I. Regarding the Depiction of History in the Potterverse:

This is a rant: you may skip it if you wish, but it lays out exactly where I am coming from as it relates to the creation of this entire collection.

One of the most glaring weaknesses (and there are a number of them) on display regarding the construction of the world of Harry Potter is the lack of respect accorded to the part that a plausibly or consistently constructed history plays in any well-drawn secondary world.

In the world of Harry Potter, the whole concept of history seems to be regarded primarily as a joke. And, moreover, as a joke that is presented in a manner which makes it clear to the reader that this was a deliberate choice on the part of the author.

The teaching of history in the Potterverse is a particularly broad piece of comedy (and reads as an established policy of deliberate disinformation, to boot). At Hogwarts, dead history is taught by a dead teacher who drones on about apparently irrelevant events until the student body has no recourse other than to fall asleep. The situation is instantly recognizable and admittedly apt. We have all been there. Every student who has ever been forced to study history against his will, as taught by a teacher who is incapable of bringing it to life will grin at this depiction. But this conceit is never examined or even explored to any narriative purpose. Even the presentation of Potterverse history when it actually comes up in the course of the story, and is relevant to the action, has been treated more dismissively than not.

Worse, it is consistently treated shallowly. The series, at least up to the release of Deathly Hallows, is clearly not intended to be a shallow story — but at no point during the series has there been any recognition paid to the simple truth that at varying points in time, people have not thought about matters in the same way that they do today.

To impart a clear understanding of this overriding truth is regarded as one of the basic tenets of education itself. But now, at the end of the final book, nowhere in the story has this truth been even lightly acknowledged. It must finally be accepted that Rowling never had any intention of acknowledging this particular truth.

This is a piece of fundametal dishonesty.

The fallout of this signal failure to acknowledge the truth is that we are given no sense of the way in which the historic interacts with the contemporary in the Potterverse. All presentations of historic personages have been made without giving the reader any sense that these personages’ experience of their world might have been anything other than that as it is being undertaken by the characters of the present day. Welcome to Bedrock. Meet the Flintstones. All historic personages are stripped of any sense of historical context, and judged accordingly by modern standards.

This is robbing the dead.

Such presentation is unfair, untrue, unrealistic and unjustified. Justice is simply not being served. And Rowling doesn’t seem to care.

One of the end results is that for all of Rowling’s blithe flinging about of phrases like; “a thousand years ago” or the sudden introduction of historical artifacts deployed as plot tokens, we get no sense of the soveriginity of time, and yet the social/moral outlook is already sufficiently topical (which is to say, dated) as to eliminate any possibility of the tale ever being regarded as “timeless”.

Nor do the most of the events which are stated as having happened in “Historic” times necessarily stand up as being plausible — in the form they are presented — against even the most cursory of examinations of what we know of the times these events purportedly took place. Rowling’s narriative voice all too clearly seems to find the notion of history comical in itself.

But it is not really possible to present a society which will read as a plausible, livable human community based upon nothing more solid than a foundation made up of jokes. In particular, it is difficult to imagine any convincing historic development of a society as nuanced and complex (or as blatantly corrupt) as that on display in the Harry Potter series within the narriative’s unvarying atmosphere of; ha, ha, ha, weren’t-our-grandparents-silly, black/white, good/evil moral absolutes in which the story is so often being related. Particularly considering that her viewpoint character is more than old enough to have begun to ourgrow such a narrow view of his world.

Nor, as the series becomes progressively darker in tone, is it possible for such a presentation to remain at all plausibly consistent. We have been treated to some harrowing examinations of the very human failings of the characters of the present day. But this courtesy has still never been extended to anyone more than one generation earlier, let alone those who reside permanently in history. History, in the Potterverse, is populated only with unquestionable heroes and irredemable villans. No human beings live there at all. It was my hope that by this time, I would be able to do a more extensive rewrite of this paragraph. But I cannot. Falable human beings apparantly do not exist at any period prior to the Marauders and the elder Weasleys, or at a pinch, within the memory of Albus Dumbledore.

In a series wherein the original motivations driving just about all of the action is rooted at least half a century earlier, it is past time that the Harry filter broadened its worldview to include an acknowledgement that the figures of history were indeed no more than men and women, and sometimes, perhaps, incapable of rising above the biases of their own, somewhat less informed eras. But to all appearances, Ms Rowling’s contention is that the truth which relates to the figures of history simply does not matter.

True, Rowling’s work is marketed with a young audience in mind. Some degree of simplification is understandable. But the books are clearly not written only for the young, and in any case, there are things that youth does not excuse. Her older fans had expected, or at least hoped for better from her. She is perfectly capable of it. But she has not chosen to give it to us.

