blunders ... culprits not apprehended ... lax security ... Dark wizards running unchecked ... national disgrace ... [GoF ch. #10; p. 131]
'He was an Auror -- one of the best ... a Dark-wizard-catcher,' he added, seeing Harry's blank look. 'Half the cells in Azkaban are full because of him. He made himself loads of enemies, though ... the families of people he caught, mainly ... and I heard he's been getting really paranoid in his old age. Doesn't trust anyone any more. Sees Dark wizards everywhere. [GoF ch. #11; p. 144]
'Father says Durmstrang takes a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. Durmstrang students actually learn them, not just the defence rubbish we do ...' [cut] 'Yes,' said Hermione sniffily, '[Durmstrang's] got a horrible reputation. According to An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe, it puts a lot of emphasis on the Dark Arts.' [GoF ch. #11; p. 147]
Harry wondered whether Baddock knew that Slytherin house had turned out more Dark witches and wizards than any other. [GoF ch. #12; p. 158]
'[Moody] Knows what it's like to be out there doing it,' said George impressively. 'Doing what?' said Harry. 'Fighting the Dark Arts,' said Fred. [GoF ch. #13; p. 183]
'Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tackling Dark creatures -- you've covered boggarts, Red Caps, Hinkypunks, Grindylows, Kappas and werewolves, is that right?' There was a general murmur of assent. 'But you're behind -- very behind -- on dealing with curses,' said Moody. 'So I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with Dark --' [GoF ch. #14; p. 186]
'Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you counter-curses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year.' [and then he shows them the Unforgivables] [GoF ch. #14; p. 187]
'I heard you recently got it into your head that one of your birthday presents contained a cunningly disguised basilisk egg, and smashed it to pieces before realising it was a carriage clock. So you'll understand if we don't take you entirely seriously ...' 'There are those who'll turn innocent occasions to their advantage,' Moody retorted in a menacing voice. 'It's my job to think the way Dark wizards do' [GoF ch. #17; p. 245/246]
Moody had told them all during their last Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson that he preferred to prepare his own food and drink at all times, as it was so easy for Dark wizards to poison an unattended cup. [GoF ch. #19; p. 282]
'And since he got out, from what I can tell, he's been teaching the Dark Arts to every student who passes through that school of his. So watch out for the Durmstrang champion as well.' [GoF ch. #19; p. 291]
When Lupin had lived here, you were more likely to come across a specimen of some fascinating new Dark creature he had procured for them to study in class. [GoF ch. #20; p. 299]
On his desk stood what looked like a large, cracked, glass spinning top; Harry recognised it at once as a Sneakoscope, because he owned one himself, though it was much smaller than Moody's. In the corner on a small table stood an object that looked something like an extra-squiggly, golden television aerial. It was humming slightly. What appeared to be a mirror hung opposite Harry on the wall, but it was not reflecting the room. Shadowy figures were moving around inside it, none of them clearly in focus. 'Like my Dark detectors, do you?' said Moody, who was watching Harry closely. 'What's that?' Harry asked, pointing at the squiggly golden aerial. 'Secrecy Sensor. Vibrates when it detects concealment and lies ... no use here, of course, too much interference -- students in every direction lying about why they haven't done their homework. Been humming ever since I got here. I had to disable my Sneakoscope because it wouldn't stop whistling. It's extra-sensitive, picks up stuff about a mile around. Of course, it could be picking up more than kids' stuff,' he added in a growl. 'And what's the mirror for?' 'Oh, that's my Foe-Glass. See them out there, skulking around? I'm not really in trouble until I see the whites of their eyes. [GoF ch. #20; p. 299/300]
'Dobby could tell Harry Potter that his old masters were -- were -- bad Dark wizards!' [GoF ch. #21; p. 332]
While many of the giants who served He Who Must Not Be Named were killed by Aurors working against the Dark side, Fridwulfa was not among them. [GoF ch. #24; p. 382]
'Put it this way, Potter,' Moody muttered finally, 'they say old Mad-Eye's obsessed with catching Dark wizards ... but Mad-Eye's nothing -- nothing -- compared to Barty Crouch.' [GoF ch. #25; p. 413]
'No, Barty Crouch was always very outspoken against the Dark side. But then a lot of people who were against the Dark side ...'[cut] [cut] [cut]'Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorised the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark side.' [GoF ch. #27; p. 456/457]
