To actually answer OP's question it probably has to do with how the Spell works as other's have discussed.

I think there was one theory (And I cant seem to recall if this is fanon or canon) that dark magic is inherently addicting in that you want to keep using it. So perhaps its a feedback loop that eventually when you use it too much makes you go... Bat shit insane.

 

I find that theory to be rather unsatisfactory. Not only does this copy Star Wars idea of light and dark, this also does not fit with the themes in Harry Potter.

The concept of being responsible for your own personal choice is one of the biggest driving theme in the books. To say someone is only evil because they are insane and lost control of themselves is contradicting the themes of the novels.

 

I imagine there's something that contradicts my theory on dark magic, but I always thought, in a sort of vague "not giving it too much thought" way that dark magic was a label for magic created with the sole intent of negatively affecting another human being. I imagine there must be some spell in canon that contradicts this idea though.

 

It's been said before, there are plenty of spells that are just as deadly and you can't really argue for most of them having a positive use (Entrail-Expelling Curse) and maybe it is a matter of it being obvious intent sending you straight to Azkaban.
But shouldn't the question be asked why you ever learned the Entrail-Expelling Curse in the first place?
There is no beneficial use for it so all that effort you put into perfecting it was for the express purpose of ripping out another persons' insides. Whether at the time of an altercation you were in a mood of rage or whatever excuse you make for that being a one off event it must be at-least in part considered premeditated even if not for that particular use but its use in general.
The comparison to guns works partially because of the lack of an equivalent to the stunning spell in that a taser just doesn't guarantee you protection so your acquisition of a gun could be just for self defense and then later you might lose it and snap, but with spells like that you just don't have that excuse.

 

Sure, there are probably loads of dark spells with little purpose for anything other than torture/killing/what have you--that's quite possibly the whole reason such a classification exists. The difference with the Unforgivables is that there is a factor of "meaning them" being a prerequisite of successfully casting-so there is obviously an necessary intent to cause harm/control/kill.

To be convicted of a specific crime, one must have both the intent to commit the act and to have actually committed the crime (of course, this is assuming the same approach in wizarding court, but it's essentially common sense to have those factors anyway). With the Unforgiveables, it's immediately obvious that the intent is present, so committing the act would make sense for one to immediately be charged of such a crime.

For ordinary dark magic/other basically harmful spell, however, it's possible that the perpetrator did not have an intent to harm in the process of casting it--perhaps they casted it accidentally after seeing the instructions in a book (ala Harry), or some other reason indicating a non-purposeful act. Even if the excuse is entirely BS or if there is almost no plausible involuntary cause for the usage of a particular spell, the mere lack of requirement of intent in casting a non-Unforgiveable on a human would not be enough to land an automatic conviction, in contrast with the Unforgiveables.

 

The Entrail-Expelling Curse: When an enema just won't do. NEXT!

 

I think Lord Raine has a point. In Deathly Hallows, Harry was breaking into the one place he'd been told not to break into the very first day he was introduced to the Wizarding World, standing next to a Death Eater (who he should have just stunned and obliviated anyway), and was about to steal a piece of Voldemort's soul. He was probably desperate enough to pull off the Imperius, which has been shown as the 'softest' of the Unforgivables, if you can call it that. J.K. Rowling has shown correlation between emotions and magic, so that's a plausible explanation.

And about using the curse, it's possible that the reason Avada Kedavra is so frowned upon is because it involves Soul Magic - much like the Horcruxes. While J.K. Rowling never went into details, one of the theories surrounding it is that it causes your the victim's soul to pass on to the Great Beyond or whatever the hell Rowling portrayed in DH. She did say that the spell means "let this thing be destroyed", so maybe the thing in question is the soul? This could also be the reason why Voldemort made Horcruxes - if he was hit by the so-called Unblockable Killing Curse, only a part of his soul would be destroyed, allowing him to remain alive. In fact, Voldemort's Killing Curse punched a bit of soul out of Harry's scar, now I think about it.

Since messing with the soul is thought to be the darkest of magics, which has a negative effect on the caster, perhaps it wouldn't be prudent to not use the spell?