«end rant»

Nor is the depiction of history the only, or even the most basic issue in which Rowling has not given us what the situation she has deliberately set up appears to call for. This segment also contains a rant:

Since the spring of 2003, when this collection first was posted, I have been publicly grousing about the fact that throughout the series, even as it then existed, any clear sense of the underlying relationship, if any, between Light, as opposed to Dark, magic has been consistenly given short shrift; to the point that all Dark magic might be defined loosely as “everything the Ministry doesn’t approve of this week”. A viewpoint that I seriously doubted Rowling ever intended. But, up to about the first third of HBP, she seemed to be perfectly fine with that deffinition.

Which is the point, inside the series, at which we were finally tossed a clue. A very brief clue. If you blinked you might have missed it.

And now, standing in the middle of the wreckage that is ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ I can no longer even be sure that the clue she finally tossed us was intentional. For she certainly never followed through on it.

In Severus Snape, Rowling finally gave us a DADA instructor who was willing to attempt to define the nature of what he is attempting to teach his students to defend themselves from.

And it really does not sound like something that is inherently evil.

It doesn’t even come across as something that is universally hostile.

But it is clearly, horrificly, perilous.

And inherently completely unstable.

In short. It is pure Chaos. Unlike the rather prosaic magic which is taught in the classrooms of Hogwarts, you get the distinct impression that however perfect your pronounciation of the spell’s incantation, and however consistently you might “swish and flick” your wand, if what you are dealing with is the Dark Arts, you could swish and flick and say the equivalent of Wingardium Leviosa six times in a row, and half the time the feather will levitate to various heights, once it will burst into flame, once it will simply dissapear, and the sixth time it will turn into a blob of rasberry jam. And that’s on a good day.

And there was still no corresponding definition which would illuminate the distinction, if any, between it and Light magic.

But, at any rate, it was enough of a hint to reasure me that I would not need to totally rework my interpretations of the subject from square 1.

I had evidently — or so I believed — picked up enough between the lines in the first five books to at least be on the right track. But I wish that Rowling could have found it in herself to elaborate a bit further. I think we can take it for granted that there is likely to be no further exploration of this issue forthcoming from Rowling.

Or at least not a coherant one. I am willing to go on record by stating here and now that I do not believe at least half of what Rowling attempted to tell us took place in DHs. Her explanations simply do not add up. I view the antcipated “encyclopedia” to the Potterverse, which she has now stated as her intention to provide around 2009 with considerable misgiving. I antcipate that parts of it may well be funny. But in the long run it will make the construction of a plausible and coherant reading of the Potterverse substanially less, rather than more achievable.

But, as the matter stands, the confusion on this issue has compounded to the point that even after 6 books out of seven of being given the repeated message that the Dark Arts are not taught at Hogwarts, Harry, his friends, and various other students all seem to be rather too frequently accused of performing Dark spells; many of which they appear to have learned in the course of their classwork or out of the school library for this to actually be the case. (In what would have been Harry’s 7th year, Dark magic evidently was taught at Hogwarts.)

So is Dark magic the same thing as the Dark Arts, or isn’t it? For that matter; is a Dark wizard a practitioner of the Dark Arts, or merely a wizard who breaks the law? We have no information on this point either, and throughout the 5th and 6th books it has looked very much as if the readers’ confusion may be shared by the average “wizard in the street”.

And, at this point, it does not look likely that we will ever be given any further clarification on the issue. One is, apparantly, just expected to instinctively “know” whether a given piece of magic is Dark or Light.

On alternate Tuesdays.

And this lack of clarity, of boundaries, makes me very cross.

But by the end of HBP it had finally begun to sink in that this particular point of confusion might be deliberate. Like I’ve said before. I think I’m reasonably sharp. But I’m sometimes not particularly swift.

And it finally occured to me that I might be asking the wrong questions.

Unfortunately. I gave Rowling far too much credit. In the end, she did not ever address the issue of where the boundary between Dark magic and everything else lies any more than she addressed the issue of where the line is drawn in the sand that marks where evil begins. In the end, so far as she is concerned, it simply does not matter.

Chiefly because, in the end, the final book — despite all suggestons or statements to the contrary — is not about the conflict between good vs. evil at all.

It never was.

I've been in correspondence with a youngster in Greece after the release of DHs, and have done a pretty fair amount of grousing about the shoddiness of DHs, its structure, its elements, its myriad contradictions to earlier canon, and the explanations given for what allegedly took place in it. The exchange has forced me to think a bit more deeply about what it is that really bugs me about Rowling’s so called “conclusion” to the series.

A part of what I rather think happened was that as the series progressed, particularly after GoF, with each book Rowling kept laying in more and more potential threads for further developments without ever making a clear decision of whch ones she was actually going to use.

A well-known and well-loved political columnist, the late Molly Ivins once wrote an article which resonated with this problem. I do not recall just what the subject of her article actually was but in it she brought up the example of people who keep defering making any kind of a decision about anything, thereby “keeping their options open” and in the end, they find they have nothing to show for it but ...unchosen options. They have ended up cheating themselves. I think that Rowling pulled a variant of this trick, probably unintentionally, but it ends up feeling a bit as though she has cheated us as well, even though I am pretty sure that the whole process was mostly unconsious.

