[HPforGrownups] Can Ghost eat?

[Carolina]

No: HPFGUIDX 90692


Fred asked:
> The reason I ask this is, in SS/PS, chap 7 (the sorting hat), page
> 123 US, it says:
> "That does look good," said the ghost in the ruff sadly, watching
> Harry cut up his steak.
> "Can't you - ?"
> I haven't eaten for nearly four hundred years" said the ghost.
>
> Then in CoS, chapter 8, (the deathday party), page 133, it goes on
> to say:
>               Sir Nicholas De Mimsy-Porpington
>                   Died 31st October, 1492
>
> Which is 500 years since his death.
> If the year before he had not eaten for "nearly 400 years", did he
> eat during the first 100 years after his death?

He was trying to do a joke by substracting a century?  I see this very OOC for 
Nick.

You know the commonly accepted answer, that it's a flint. It is difficult to 
explain if taken at face value, so only (very wild) speculation here.

Maybe he died twice, first as human and later as vampire. He'd be the 
strangest ghost in history, but it explains eating after dying(if vampires 
die to become so, of course).

Maybe not all ghosts are inmediately aware that they are dead and he is the 
extreme case, he needed 100 years so the period he remembers as not eating is 
400 years.

Maybe ghosts can 'eat' in some sense for a given period. They usually feed of 
blood. I'm talking of two cases I recall: 
a) Japanese (the Eye) and Chinese (I believe, but I don't trust the source of 
the information very much, it is White Wolf)
b) Greek (the Golden Fleece, Robert Graves, 1944)

Silmariel