There must be other, less damning ways to kill. Stop the heart, sever a nerve, the possibilities are endless with magic.

And as for the power behind the spell, Moody was probably referring to the fact that they weren't fully trained wizards. In POA, Lupin says that most grown wizards can't cast a Patronus, but fast forward two years and you have a group of pubescent teenagers throwing Patroni around like paper airplanes.

 

The Killing Curse kills things. Don't start talking about soul magic.

 

Most of Tue time in self-defence the thought is not "I want this person to die" but some aspect of " I want this person to not be able to hurt me/near me". That is probably the key difference between AK and any other curse you could use to defend yourself. When you use the AK, you want that person to die, period. That seems by definition contrary to self-defense (except in the affirmative "get them before they get me").

See also: Why everyone doesn't have accidental horcrux. It is not killing a person that splits your soul, but cold blooded murder.

 

I've always viewed the use of deadly force on the following scale:



That's the Force Continuum (a very basic representation) used by law enforcement agencies all over the world.

What it doesn't show is other factors to consider when deciding on what level of force to use in a situation.

Subject Factors

• Age
• Sex
• Size
• Skill Level
• Multiple Subjects/Officers
• Relative Strength

Special Circumstances

• Closeness of a weapon
• Injury, or exhaustion
• Distance from the subject
• Being on the ground
• Special knowledge
• Availability of alternative options

Now, some of these factors become very important, especially when any wand in the HP universe is a potential deadly weapon. Aurors, Hit Wizards, I imagine would abide by some sort of force continuum code. There are rules.

In heated battles, of course, your average wizard won't have time to assess which level of the force continuum he perceives the situation to be, so that's when special circumstances come into play.

So, to answer part of ray243's original questions, I don't believe that teaching a wizard (who is aware of something along the lines of the force continuum) to use the Killing Curse is any different than giving them a gun.

It does come back to intent - not intent to use the curse, but intent to understand whether it should be used based on the force continuum.

Eh.

 

I always just thought that the three unforgiveables were just something decidedly evil JK thought of pretty early, and as the series progressed and things got progressively darker and grittier, the gap between them and other spells narrowed to the point of non-existence, making the definition of them being the worst rather arbitrary because she never in-universe really made the differentiation between them and other lethal curses. I mean, AK is just a clean death really, much better than any alternatives.
I'd chalk it up to inconsistent writing due to an out of control evolving story, and if you ever really need an in-story explanation it's kind of up to you. I personally like the common crossover explanation of it being an absolute, almost conceptual, killing spell that can kill regardless of anything, including divinity. Not really notable when facing purely human or mortal foes, but when you up the ante it really shines.

 

A few hundred years ago capital punishment was the breaking wheel. If you don't know what that is then google it, because it is fucking brutal. The french implemented the guillotine as the new capital punishment. They thought it was more humane as the capital punishment should be a swift death, not a pain filled ordeal. The only reason the guillotine was made was to kill. Does that make it unethical? We already know killing is immoral. This is obvious. However, when killing is justified, whether in self-defense or capital punishment, a painless and fast method should be used. The killing curse does just that.

Now from what we have seen in canon, capital punishment would mean a dementors kiss. What kind of morals do wizards have to use a soul sucking beast that rapes your mind and feasts on your soul instead of a painless killing curse. And we know it is painless because Harry asked his ghost parents if dying hurt and they replied it was just like falling asleep.

 

Also, it was Sirius who claimed it was like falling asleep, and he died falling through the Veil of Death.

I reread the passage and I'm still not convinced that the Resurrection Stone does anything more than create figments from your perception of those that died. Short term, it might be somewhat of a consolation, but without the unique memories of the actual persons to make them really themselves, such shadows would eventually prove dissatisfying. This tracks in my head with how Cadmus Peverell reacted to his dead lover's shade.

Nothing any of them said was outside of Harry's knowledge, except for the expressions of reassurance that he was sorely wanting at that moment. The moment that he dropped it, the shades disappeared.

Back to the Killing Curse- it probably doesn't hurt for long, else victims would have been marked as having died of heart failure instead of appearing as if their life had been ended like a lightswitch being turned off. I can't recall any case where victims of the Killing Curse reappeared as ghosts or anything like it, aside from the Resurrection Stone incident with Harry.