This by itself is a comparitively small issue, but the major problem with it was that one of these dangling threads was what we had all thought to be the central story.

It was only at the point at which she had to finally buckle down and tie the whole thing off that it all came apart on her, and on us as well. In retrospect, it seems that she had been driving two central stories, or themes, through the middle of this series, and in the end, she only chose to complete one of them. And it was not the one we had believed was the major one.

Stringing a story out requires a rather different skill set than finishing one off satisfactorily. And Rowling is hardly the only author who doesn’t quite have it. There are a lot of authors out there (and not just in children’s or YA fantasy, not by a long shot) who can put together some perfectly marvelous stories and yet are not able to give them really satisfactory conclusions. It sometimes feels like the story simply didn’t want to end there, and the author merely wrestled it to the ground.

But the fact remains that the 7th book was simply not a worthy conclusion to the series as it had developed. And the series, as it had developed, it finally turns out to have never been what, in the end, Rowling’s idea of the story was really about. We have spent 6 books fllowing what turned out to have been a false trail.

The series as a whole was stronger and much more coherent at the end of HBP than it is now. With DHs, the whole story arc completely lost focus.

All the more so in that Rowling was suddenly concentrating on a single issue, which although it has been present throughout the whole series, it has never been the one that was primary to the story’s action.

Coming to terms with death is not the premise upon which Rowling sold this story. And if she had tried to, it would probably never have sold at all.

That premise has nothing to do with either good or evil. The whole issue of good vs. evil is irrelevant to it, and Tom Riddle's misguided goal to evade death, or Albus's equally misguided desire to master it, have nothing to do with either good or evil, either.

Albus was foolish for wanting to collect Death’s “hallows” (2 of which Death created expressly for the purpose of trapping people. Doesn’t Albus realize that?) in order to master it, that goal was certainly not “good”, and Tom's desire to evade death is not in itself inherently evil. And attempt to to position either one of them as being anything like it is totally bogus.

The story turns out to have simply NOT been about what Rowling spent years trying to pretend it was about. The story was NEVER about good prevailing over evil. The articles in which we are to keep faith are not that ultimately justice will be done, and good will prevail. It is that; do what you will, Death eventually comes for all.

And, presumably, being a hero consists of being willing to meet it.

Dumbledore and Snape ultimately did so. Albus with the advantage of a full year’s advance warning and preparation, and no alternate choice on offer, really. Snape did so with no hesitation whatsoever — once Harry miraculously turned up at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, and enabled him to pass on Albus’s final message, and finish the job. And Harry eventually managed it as well, when given sufficient outside help and support (and no viable other options, or none which would allow him to save face). Tom, predictably, never learned it at all.

But THIS is, in fact, what the whole 7th book was about, and all the lip service, grand gestures, and going through the motions over some supposedly eternal conflict between good and evil turn out to be just so much set-dressing. It’s finally clear why Rowling never bothered to define the point at which evil begins. The issue simply doesn’t matter in the long run. Not in her universe. Tom Riddle turns out to have been right, all the way back in PS/SS. In the Potterverse there isn’t really any such thing as good or evil. Unforgivable curses are not really unforgivable. There is only power. If you are special enough all will be forgiven.

In the end, Tom Riddle’s actual acts do not matter either. He could be the deepest-dyed villian or the most shining saint, and it wouldn’t make a bean’s worth of difference to the theme of this book. His ultimate crime was to believe that he could evade death, and the 7th book was where Rowling finally stopped farting around and took the gloves off.

The whole, overriding story arc of the final book is to bring death to Tom Riddle, and to force him to face it. The whole DE set-up is local color, the Battle of Hogwarts is sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing. Rowling clearly doesn’t give a damn about this world or the state she’s left it in. The minute that Tom’s AK rebounded, the story was over. Even Harry no longer really mattered, and throwing him a nice bone of future domestic happiness cost the author absolutely nothing. It was a completely gratuitous tag-on, and no real resolution of anything.

I've said it for years: the villian is the story. This time that statement seems to be true on a whole higher level from the way it usually works in a fantasy adventure, but it is definitely true.

III. Regarding Magic in the Potterverse:

But, the rest of us are not Rowling and we generally prefer a reading of the series that makes sense, and that is at least potentially consistent with the entire series. And that particularly goes for the elements that would appear to be the foundations of the story. Regardless of Tom Riddle’s unwitting murder-suicide pact that hijacked the final volume and flew it into a cliff.

Most of this issue was pretty fully developed before the release of the final volume of the series. And there was little in that final volume to have caused me to modify my earlier extrapolations. Although there were some which are highly suggestive. But nevertheless, Rowling’s all but total abandonment of what had appeared to be her central story arc in this instance works in the theorist’s favor.

