I'm gonna go out on a limb and just say that it was a plot sort of thing used by JK to have something to make the whole good and evil issue apparent. In any case, from a fanon stand point, it really just depends, in my mind, on what ever the user thinks is good or bad or evil or whatever. >_>

Thats what I get for writing something at 12:41 AM.

 

In before the rest.

This is utter bullshit. There's no simpler way of putting it.

No one is born 'good' or 'evil', we are a product of our environment. Babies and young kids are innocent. Voldemort was not born 'evil'. He grew up in the system, which everyone knows can be extremely harsh and 'soul destroying'. A lot of people carry scars and baggage with them for the rest of their lives from growing up in the system, and not having parental influence when we are most vulnerable, which I would say is late childhood to early teens.

Tom Riddle realized quite early he was different from others. He realized that he could cause things to happen if he desired it enough. Power is addictive and corruptive, no matter what age you are. Tom knew he had power to do things others couldn't (supernatural things), and that he had a modicum of control over his peers and supervisors. He also didn't have someone (or something, such as a book on morality/philosophy) to instill morals in him. He grew up unloved and self absorbed, which led to him abusing his power, and eventually, to become the most feared dark wizard of the century.

Tom could have easily been redeemed if he had been adopted and given unconditional love, or if Dumbledore followed his instincts with what he knew about Tom (his tendencies towards theft and harming others) and took Tom under his wing, etc.

Likewise, Harry could have turned out a lot different. He could have turned out just as bad as Voldemort, or worse. Where Tom grew up as an unloved statistic of the system, Harry grew up in an abusive and hateful household, where he witnessed the worst of humanity, and was repeatedly told he was worthless and treated like a slave in his formative years. He could easily have become extremely bitter, resentful to his situation, and hateful to his relatives and the rest of the world for not taking notice of his horrible situation. He might have become more clever, self centered, manipulative, conniving, and for lack of a better word, slytherin, in order to deal with his situation. But as we know, that wasn't what JKR wanted Harry to be, or else she wouldn't have had much of a story.

The point is, both Harry and Voldemort could have turned out very differently with just a slight change of events. Their destinies weren't set in stone. As Dumbledore told Harry in HBP, Harry could have ignored the prophecy altogether and let someone else take on Voldemort and martyr themselves, but due to his pussy canon self (which was manipulated by Dumbledore to be the martyr from the start), he didn't.

I could write a lot more about this, but it's late and I'm going to bed.

 

The biggest sin of Bellatrix through the series is that she and Co tortured Longbottoms to insanity. You can call it interrogation I suppose, but I would have said she allready had it coming. Not torture everything in the sight insane as she written in many fanfics, but not quite right in the head clearly. However I can't claim I know something about people behavior in the war...

 

This is true in real life, but JKR really screwed it up with Tom Riddle, saying that he was "showing the signs of evil as early as the age of 5". Yes, he was evil at age 5. In addition, JKR has said that he turned out as he did at least partly because he was conceived under a love potion.

To Sesc: there is a problem with your theory. As I can see it, you're saying that the actual magic itself of "Dark magic" is the same as other magic, but to want to use it you need to be, for the lack of a better word, an evil person, because the magic can only be used to destroy.

However, this ignores the fact that we know that Dark magic is different in nature to other magic, since you cannot heal wounds cause by Dark magic anywhere near as easily as wounds caused by normal magic, nor mundane activities.

So there is something to the magic itself.

One way around this would be to say that this attribute of Dark magic, which makes it hard/impossible to heal, comes not innately to the spell, but from the intentions of the caster.

Say, if you cast a spell in a hateful way, then that spell will always be harder to heal than a playfully cast jinx or a mundane accident. This once again makes Dark magic part of the character of the person using the magic, not something innate to the spells themselves, but it allows for the magic to be affected by these evil intentions.

 

No, he wasn't. A child of 5 cannot be evil. A child of that age can have tendencies towards sadism or inflicting pain on other creatures, but the child does not understand what he is doing and why it is wrong. With therapy and good parenting a child showing such tendencies could easily be 'cured' and the damage could be averted before it gets out of hand and becomes permanent.