EDIT: although we do see shades of Voldemort's victims appearing in the graveyard as a side-effect of the Priori effect, these are not independent ghosts. In fact, I saw their appearance as an indication that the Killing Curse didn't just separate soul from body, it actually captured it to some extent, making the curse more like the Dementor's Kiss. There's a problem with that- why do victims of the Kiss continue to live after their soul is consumed, whereas a victim of the Killing Curse is dead, despite the soul still being extant in the mortal plane? It's as if the body shuts down only after the soul is checked back in to the Soul Library of the Great Beyond, and until the Immortal Librarian sees a return of the soul in use, that body is still on the grid.

Add in Horcruxes plus Harry's situation and everything gets confused.

 

As my 2 cents: The entrail-expelling spell could be used to clean out a deer quite easily. It could also be used to move the stomach and intestines out of the way for a c-section.

Honestly, the whole dark/light magic thing is soooo old.

Consider episkey. It was used to heal Harry's nose, but it can be used to heal plenty of small wounds. This means the spell has an effect, but it doesn't have a specific effect. It has a general one. All spells are like this.

The Patronus carries bloody messages around. What does that have to do with the original purpose? Nothing. It's not a spell to fight dark creatues. That's a use. It's a spell to conjure an avatar of happiness.

Thus, one could conceive of millions of malignant ways of using this spell or that spell when they aren't 'dark'.

Leave the dark thing in post-fifth year fics from 2007. It belongs there.



Now, when it comes to the use of Avada Kedavra in self-defense: The question was of morality, and morality is a tricky one. Does morality come from something external? Does it come from internal rationalism? Is morality subjective or objective?

Ethically, I can answer how the wizarding society would see it and how our society would see it as an allegory of guns.

Morally? It kills people. Is that a bad thing in self-defense? You decide.

 

Heir, Entrails Expelling Curse + Deer + First Childhood Experience (Including Unnecessary Capitalisation) = a kid taking a spleen to the face. Or deer nuts. Either way...

 

If the guy attacking you is going for lethal or even just serious damage, there is no problem going lethal on them.

I say there is no problems using AK during the war. It's war, not a bow down and do things by protocol duel. The US army is entirely dedicated to the concept of overwhelming force since WW2 (atom bomb anyone?) because they know it's a us vs. them situation for the troops involved, and the tales of honorable fighting go out the window when it's your ass on the line.

The dark/light dynamic of HP was just the same old over-rehashed nonsense established long before anything modern came to the scene (Star Wars was big on this). It's just the basic good vs. evil story telling technique.

I'm sure soon after the gun was first introduced on the scene, stories were circulating among the people who didn't have them that only bad guys use them and the good guys use the more honorable bow and arrow. Hell, we just got that load of nonsense fairly recently with a lot of stories, most recent one I remember is Last Samurai. I'm sure when laser weapons are introduced, it'll be all about the dying honor of the gunslinger.

 

Meh, as far as I see it Rowling has shown 2 types of magic
Neutral: utility shit and protection
Dark: hurting people.
So light=most of the grove dark=100% of the grove(forbidden trees)
I never went pottermore so don't know about that. As far as I am concerned most dark curses actually disable your target making them die in the long run, or outright killing them. Avada kedavra unlike most curses is always spoken as far as I know and therefore (ignoring morality) is not very practical as silent casting a chain of spells is much more useful. If it CAN be silent cast it should be used.
Unless I am missing something there are no light spells, I never read about one.
And as for the moral issue if someone is going to hurt my family I will make sure that they will die and I am sure most people would agree

 

If there are no light spells, then there are no dark spells. They only exist in relation to each other as a concept.

There's nothing but neutral.

There's a million good ways to use the killing curse. I do my best to kill as few creatures in this world as possible, but when I get a bug infestation in my apartment, I wish I had a killing curse. Instead, I'm forced to put out traps, where the animals drown themselves to death.

Well, there would be better things to do, like simply using magic to transport them outside of my home, but the idea is that magic is use. Magic is change. A use is only good or bad in context.

 

In retrospect my post here was dumb, so ignore it.