For all that the Dark Arts are suposedly not taught at Hogwarts (until we and Harry are no longer in attendance there); there appears to be no obsticle to learning them there, even if you are a Muggle-raised student who had no knowledge that the wizarding world even existed before being handed your Hogwarts letter, are still under supervision for underage magic and exiled to Muggle Hell over the summer breaks. Tom Riddle certainly managed to do so under those circumstances.

It is apparant that the Dark Arts are not only not illegal but that Harry and his friends seem to be picking up bits of them at Hogwarts. As Tom Riddle certainly did. Severus Snape’s homemade schoolboy hexes are even refered to in conversation as “Dark magic”. Although that may merely have been shorthand for “unauthorized magic”, which is not the same thing and not a satisfactory explanation in itself.

It also seems to make no sense at all if Dark magic has a specific nature. Excuse me, but how did Snape’s “Dark” hexes differ from James and Sirius’s equally vicious and painful hexes?

You know, James Potter, the boy who abhored anything to do with Dark magic. So he apparantly picked up a fledgeling “Dark wizard’s” spells which were running merrily through the school and used them publicly for the general entertainment of the student body? Yeah, that guy.

Apparantly Sirius Black was an even bigger hypocrite than we had already figured out for ourselves. And so was his best buddy James. Unless they were simply unable to tell the difference. (“I see no difference.”)

It’s obvious to any reader that the whole Black family had been Dark Arts practitioners for centuries. But they apparantly never had a Death Eater in the family until Bellatrix finished Hogwarts in ’70 (unless Walburga’s younger brother Cygnus managed to get swept up in the movement via his wife’s family).

Sirius’s great-great grandfather had been appointed the Headmaster of Hogwarts. His grandfather had apparantly bought himself an Order of Merlin, from a Ministry that was perfectly aware of who and what he was, and what kind of magic he practiced. In fact, the family’s general attitudes regarding the Dark Arts must have been pretty widely known, for they made no attempt to conceal them. But as long as they were trying to push their nasty little agendas (whether Isolationist or Supremacist) through the approved, legal channels, no one but Harry seems to have come straight out and called them Dark wizards. And Harry is clueless.

By OotP it was beginning to look very much as if both Dark and Light magic are used indiscriminately throughout the wizarding world, and in general parlance “Dark wizard” seemed not to refer to a practitioner of the Dark Arts. It meant merely a wizard who breaks the law, and consequently, signified no more than the wizarding equivalent of “felon”. A bit of confusion no doubt fostered by the fact that the DMLE employs a team of Aurors whose duty it is to aprehend both.

It sounds a remarkable lot as though “Dark magic” is turning out to be a term like “computer memory” where you have to figure out from the context whether the speaker is refering to RAM or hard disk space.

This entire series of essays, in both collections, is an attempt to weave a more sturdy framework in which such contrasting interpretations of Magic itself may be contained, without destroying each other, or too greatly compromising a workable interpretation of their mutual culture. Ms Rowling, who is certainly capable of spinning a story with real skill and some distinction, when she chooses to, does not usually weave. She makes macramé. She does it very well.

Since about 2002 (before posting the first iteration of this collection), I have been attempting to fit the varying developments encountered within canon into at least some historical and social context consistent with what the majority of us most widely believe to have been the evolution of a “Western”-style, industrialized society, such as the one that Rowling presents as the widely-observed mundane, or, rather, Muggle, late 20th century norm, for the use of fanfic authors, or for the entertainment, of readers who enjoy this sort of thing. What we have been shown regarding magic in wizarding society in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince finally suggests that the whole attempt is probably futile. But I am not quite yet prepared to abandon it.

However; a great deal of the following material necessarily has been downgraded from the status of “perfectly reasonable theory” to merely being “not absolutely contradicted”. It may continue to recieve incremental revisions. But these are in the process of tapering off. With the closing of the official canon any further development will depend upon erratic small personal epiphanies, which a impossible to antcipate.

In keeping with Muggle society as shown in Rowling’s work, I am focusing most closely upon that segment of a modern world which composes a predominantly English-speaking society.

VI. Regarding the Study & Practice of the Dark Arts:

Despite the fact that a number of Dark materials and spells have been stated to be unlawful in the wizarding world of Great Britain, or at the very least closely regulated; there has never been any indication in canon that the Dark Arts in toto are actually illegal.

The fact that the Dark Arts are openly taught at Durmstrang serves as a strong counter-indication that the Dark Arts are more probably regarded as an accepted branch of Magical study, at least throughout Europe. Any (originally I presumed heavy, but I was evidently wrong) regulations on the practice of the Dark Arts are indicative only of their potential for harm both to the community and, it seems reasonable to postulate, to its practitioners as well.

