Chapter 79 - Dark Arts

More days in the academy passed and during those days, after asking the elders and some amount of reading in the library, I was finally able to get a brief idea on a field of magic that I had been planning to start studying for many years but just didn't find the time - The Dark Arts.

The belief that dark magic is evil magic in Britain and rest of Europe is wrong. India and many other countries including some ICW countries do not believe that magic could be differentiated into good and evil magic. They believe and I agree with their opinion that magic is inherently neutral. Only based on the intent of the user can the magic performed by them be termed as either good or evil.

Even the vilest rituals and curses which are termed as dark magic in Europe have proved themselves useful in many scenarios in the past where they have been used to perform good deeds. In one case a ritual which required a human sacrifice was used to heal the people of an entire village of an untreatable and contagious disease. In another case to treat her child who was suffering from a terminal illness, a mother used her life as sacrifice to brew a potion that could treat her child. Hence in the end, the elders of the magical communities decided that they could not simply differentiate magic into good or evil magic.

But later it was found after many observations that even though the vile potions, spells and rituals could be used for good things they had side effects on the casters. Repeated usage of the kinds of spells like the vile rituals and curses, led the casters to losing their sanity little by little until they eventually became insane and lost mental stability. This led to the elders of various communities deciding that the usage of these kinds of magic must be controlled and hence to do this the classification of magic was necessary.

To make differentiating the various spells and rituals easy for the elders, the wizards possessing mage sight came forward and provided their help. These people were easily able use their sight and help the various elders categorize the different spells, potions and ritual into two categories: The magic that had side effects on the user and the magic that did not. All they had to see was whether the core of the caster gained black spots after performing a spell or making a vile potion. With the information provided by the mage sight possessors, the Elders were able to deduce the dark black spots in the magic core were responsible for the people losing their sanity. The more dark black spots a person had, the more they were in risk of losing their sanity.

After more experiments they were able to find that the greater the will power of a person the more they will be able to resist the effects of the dark spots and resist insanity that came with it. Some people did not show any signs of insanity even when their core was nearly half black while some became insane after a few black spots appeared in their magic core.

So after many experiments and the invaluable help of people possessing mage sight, magic was finally categorized into light and dark magic. There was no grey magic but people sometimes used the term to label the dark magic used for good deeds.

Light magic consisted of the magic that did not have any side effect on the user. Almost all types of magic were included in this criteria. Some vile spells, that seemed like they were dark like the bone breaking and blood boiling curses were also entered in the light category since they did not have any side effects on the caster. Hence it could be said that all the light magic were not good magic.

Dark magic category included the various rituals and potions that required sacrifices or led to the person using them losing their sanity and humanity. The many ritual Voldemort used to increase his strength quickly belonged to this category.

The dark category also included spells that required malicious intent and dark thoughts towards the target to cast. These spells were very addicting and when used regularly without any control or restraint, led to the castor becoming a crazy lunatic. The Death Eaters were a prime example for this. The perfect example was Bellatrix Black who was said to be well mannered pureblood lady before she joined the Death Eaters. Her current state was the end result of uncontrolled use of dark magic.

The unforgivables as they are termed in the ICW countries were also added in the dark magic category. They could also not be termed as evil magic.

Two of the unforgivable curses were created by some British wizards many years back with good intentions. The Avada kedavra (AK) curse was made to give the various cattle painless and clean death. The Imperious was designed to help mentally ill wizards gain their sanity. These spells were now used for completely different purposes. The AK for easy killing and the Imperious which ironically made the victims mad when placed under it for long duration.

The Cruciatus curse which also belonged to the unforgivable category was designed as a torture spell. But unlike the other unforgivable the opposite happened here. The Cruciatus spell which was created for torture was now used in many countries to heal patients and in some cases as a defibrillator. Most of the people who have issues with their nervous system are treated using this torture curse.

The unforgivable had many side effects on the user so their usage even for good deeds was not encouraged. Also they were termed as unforgivable only in the ICW countries because their usage was banned and when caught were sentence to life time in prison. In other countries only when these spells have been used with malicious intent are the castors sentenced.

Since the Dark spells also had good uses, time was put in research for ways to remove the side effects. After many years, a way a found. A cleansing ritual was invented which when performed within 24 hours of the usage of the dark magic led to the complete removal of the side effects. The ritual completely removed the new dark black spots that were produced in the user's magic core after using the dark magic. The only bad thing about the ritual was that the ingredients for the ritual were costly and there was a cool down period of 3 days before another cleansing ritual could be attempted. Hence this ritual could not be used all the time and due to this dark magic could not be properly used.

This was not a major problem for me and I was satisfied with just this since the ritual provided me a safe way to learn and practice dark magic.

Coming to the topic of Horcrux which is an important part of the Harry Potter universe, the information about it was openly available in the academy library. I was confused at first when I saw this but after reading the information in the books and learning why this was done, I agreed with their reasoning for openly releasing the information. After reading the books on the topic, no sane person would ever be interested in making an Horcrux.

An Horcrux is a soul anchor which is made by using an act of emotionless murder to split the soul into two halves and storing the soul to a magical artifact. The artifact acts as the soul anchors and prevents the soul of the person from passing on to the afterlife on event of death. The soul anchor does its job till the soul inside it dies on reaching its fated natural death.

Coming to the other disadvantages of using this failed method.

It does not allow the person to increase his natural lifespan. Also due to the fact that the soul has been fractured, none of the rituals that can be used to increase natural lifespan will work for the person.

While creating the soul anchor, the individual splits his soul which leads to the individual sacrificing parts of his personality. The individual will become literally incapable of love or happiness or some other personality trait. This will lead to the person eventually becoming a psychopath.

Another disadvantage is that, on death, the individual will become a wandering soul without a physical body. Rituals must be used by a trusted helper, which is not always available, to create a physical body for the individual before the soul could possess the body and be reborn.

One more disadvantage is that the Horcrux only protects the soul and not the physical body. So to kill the person all one has to do is cut of the person's limbs and keep him prisoner until his natural death of old age.

All these disadvantages make this method more trouble than it is worth and no sane person will be interested to try it. Thus this information was freely available in the library to discourage everyone from trying the foolish method. Some other methods also had detailed information but they were also ineffective methods. To my disappointment, the information about the effective methods like the philosopher stone was not openly available in the library.