Nightmare Fuel / The Choices That Make Us

• An attempt to poison a pregnant Narcissa causes her to have a Longest Pregnancy Ever that is Played for Drama as she places a stasis spell on her unborn son for months to keep him from dying in the womb, while Snape seeks to help her by testing an antidote on pregnant muggle women, some of whom miscarry before he perfects it.
• Bellatrix kidnaps Florean Fortescue and uses him to test torturous security spells before having him killed simply as an afterthought after she develops a craving for ice cream after breaking out of Azkaban and decides to steal an ice cream machine to make it whenever she wants.
• In a particularly nasty Kids Are Cruel hate crime, Mulciber, Avery, and a conflicted Regulus forcibly transfigure a muggle-born classmate into a bird and then toss him into a room with a cat. He survives, but is left blind and with permanent brain damage from the cat's claws.
• Voldemort personally kills close family members of three prominent Aurors in one afternoon as they blissfully go about their days, including transfiguring one Auror's husband into a lion cub and then skewering him.
• Voldemort may have the monopoly on murdering muggles, but there are plenty of moments to show that he is harnessing a lot of ruthlessness and bigotry that already exists in the Wizarding World.
  • Orion Black thinks nothing of murdering a muggle neighbor just because Sirius played with the man's dogs and does so three whole years before Voldemort ever makes a move against the Ministry of Magic and Dumbledore.
  • Narcissa recounts a story about how, between wars, the mother and brother of a muggle-born political rival of Fudge were poisoned to send the man into hiding before he could run against Fudge, who suspected what happened but shut his eyes to it. Even worse, members of "Light" wizarding families like the Longbottoms and Goldsteins were involved in the murders themselves. The scene is a stark example of of murderously selfish ruthlessness and bigotry throughout wizarding society even in the absence of Voldemort.