The continuing, openly acknowledged, existence of Knockturn Alley as a supplier of Dark Arts information and materials has served as a hint as early as CoS that the Dark Arts are not under a blanket interdiction even in Great Britain. What is more, with the publication of OotP the depiction of the history and traditional attitudes of the Black family served as a wake-up call that quite openly Dark wizards remain respected members of British wizarding society to the present day, just so long as they break no Ministry law and continue to support the legitimate wizarding government.

By the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince it was made broadly evident that so far as we could tell, in JKR’s interpretation, Dark magic, even the Dark Arts are absolutely all over the map and that Harry and his friends are actually learning scraps of them, along with everything else right there in Hogwarts, with Dumbledore’s approval. In fact as one works one’s way through HBP, it begins to look very much as if a "Dark wizard" has been downgraded and redefined as merely a wizard who breaks the law.

Which makes complete gibberish of the statement put into Draco Malfoy’s mouth in GoF, where, if you remember, Malfoy states that his father had wanted to send him to Durmstrang where he would be taught “proper” Dark Arts rather than just Defense.

All of which begs the underlying question of exactly what the Dark Arts are, and how they differ from what is generally referred to by the fans of the series as “Light” magic.

At this remove it is impossible to determine what Rowling thought she meant by it. For she has spectacularly failed to follow up with any explanation that would read as either comprehensive, or coherent, or indeed, that would “read” at all with what she has actually shown us.

It is possible that this is another of her original intentions which was shot off in the great, post-GoF revision to the original storyline. It is also possible that, in pursuit of some experiment of her own, she has deliberately held off from giving us any explantion on the subject, whatsoever. Maybe we are supposed to not know.

Or, as it now appears to be the case; Sse really did not understand at the outset that she was writing a fantasy series, and that in a fantasy series you need to actually draw the line for the purposes of the world you are creating. You cannot merely port over what “everyone” knows from this one. That world, simply does not work like this one. It has magic in it. And magic requires observable rules.

Most fans tend to take the rather crude approach of defining Dark magic solely according to the “intent” of the caster. (The Randall Garrett aproach. “Dark magic is composed of symbolism and intent”.) Or of defining it according to whether the end result can be determined to be either passive or aggressive, friendly or hostile, nurturing or exploitive.

The very blackest of Dark magic in HBP is stated to be the splitting of one’s own soul in order to create a Horcrux, not only because an act of murder is required to facilitate it, but because the soul is supposed to be left intact, and to split it is “against nature”, indeed is skirting upon blasphemy. This explanation on the face of it, leaves a lot to be desired. Things like logic and rationality for example. To say nothing of a coherant “moral compass”.

I have begun to suspect that this definition has been overly simplified. To the point of rendering it into gibberish, in fact.

Excuse me, but if anyone who has committed a murder has split his soul, then the “supreme act of evil” has already been done. Without creating anything remotely like a Horcrux. Committing a murder in itself apparantly does not do that.

Any Auror who has ever killed a suspected DE has killed someone. Are Aurors then to be considered inherently, or potentially evil? Casting AK at another creature which possesses a soul is likely to have the same effect upon your own soul, whatever your justification. So why does the creation of a Horcrux take all of this to a higher level? Is it really the murder, which splits the soul that is the act of evil, or is it the separation of the detached fragment into an external housing? Clearly it is the separation of one fragment from the rest of the group that actually creates the Horcrux, appears to cause the observed physical changes, and diminishes the soul of the wizard who does it. From all of the information available (what there is of it) it does not appear that it is possible for such a wizard to ever get that bit of soul back. Even if a wizard who has killed another person and has not created a Horcrux from that act might, with sufficient remorse, manage to heal the rent in his soul produced by that killing.

So is the real abomination the comitting of murder, or of deliberatly choosing to diminish one’s own soul?

And if performing acts, the result of which are “against nature” is the significator of the very worst sort of Dark magic, how does one justify the performance of any sort of magic? How “natural” is it to cause a pineapple to sprout legs and dance across the table?

No. I’m afraid this “official explanation” is a piece of subjective relativism beyond the bounds of morality, ethics, principle, or any kind of common sense. A certain degree of simplification for the purpose of rendering your message accessible to 9-year-olds may be unavoidable, but this is reducto ad absurdism in spades. It completely undermines any serious attempt to transmit any sort of a coherantly moral “message”. The author has just shot herself in the foot.

There is absolutely no question but that the spellcaster’s intent matters in the Dark Arts — quite possibly a great deal more so than in “Light” magic. But I contend that this is an insufficient distinction on its own. What this approach boils down to is that it only becomes Dark magic if you “mean” to do harm with it. By this sort of criterion one could claim to be justified in casting Imperius left and right in order to control people’s behavior, absolutely convinced that it is for their own good. I rather doubt that the Ministry of Magic would agree to interpret one’s actions according to that criterion. And for the average wizarding citizen to cast Crutiatus or AK at someone “Because they’re bad.” is unlikely to be an accptable reason either.