'Moody says Crouch is obsessed with catching Dark wizards,' Harry told Sirius. [GoF ch. #27; p. 460]
'I know Dumbledore's brilliant and everything, but that doesn't mean a really clever Dark wizard couldn't fool him --' [GoF ch. #27; p. 460]
'Snape's always been fascinated by the Dark Arts, he was famous for it at school. Slimy, oily, greasy-haired kid, he was,' Sirius added [GoF ch. #27; p. 460]
'Ludovic Bagman, you were caught passing information to Lord Voldemort's supporters,' [GoF ch. #30; p. 514]
'Er,' he said, 'Mr Bagman ...' '... has never been accused of any Dark activity since,' said Dumbledore calmly. [GoF ch. #30; p. 524]
Parseltongue, the ability to converse with snakes, has long been considered a Dark Art. Indeed, the most famous Parselmouth of our times is none other than You-Know-Who himself. A member of the Dark Force Defence League, who wished to remain unnamed, stated that he would regard any wizard who could speak Parseltongue 'as worthy of investigation. Personally, I would be highly suspicious of anybody who could converse with snakes, as serpents are often used in the worst kinds of Dark Magic and are historically associated with evil-doers.' [cut] [cut]Some fear that Potter might resort to the Dark Arts in his desperation to win the Tournament [GoF ch. #31; p. 532]
'I knew that to achieve this [Voldemort's resurrection] -- it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight -- I would need three powerful ingredients.' [GoF ch. #33; p. 569]
'And both of us had the pleasure ... the very great pleasure ... of killing our fathers, to ensure the continued rise of the Dark Order!' [GoF ch. #35; p. 589]
'You're an Auror?' said Harry, impressed. Being a Dark-wizard-catcher was the only career he'd ever considered after Hogwarts. [OotP ch. #03; p. 52]
'In the old days he had huge numbers at his command: witches and wizards he'd bullied or bewitched into following him, his faithful Death Eaters, a great variety of Dark creatures. You heard him planning to recruit the giants; well, they'll be just one of the groups he's after.' [OotP ch. #05; p. 88]
'You have been frightened into believing that you are likely to meet Dark attacks every other day --' [OotP ch. #12; p. 219]
'You have been told that a certain Dark wizard has returned from the dead --' [cut] [cut] 'The Ministry of Magic guarantees that you are not in danger from any Dark wizard.' [OotP ch. #12; p. 220/21]
When Lupin had occupied [the DADA office], it was likely you would meet some fascinating Dark creature in a cage or tank if you came to call. In the impostor Moody's days it had been packed with various instruments and artefacts for the detection of wrongdoing and concealment. [OotP ch. #13; p. 239]
'I ... I think I do see something ... something that concerns you ... why, I sense something ... something dark ... some grave peril ...' [OotP ch. #15; p. 282]
[cut] he had found himself thinking about the spells that had served him best in his various encounters with Dark creatures and Death Eaters [OotP ch. #16; p. 295]
'And just look at these books!' said Hermione excitedly, running a finger along the spines of the large leather-bound tomes. 'A Compendium of Common Curses and their Counter-Actions ... The Dark Arts Outsmarted ... Self-Defensive Spellwork ... wow ...' [OotP ch. #18; p. 346]
'Hey, Harry, what's this stuff?' asked Dean from the rear of the room, indicating the Sneakoscopes and the Foe-Glass. 'Dark detectors,' said Harry, stepping between the cushions to reach them. 'Basically they all show when Dark wizards or enemies are around, but you don't want to rely on them too much, they can be fooled ...' He gazed for a moment into the cracked Foe-Glass; shadowy figures were moving around inside it, though none was recognisable. [OotP ch. #18; p. 346/347]
Sirius and Lupin had given Harry a set of excellent books entitled Practical Defensive Magic and its Use Against the Dark Arts, which had superb, moving colour illustrations of all the counter-jinxes and hexes it described. [OotP ch. #23; p. 443]
'And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts, and James -- whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry -- always hated the Dark Arts.' [OotP ch. #590; p. 29]
'I was and am the Dark Lord's most loyal servant. I learned the Dark Arts from him, and I know spells of such power that you, pathetic little boy, can never hope to compete --' [OotP ch. #36; p. 715]
'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 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]
The wizarding community is currently under threat from an organisation calling itself the Death Eaters. Observing the following simple security guidelines will help protect you, your family and your home from attack.
