Ghosts

[blpurdom]

No: HPFGUIDX 34620

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "uncmark" <uncmark at y...> wrote:
> I was reading Harry to my niece for about the tenth time when we 
> came to Moaning Myrtle talking with Harry in Goblet. My niece 
> thinks Myrtle likes Harry and wonders if they will be friends or 
> even more. 
> 
> She wonders whether there is anything Harry can do to help her and 
> mentioned the Casper movie where ghosts moved on when they 
> completed their 'unfinished business'.  I remember similar themes 
> in several books and wondered if the theme carried on in the 
> Potterverse.
> 
> Thoughts on the subject? What would Myrtle's unfinished business 
> be? My niece thinks Harry needs to give her her first kiss. Or 
> maybe Harry needs to bring back Olive Hornby to apologize.

Olive Hornby is a good guess, but unfortunately, the Ministry 
forbade Myrtle from continuing to haunt Olive, so that's why she was 
banished to the castle.  (So, perhaps, her "unfinished business" 
will never be finished.)  

The other possibility is that since Tom Riddle was responsible for 
her death, the final fall of Voldemort would be necessary for her to 
no longer have "unfinished business."  Perhaps when Voldemort lost 
his power when Harry was a baby, she had some way of knowing that he 
wasn't really COMPLETELY gone, and so she didn't move on.  

One has to wonder, by extension, what the "unfinished business" is 
of the other ghosts.  (Actually, Nick's angst about his botched 
beheading is pretty obvious, and not ever likely to be resolved.)  
The Friar seems way too cheerful to have unfinished business, but he 
could simply be like Binns and have such an obsessive attachment to 
the activities he performed in life that he continues to perform 
them in death.  (Perhaps the Friar worked at cleaning the monastery 
in his life, and now he assists the house-elves.)  Frankly, I don't 
really WANT to know about the Bloody Baron, but of all the ghosts, I 
have the feeling that his story will turn out to have some sort of 
significance in future books....

--Barb
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP_Psych
http://schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Barb