Nor do I believe that the Dark Arts would continue to remain legal, even if far more heavily regulated than they apparantly are after all these uncounted centuries if all the Dark Arts had ever amounted to was magic that was designed expressly for the purpose of exploitation or of causing harm. And, by every indication that we have been given in the books, the Dark Arts, in general, do, indeed, appear to be legal. Indeed, it has become evident that they are not only legal, they are pervasive. Tom Riddle learned them right under his instructors’ noses at Hogwarts.

Nevertheless, for a long time I also believed that in any sort of a viable society, anything as potentially dangerous as the Dark Arts has got to be at least as heavily regulated as, say, Apparating.

Apparantly in that regard also, I was wrong. There appear to be no regulations applied to the study of the Dark Arts whatsoever.

Another closely related issue is the apparant readiness of Dark wizards to go “rogue”. The identification and apprehension of “Dark wizards” is stated as being one of the primary duties of an Auror. From which we may conclude that, so long as a team of Aurors are employed by the Ministry in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, it can be assumed that it is generally understood by the Ministry of Magic that there are a good many Dark wizards known to be out there practicing at any given time. And that tracking down those that are practicing outside the Ministry parameters, illegally, or those who have lost control of their experiments will occupy a significant percentage of the Ministry Aurors’ time and skills.

The fact that Aurors are, by the simplest defintition, employed to aprehend lawbreakers in general, no doubt contributes also to the pervasive confusion of both reader, and the wizarding public itself as to whether a Dark wizard is merely a lawbreaker, or the practitioner of a specific class of magic. It is rather difficult to regard Willy Widdershins or Mundungus Fletcher as fitting the mould of “dangerous Dark wizards”.

If that’s what you are using as your measuring stick, it’s small wonder Tom Riddle rates so high.

With the release of HBP and the (somewhat indignant) realization that “Dark wizard” usually seems to translate into the wizarding equivalent of miscreant, I doubt that anyone blinks and gasps when an Auror, in the course of his or her duties, apprehends a Dark wizard. There might be a line or two in the Prophet, but the Auror is regarded as only doing his job. That, after all, is what Aurors are for. To catch and neutralize dangerous, Dark wizards so the rest of the community doesn’t have to.

(Note: the Department of Magical Law Enforcement employs both Aurors and Hit Wizards. While is is tempting to conclude that the Hit Wizards are the equivalent of the regular police, or, possibly, the SWAT team, and that the Aurors serve as the equivalent of the Detective division, this has never been confirmed in canon.)

My inital interpretaion, which I’ve stated publicly, in more than one forum, over the past three years was that the Dark Arts were probably heavily regulated, but that only a comparatively short list of specific materials and/or spells are actually illegal.

I am now inclined to believe that while the Dark Arts seem not to be regulated at all, the same consideration of there being a short list of specific spells and materials which are indeed illegal is nevertheless the case.

I have also stated that I believed that these specific spells and materials are probably illegal for a number of different reasons. Some, because of their extreme potential for harm to others, or due to their inherent violation of “human (or at least sentient Beings’) rights”. Others may be illegal due to their unacceptably high potential for harm to their caster, and some — particularly such materials as proscribed Potion ingredients, because de facto illegal acts are necessary in order to obtain them.

In the past, I also suggested, although it was nowhere confirmed in canon, that there was probably a considerable bureaucratic overlay pertaining to the legitimate study and practice of the Dark Arts. Given that what we had been shown of the Ministry of Magic depicts it as a bureaucracy run wild, I thought that this was at least a tenable hypothesis. I no longer believe this to be an accurate reading of the situation.

I do still contend that this is one of several alternatitive tenable hypotheses if one attempts to postulate a society in which the society actualy manages to function. But there is nothing that we have been shown to date which would defintely support that particular interpretation. We have been shown almost no regulations upon Dark magic whatsoever, until it crosses the line and conflicts with a specific wizarding law.

My own take on the subject of the Dark Arts, and one which I still believe allows for all of the multiple viewpoints which we have seen within canon — yes even in HBP and DHs — is that the Dark Arts are an older branch of Magical study itself, accessing magic in a form that is wilder, more organic, inherantly chaotic, and far less amenable to human control, and that this class of spells were only formally defined as the Dark Arts after a later, more stable, less dangerous process of performing magic (i.e., “Light” Magic, aka: “modern wizardry”) was developed — from them. And that their somewhat ominous-sounding name is chiefly due to their association with the last historical period in which they were uncontested and unchallenged, which is to say, the “Dark” Ages. (This was a fairly brief period, historically. The information “blackout” from which the era takes its name took place comparitively late. There is ample information regarding events among the various cultures of Antiquity.) Indeed, the major reason that the Dark Arts are “dark” is because it is impossible to fully classify and control them.