1.
You are advised not to leave the house alone.
2.
Particular care should be taken during the hours of darkness. Wherever possible, arrange to complete journeys before night has fallen.
3.
Review the security arrangements around your house, making sure that all family members are aware of emergency measures such as Shield and Disillusionment Charms and, in the case of under-age family members, Side-Along-Apparition.
4.
Agree security questions with close friends and family so as to detect Death Eaters masquerading as others by use of Polyjuice Potion (see page 2).
5.
Should you feel that a family member, colleague, friend or neighbour is acting in a strange manner, contact the Magical Law Enforcement Squad at once. They may have been put under the Imperius Curse (see page 4).
6.
Should the Dark Mark appear over any dwelling place or other building, DO NOT ENTER, but contact the Auror Office immediately.
7.
Unconfirmed sightings suggest that the Death Eaters may now be using Inferi (see page 10). Any sighting of an Inferius, or encounter with same, should be reported to the Ministry IMMEDIATELY. [HBP ch. #03; p. 45/46]
'Rufus is a man of action and, having fought Dark wizards for most of his working life, does not underestimate Lord Voldemort.' [HBP ch. #04; p. 62]
'[Inferi] are corpses,' said Dumbledore calmly. 'Dead bodies that have been bewitched to do a Dark wizard's bidding. Inferi have not been seen for a long time, however, not since Voldemort was last powerful ... he killed enough people to make an army of them, of course.' [HBP ch. #04; p. 63]
'My dear Horace,' said Dumbledore, looking amused, 'if the Death Eaters really had come to call, the Dark Mark would have been set over the house.' The wizard clapped a pudgy hand to his vast forehead. 'The Dark Mark,' he muttered. 'Knew there was something ... ah well. Wouldn't have had time, anyway.' [HBP ch. #04; p. 65/66]
But Knockturn Alley, the side street devoted to the Dark Arts, looked completely deserted. They peered into windows as they passed, but none of the shops seemed to have any customers at all. Harry supposed it was a bit of a giveaway in these dangerous and suspicious times to buy Dark artefacts -- or at least, to be seen buying them. [HBP ch. #06; p. 120]
'If Malfoy wants something fixing, and he needs to threaten Borgin to get it done, it's probably something Dark or dangerous, isn't it?' [HBP ch. #07; p. 129]
'I have not asked you to take out your books,' said Snape, closing the door and moving to face the class from behind his desk; Hermione hastily dropped her copy of Confronting the Faceless back into her bag and stowed it under her chair. 'I wish to speak to you and I want your fullest attention.' [cut] 'The Dark Arts,' said Snape, 'are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.' Harry stared at Snape. It was surely one thing to respect the Dark Arts as a dangerous enemy, another to speak of them, as Snape was doing, with a loving caress in his voice? 'Your defences,' said Snape, a little louder, 'must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo. These pictures,' he indicated a few of them as he swept past, 'give a fair representation of what happens to those who suffer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse' (he waved a hand towards a witch who was clearly shrieking in agony) 'feel the Dementor's Kiss' (a wizard lying huddled and blank-eyed slumped against a wall) 'or provoke the aggression of the Inferius' (a bloody mass upon the ground). 'Has an Inferius been seen, then?' said Parvati Patil in a high-pitched voice. 'Is it definite, is he using them?' 'The Dark Lord has used Inferi in the past,' said Snape, 'which means you would be well-advised to assume he might use them again.' [HBP ch. #09; p. 168/169]
'Did you hear him talking about the Dark Arts? He loves them! All that unfixed, indestructible stuff --' 'Well,' said Hermione, 'I thought he sounded a bit like you.' 'Like me?' 'Yes, when you were telling us what it's like to face Voldemort. You said it wasn't just memorising a bunch of spells, you said it was just you and your brains and your guts -- well, wasn't that what Snape was saying? That it really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?' [HBP ch. #09; p. 172]
'[cut] Filch ran over all of us with Secrecy Sensors when we got into the Entrance Hall. Any Dark object would have been found, I know for a fact Crabbe had a shrunken head confiscated. So you see, Malfoy can't have brought in anything dangerous!' [cut] [cut] There did not seem to be any way Malfoy could have brought a dangerous or Dark object into the school. [HBP ch. #11; p. 221/222]