I don't care what JKR says, Tom was not evil at 5. He wasn't evil at 10. He showed all the signs of becoming evil, but like I said, the damage could have been averted if things turned out slightly differently (ie him getting adopted or Dumbledore recognizing his magical potential and tendencies towards theft and sadism, and taking him under his wing). The time when Tom became unreedemable would probably have been sometime around his 2nd - 4th years of Hogwarts when he became obsessed with the fact that he was Slytherin's Heir, and the whole blood purity nonsense he picked up by hanging around unsavory Slytherin purebloods.

 

a few words to sum the Tom Riddle discussion in this thread: Nature vs. Nurture...
Or if you want it this way: JKR vs. current DLP fandom

 

Was it really so tl;dr that you felt the need to summarize?

Anyway a query for DLP.

As has been established the Dark Arts are sperate from regular magic. And the Unforgivables are set above the Dark Arts. Is this simply because they are part of the pinnacle of the Dark Arts? Or is it something else like AK being soul magic (as I believe).

 

I'd say that this is a legal thing, not a magical thing. There are clearly Dark spells just as, if not more, destructive. Fiendfyre, for instance.

I find it extremely doubtful that the Killing Curse effects the soul, as it has nowhere near the same effect as Dementors. I think it's simply a spell that makes whoever it hits dead, like flicking a switch from "alive" to "dead".

 

A Killing Curse affects the soul only in as much as it fractures/rips the soul of the caster, the same as any other premeditated murder would. Hence, Voldemort's 'weapon' of choice when setting out to make a Horcrux.

 

All this about the dark arts twisting the users seems to be more propaganda than anything else. Most people have a strong desire to preserve their identity (at least I do), and hearing that a spell will literally corrupt and addict you, gradually changing you until you aren't exactly yourself anymore is a definite turn-off.

Sure, you need the intent to kill for the AK, but who's to say you can't dredge up the hate to kill a Death Eater? Power is power. You can torture innocent babes and homicidal maniacs just the same with the cruciatus. You can kill someone with a Banisher just as well as an AK. It's the person who makes the spell evil; they aren't inherently evil in and of themselves.

 

Eh, you just repeated what's been said in this very same thread, and countless fanfics...

 

I would have to agree with the general consensus here that the Dark Arts are mostly just spells that are particularly dangerous/harmful when used on other human beings. My personal theory is that there are two branches to what are commonly called the Dark Arts: combat spells which were once acceptable but have become increasingly regulated, and the true Dark Arts; things like necromancy and horcruxes.

I seem to recall hearing that the Dark Arts used to be much more acceptable; didn't one of the books say that they were taught at Hogwarts in the past? Also, given that Durmstrang teaches them as a regular subject and is still considered a respectable school that would also seem to indicate there is nothing inherently evil/corrupt about them.

Injuries inflicted by Dark Magic being hard to heal certainly makes sense if the Dark Arts were designed to be combat spells; what use is a combat spell that can be easily healed/reversed? Having much of combat magic classified as Dark Arts would also explain why the only combat spells we see that aren't considered Dark are designed to incapacitate or disarm rather than injure and kill.

As for the Unforgiveables, I think there's really nothing special about them as a class of magic. I agree with previous posters who said that it is not the spells themselves, but their use on a human being which is illegal; any civilized society is going to have laws against things like murder and torture after all.

As for the Dark Arts twisting/corrupting their users, I'll once more side with the majority and say that it's more often that twisted/corrupted people will tend to use the Dark Arts. Anyone who wants to use the Cruciatus curse is no innocent; from what Bellatrix said in OotP you have to be at least a bit sadistic to even make the spell work properly. By the same token, people who are regularly using spells designed to injure or kill on other human beings are generally viewed with a certain degree of worry.

 

Contemporary evidence would indicate that psychopaths are born, not raised and that sociopaths are the result of their enviroment.

I feel Tom meets the definition of psychopath more than the definition of sociopath.

 

Actually, if you look at his early life he fits the bill of a sociopath to a tee. What with the torturing animals and his view of muggles as inhuman during/after his second year. Besides, psychopaths generally don't have long term goals, or so the internet tells me. Voldemort was all about the long term.

Aekiel

 

I thought psychopaths tortured animals :/

Perhaps I got the two mixed up.

 

It's not so much the torturing but the reasons behind it. Psychopaths are typically very angry people, and take out their frustrations on those weaker than them. Sociopaths are the more detached ones; the type of people that set a cat on fire just to see what happens. Or that's what I gather at any rate.

 

Uh, actually, guys...they're the same thing.

 

No they're just commonly misinterpreted as the same thing.