Under this reading; up to, and until nearly the end of the Dark Ages, virtually all magic was “Dark” magic. Modern wizardry was only developed or formalized around the beginning of what has since come to be referred to as the “Middle” Ages, over which period this newer and safer process of conducting and controling magic was gradually applied to an ever wider range of the spells actually performed on an everyday basis and was eventually adopted as the primary method of working magic by nearly all formally trained witches and wizards. Such a transition in the way magic was taught and used would have taken several generations.

In short that “Light” magic, aka; modern wizardry, is essentially domesticated magic. Or, as it is more commonly referred to; “wizardry”. Hogwarts is a school which teaches witchcraft, and wizardry.

According to this reading, the chief problem with the Dark Arts isn’t that they necessarily are inherently “evil”, it is that they are inherently, and inordinately chaotic, and, consequently, unacceptably perilous. Dabbling with the Dark Arts is the magical equivalent of playing Russian roullette.

Particularly in comparison with the “wizarding” equivalents which have widely superceded them across much of general “wizarding” society. Clearly these “Dark” Arts are more dangerous — both to the community as a whole, and to the individual wizard — than any form of conventional domestic magic. By the standards of modern wizardry, even the results produced by the Dark Arts are probably sometimes also unacceptably unstable and inadmissably erratic. But the historical significance, and the place in the continuum of Magical development of the Dark Arts is unquestionable. It ensures that many, if not most, of the current spells used in modern wizardry must have been originally developed from them. And, if this is the case, the study (if not necessarily the practice) of the Dark Arts cannot readily be abolished, since a grounding in this particular branch of study is still the basis for much of the wizarding world’s research in developing modern, reliable magical processes from older, Dark Arts root forms. Rendering this particular issue into a perpetual “balancing act” in which all of wizarding society is eternally engaged.

And not all of the spells which comprise the body of “wizardry” are mild or harmless, either. Rather a lot of them are curses, and some of them are pretty brutal. But they are consistent, and reliable, and they do not try to morph into something else when you try to cast them.

Once we apply this contextual lens of viewing the Dark Arts as an earlier stage of Magical development, and the raw material from which spells in general are created, to the question of just what the Dark Arts are, we start seeing a very much more nuanced and sophisticated reading of the ongoing conflict between the current forms of “wizardry” and Dark magic as they are shown in canon. Including a possible explanation for why it seems to be specifically the wizards whose families have the longest history of wizarding tradition who appear to be most likely to gravitate toward the older forms.

Or at least to be the ones most likely to tolerate or encourage an interest in such study in their young.

Which may be an indication that this interpretation may be erring slightly in the oposite direction. For while, under this definition, domestic magic would be clearly amenable to an almost unlimited degree of customization and modification, your true “spell hackers” would almost universally tend to be Dark wizards.

Although that could concievably explain the prestige of the Blacks.

For that matter, using this interpretation as a reference point, even when dealing with the three Unforgivable curses, one might with comparatively little effort postulate perfectly “legitimate” usages (even if only according to the mindsets of far less enlightened times) for all three of them, if one transposes the context to a period when “western civ” and magical technology were at a far more primitive level. That these curses operate in the manner of Dark magic seems indisputable in canon, for the point has been repeatedly made that the caster’s intent is a critical element in the casting of them. But that their original purposes were intended exclusively for evil is open to some debate.

In a period when a man quite literally, and quite legally, “owned” his wife and children, to the point that he had the power of life and death over them, Imperius would have been a wizarding husband or father’s right. It must have looked like a far more gentle and kindly solution to family friction than that of a Muggle neighbor whose wife and children regularly sported visible injuries, or one who would go so far as to execute an adult or adolescent child who refused to honor his authority. It was a solution which was accessible to any wizard who happened to own a family. Such “ownership” would have been as little questioned as the ownership of a House Elf is in modern times.

In North Africa, a form of desert hunting which required only a direct line of sight without the range limitations of a sling or bow, or — whether in North Africa or elsewhere — a means of providing a quick, merciful death on the killing floor of the slaughterhouse, or the sickroom, in the case of incurable illness or irreparable injury hardly needs justification. We also have no reason to believe that the Avada Kadavra curse was originally developed with the intent to kill humans. (I specify North African desert hunting in recognition that the AK curse, unlike the two other Unforgivables does not have its incantation’s roots in Latin, but is of Arabic, or Aramaic, origin.)

Even Cruciatus might have once served a useful purpose in sorting the deeply unconscious from the dead in the aftermath of battle, poisoning or magical catastrophe. Affecting the whole nervous system, as it does, anything still alive cannot help but react to it. Even when deeply unconsious.

In some cases, centuries ago, such a curse’s shock to the system might have even been regarded as legitimately therapeutic. It seems hardly more inhumane than many other processes which unquestionably lurk in the corners of modern medical history. For that matter, we were given a big hint in OotP that the history of medi-magic is probably every bit as brutal as that of Muggle medicine. But Cruciatus certainly is not used for any of these purposes nowadays, nor can it be sustained by such semi-benign intentions. Which may nevertheless have been the original intentions. The sadistic intent which is applied by the curse’s modern users to prolong its effect may even be a deliberate perversion of it’s original purpose.