'What does it matter if we're smuggling Dark stuff OUT?' demanded Ron, eyeing the long thin Secrecy Sensor with apprehension. 'Surely you ought to be checking what we bring back IN?' [HBP ch. #12; p. 228]
'She appears to have brushed the necklace with the smallest possible amount of skin: there was a tiny hole in her glove. Had she put it on, had she even held it in her ungloved hand, she would have died, perhaps instantly. Luckily Professor Snape was able to do enough to prevent a rapid spread of the curse --' [cut] [cut] 'Professor Snape knows much more about the Dark Arts than Madam Pomfrey, Harry. Anyway, the St Mungo's staff are sending me hourly reports and I am hopeful that Katie will make a full recovery in time.' [HBP ch. #13; p. 242/243]
'Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?' said Dumbledore. 'No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is.' [HBP ch. #13; p. 258]
'And he was a Parselmouth,' interjected Harry. 'Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although, as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy and domination. [HBP ch. #13; p. 259]
'Secrecy Sensors detect jinxes, curses and concealment charms, don't they? They're used to find Dark magic and Dark objects. They'd have picked up a powerful curse, like the one on that necklace, within seconds. But something that's just been put in the wrong bottle wouldn't register -- and anyway, love potions aren't Dark or dangerous --' [HBP ch. #15; p. 287/288]
'The Aurors are part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, I thought everyone knew that. They're working from within to bring down the Ministry of Magic using a combination of Dark magic and gum disease.' [HBP ch. #15; p. 299]
'What does it matter?' said Malfoy. 'Defence Against the Dark Arts -- it's all just a joke, isn't it, an act? Like any of us need protecting against the Dark Arts --' [HBP ch. #15; p. 303]
'[Horcruxes] must be really advanced Dark magic, or why would Voldemort have wanted to know about them? [HBP ch. #18; p. 350]
'The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard's spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like a puppet to do the wizard's bidding.' [HBP ch. #21; p. 431]
'[cut] you'd be hard-pushed to find a book at Hogwarts that'll give you details on Horcruxes, Tom. That's very Dark stuff, very Dark indeed,' said Slughorn. [HBP ch. #23; p. 464]
'[cut] despite your privileged insight into Voldemort's world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort's followers!' [HBP ch. #23; p. 477]
'Apparently I underestimated you, Potter,' he said quietly. 'Who would have thought you knew such Dark magic? Who taught you that spell?' [HBP ch. #24; p. 490]
[cut] it made a very nice change to be talked about because of something that was making him happier than he could remember being for a very long time, rather than because he had been involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic. [HBP ch. #25; p. 500]
'Now, I've been trying to find out a bit about who might make a hobby of inventing Dark spells --' [HBP ch. #25; p. 502]
'I was strolling along, brooding upon certain Dark portents I happen to have glimpsed ...' [HBP ch. #25; p. 505]
'No, I don't think that Bill will be a true werewolf,' said Lupin, 'but that does not mean that there won't be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely ever to heal fully,' [HBP ch. #29; p. 572]
'Pure-blood mother, Muggle father ... ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts' [HBP ch. #30; p. 594]
He despised Malfoy still for his infatuation with the Dark Arts, but now the tiniest drop of pity mingled with his dislike. [HBP ch. #30; p. 596]
'But I can promise that anybody who still thinks Dumbledore was white as his beard is in for a rude awakening! Let's just say that nobody hearing him rage against You-Know-Who would have dreamed that he dabbled in the Dark Arts himself in his youth! [DH ch. #02; p. 27]
[cut] Death Eaters, Dementors, maybe even Inferi, which means dead bodies enchanted by a Dark wizard [DH ch. #03; p. 35]
'[cut] there's no chance of replacing his ear, not when it's been cursed off --' [DH ch. #05; p. 64]
'I can't make it grow back, not when it's been removed by Dark Magic.' [DH ch. #05; p. 66]
