What if you kill in self defence What if you believe that a person has brought about their own punishment All magic dark and light is what you make of it You are not automatically good or bad because you use one or the other So Voldemort s ritual It itself was not evil It was merely a tool a function The use he put it to was well certainly repugnant I hesitate to use the word evil even in the case of Voldemort As for transfiguration or charms you would expect it to hurt A lot Lupin s transformation s hurt him and they are to a large extent a more primeval and uncontrolled feature of transfiguration