V. The Development of Magic as a Course of Study:

Insofar as a postulation on the order in which Magic and Magical studies may have developed; the following is my own reading of the subject. I am an inveterate incrementalist and the collection has already undergone multiple expansions and reinterpretations. If something is not totally contradicted and rendered instantly obsolete, it will probably, over time be subject to further tweaks or refinements as I think sections of it over in context with points that others may call to my attention, as I have further insights of my own, or, sometimes, as I reconsider the implications of just what I have said. Occasionally adjustments may be made as off-canon auxilary information comes up in interviews, or on the official website. Although, given Rowling’s recent performance of flip-flopping, and her failure to come up with an explanation and stick to it for two days running, I am more likely to discount any such further information as she might choose to give us in interviews.

The underlying concept of the following was initally formulated after the release of HP and the Goblet of Fire, but the publication of HP and the Order of the Phoenix did not present any significant contradiction to the general principles explored below, and the release of HBP, although it was not particularly helpful, did not produce any absolute contradictions either. Nor, for that matter di the release of DHs. More recently I am very much indebted to a LiveJournalist who goes by the name of Sollersuk for her exceedingly welcome corrections to a number of the inaccuracies regarding early history which had infested the previous versions of this essay and some others in the collection.

As a starting point: I base all speculation upon the underlying premise that “Magic” (i.e., “wild” or “Dark” magic) is a form of energy; a non-sentient force, such as electricity, and that some minerals, plants, species, and individuals within specific species are natural conductors of this energy.

Just about anything on either the material or spiritual “planes” can be affected by Magic, properly focused and directed, but only these natural conductors are able to constrain this force into a deliberate form, or to direct it to a specific end. Depending on the circumstances and the actual materials involved in such conduction this may be accomplished either consciously, or otherwise.

In fact, it is possible that not only is Magic an energy “like” electricity, but that these two forms of energy require some of the same “frequencies” for their transmission. This would explain why electronic equipment fails to operate in environments with extremely high levels of ambient Magic, such as Hogwarts. The magical energies are already occupying the bandwidth necessary for the electrical impulses to be transmitted from the batteries to the device. Away from such environments, Magic and electricity will both be operable in proximity, but it is possible that there may occasionally be random interference between the two under extrordinary conditions.

I am limiting my focus to the development of Human Magic. Human Magic has developed along different routes and, upon the whole, I suspect, at a later date than the Magic of most other sentient magical species, or “Beings”. Human magic, in fact, appears to be a biological aberration within its species, which may explain why human wizards are so likely to be adversely affected by magical energies in their more chaotic forms. Unlike all other magical peoples, only a very small percentage of humans are able to conduct magic. Something on the order of 0.005% of the population. Human beings, in general are not a magical species.

It must also be noted that until quite recently, say the last 200 years or so, not all persons who are actually capable of conducting Magic necessarily found themselves doing so to any significant degree. Many wizards and witches prior to the development of monitoring or locational devices such as the charmed quill currently used by Hogwarts Academy to identify and record the births of magical children, lived out apparantly normal lives scarcely distinguishable from those of the rest of their social groups (although they would have been occasionally plagued with “odd happenings” in their vicinity).

When such a witch or wizard’s ability to conduct magical energies remained latent, or if, with practice and dicipline, it could be sustained at a very low level, dissapating the build-up of such energies, their survival rates within these groups were typically neither greater nor less than those of their non-conductive counterparts, given that they were not exposed to either the dangers nor the full benefits to which their natural conductivity would have otherwise entitled them. Under most conditions the ability to disapate these energies harmlessly would have been a considerable advantage for survival past the age of puberty.

Unfortunately, while magical conductivity appears to be inherited, the ability either to disapate the energies so generated is not. The accidental magical “breakthroughs” commonly observed among juvenile wizards are due to resistance to the energies that their systems are attempting to channel. Eventually the buildup of such energies is released suddenly, and explosively, much as in a sneeze. While such breakthroughs are typical, extreme breakthroughs of this sort are not universal, and there is reason to believe that in a minority of such children whose breakthroughs are more moderate (perhaps 20% or so) the young wizard — who might understandably find such breakthroughs alarming — eventually learns to regulate the channeling of such energies, disapating them at a very low level, by the time he leaves the toddler stage. Such a dissapation of the magical energies has the side efrfect of eventually leaving the child without enough of a reservoir of magical energy to be able to cast spells.

Such children appear to have have unconsiously found some manner in which to expell the generated energies which escapes general notice, or have found some way to keep the channel open to the pont that the energy trickles through them at a steady enough pace that it does not ever build up to the point that it needs to be expelled in a burst. Such children may find it difficult to actually “connect to” and utilize their magic once the time comes to learn how to control it.

Other children, particularly ones with a great deal of such magical energy to work wit