'This is the one that gives explicit instructions on now to make a Horcrux. Secrets of the Darkest Art -- it's a horrible book, really awful, full of evil magic.' [cut] [cut] 'So does it say how to destroy Horcruxes in that book?' 'Yes,' said Hermione, now turning the fragile pages as if examining rotting entrails, 'because it warns Dark wizards how strong they have to make the enchantments on them. From all that I've read, what Harry did to Riddle's diary was one of the few really foolproof ways of destroying a Horcrux.' [DH ch. #06; p. 89]
'The Decree for Justifiable Confiscation gives the Ministry the power to confiscate the contents of a will --' 'That law was created to stop wizards passing on Dark artefacts,' said Hermione, 'and the Ministry is supposed to have powerful evidence that the deceased's possessions are illegal before seizing them! Are you telling me that you thought Dumbledore was trying to pass us something cursed?' [DH ch. 07#; p. 104/105]
'Grindelvald. That is Grindelvald's sign.' 'Grindelwald ... the Dark wizard Dumbledore defeated?' [cut] [cut] Harry felt perplexed. It seemed incredibly unlikely that Luna's father was a supporter of the Dark Arts, and nobody else in the tent seemed to have recognised the triangular, rune-like shape. [DH ch. #08; p. 124]
'Rita Skeeter hinted that Professor Dumbledore was involved in the Dark Arts when he was young.' [DH ch. #08; p. 127]
'Borgin and Burke were experts on Dark objects, they would've recognised a Horcrux straight away.' [DH ch. #15; p. 237/238]
The enchantments they had cast around themselves ought to be sufficient, in the near total darkness, to shield them from the notice of Muggles and normal witches and wizards. If these were Death Eaters, then perhaps their defences were about to be tested by Dark Magic for the first time. [DH ch. #15; p. 242]
'If it's a symbol of Dark Magic, what's it doing in a book of children's stories?' 'Yeah, it is weird,' said Harry. 'And you'd think Scrimgeour would have recognised it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff.' [DH ch. #16; p. 260]
'Maybe you can't rebuild it?' Harry replied. 'Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?' [DH ch. #17; p. 271]
Now revealed for the first time, it calls into question everything that his admirers believed of Dumbledore: his supposed hatred of the Dark Arts, [DH ch. #18; p. 290]
The name of Grindelwald is justly famous: in a list of Most Dangerous Dark Wizards of All Time, he would miss out on the top spot only because You-Know-Who arrived, a generation later, to steal his crown. As Grindelwald never extended his campaign of terror to Britain, however, the details of his rise to power are not widely known here. Educated at Durmstrang, a school famous even then for its unfortunate tolerance of the Dark Arts, [DH ch. #18; p. 290]
And how did the mysterious Ariana die? Was she the inadvertent victim of some Dark rite ? [DH ch. #18; p. 293]
'They were the same age as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting their rise to power over the Muggles.' [DH ch. #18; p. 294]
'Maybe he did believe these things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to fighting the Dark Arts! Dumbledore was the one who stopped Grindelwald, the one who always voted for Muggle protection and Muggle-born rights, who fought You-Know-Who from the start and who died trying to bring him down!' [DH ch. #18; p. 295]
[The silver doe] continued to step deliberately through the trees, and soon her brightness was striped by their thick, black trunks. For one trembling second he hesitated. Caution murmured: it could be a trick, a lure, a trap. But instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him that this was not Dark Magic. [DH ch. #19; p. 298]
'Witness that knuckle-headed young man at your brother's wedding,' he nodded at Ron, 'who attacked me for sporting the symbol of a well-known Dark wizard! Such ignorance. There is nothing Dark about the Hallows -- at least, not in that crude sense.' [DH ch. #21; p. 329]
'The Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, they crop up under different names through the centuries, usually in the possession of some Dark wizard who's boasting about them.' [DH ch. #21; p. 337]
'Finally, we regret to inform our listeners that the remains of Bathilda Bagshot have been discovered in Godric's Hollow. The evidence is that she died several months ago. The Order of the Phoenix informs us that her body showed unmistakable signs of injuries inflicted by Dark Magic.' [DH ch. #22; p. 356]
More shops than ever were boarded-up, though several new establishments dedicated to the Dark Arts had been created since his last visit. [DH ch. #26; p. 424]
'Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defence Against the Dark Arts, except now it's just the Dark Arts. We're supposed to practise the Cruciatus Curse on people who've earned detentions --' [DH ch. #29; p. 462]
'Fiendfyre -- cursed fire -- it's one of the substances that destroy Horcruxes, but I would never, ever have dared use it, it's so dangerous. How did Crabbe know how to --?' 'Must've learned from the Carrows,' said Harry grimly. [DH ch. #31; p. 510/511]
'Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He's creepy! D'you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?' [cut] 'That was nothing,' said Snape. 'It was a laugh, that's all --' 'It was Dark Magic, and if you think that's funny --' 'What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?' demanded Snape. [cut] [cut] 'They don't use Dark Magic, though.' [DH ch. #33; p. 540/541]
The creation of Basilisks has been illegal since medieval times, although the practice is easily concealed by simply removing the chicken egg from beneath the toad when the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures comes to call. However, since Basilisks are uncontrollable except by Parselmouths, they are as dangerous to most Dark wizards as to anybody else, [FB A-Z; p. 4]
If [Beedle's] stories accurately reflect his opinions, he rather liked Muggles, whom he regarded as ignorant rather than malevolent; he mistrusted Dark Magic, and he believed that the worst excesses of wizardkind sprang from the all-too-human traits of cruelty, apathy or arrogant misapplication of their own talents. [cut] One modern-day wizard who held very similar views was, of course, Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore [BtB Introduction; p. xiii/xiv]
There was once a handsome, rich and talented young warlock, who observed that his friends grew foolish when they fell in love, gambolling and preening, losing their appetites and their dignity. The young warlock resolved never to fall prey to such weakness, and employed Dark Arts to ensure his immunity. [BtB ch. #03; p. 45]
Here, in an enchanted crystal casket, was the warlock's beating heart. [BtB ch. #03; p. 51]
The hero in this tale, however, is not even interested in a simulacrum of love that he can create or destroy at will. He wants to remain for ever uninfected by what he regards as a kind of sickness, and therefore performs a piece of Dark Magic that would not be possible outside a storybook: he locks away his own heart. The resemblance of this action to the creation of a Horcrux has been noted by many writers. Although Beedle's hero is not seeking to avoid death, he is dividing that which was clearly not meant to be divided -- body and heart, rather than soul -- and in doing so, he is falling foul of the first of Adalbert Waffling's Fundamental Laws of Magic:
Tamper with the deepest mysteries -- the source of life, the essence of self -- only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind.
And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. [BtB ch. #03; p. 58/59]
6 The Cruciatus, Imperius and Avada Kedavra Curses were first classified as Unforgivable in 1717, with the strictest penalties attached to their use. [BtB ch. #04; p. 83]
1 {Necromancy is the Dark Art of raising the dead. It is a branch of magic that has never worked, as this story makes clear. JKR} [BtB ch. #05; p. 95]
[cut] we remain incapable of raising the dead, and there is every reason to suppose that this will never happen. Vile substitutions have, of course, been attempted by Dark wizards, who have created Inferi,4 but these are ghastly puppets, not truly reawoken humans. [BtB ch. #05; p. 97/98]
4 {Inferi are corpses reanimated by Dark Magic. JKR} [BtB ch. #05; p. 98]
In the days before there was a Ministry of Magic to regulate the use of Dark Magic, duelling was usually fatal. A full century later, another unpleasant character, this time named Godelot, advanced the study of Dark Magic by writing a collection of dangerous spells with the help of a wand he described in his notebook as 'my most wicked and subtle friend, with bodie of Ellhorn,6 who knows ways of magick moste evile'. (Magick Moste Evile became the title of Godelot's masterwork.) [BtB ch. #05; p. 101]
[cut] a hypothetical wand that had passed through the hands of many Dark wizards would be likely to have, at the very least, a marked affinity for the most dangerous kinds of magic. [BtB ch. #05; p. 102]
