Dementors kiss

[smokyant41]

No: HPFGUIDX 41074

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "ftah3" <ftah3 at y...> wrote:

> My own opinion is based on how Harry is affected.  I don't have the 
book with me and can't quote, but when Harry is around Dementors, the 
main effect isn't that happiness is sucked out, but that the depths 
of his despair are plumbed and unhappiness is brought to the fore.  I 
think it's an important distinction.   <

Hmmm... very interesting idea :-) I try not to argue too much in 
these things, just try to bring up pieces of evidence and waffle for 
a bit. I think there's definite merit to your argument, and I get the 
sense that (correct me if I'm wrong) that you're basing it on the 
*actual* method the dementors use to feed, rather than the *effect* 
it produces in humans, and their ability to describe what's happening 
to them as the dementor is doing its thing.

If you look at the first instance of the dementor appearing (PoA5), 
there's a series of different reactions. Harry's is, obviously, the 
most detailed one; as his encounters with the dementors and the 
boggart-dementor increase, they gradually become more graphic 
(possibly because Harry's had longer to dwell on the horror of the 
memories dredged up earlier.) Ron says he feels like he'll never be 
cheerful again, Neville describes the cold (I would have thought he'd 
be almost as bad off as Harry -- his infancy wasn't much better), and 
Ginny's a shaking wreck. I think, though, that the very first 
appearance of the dementor on the train is worth dissecting:

"And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, 
slow, rattling breath, as though it were trying to suck something 
more than air from its surroundings."

There's an argument that JKR is qualifying her statement by employing 
the similie "as though it were trying to suck something more than 
air," but the notion of sucking 'more than air' is closely tied to 
both the impression produced in Lupin, Sirius, and Hagrid, and the 
mysterious mechanics of the Dementors' Kiss, by which the dementor 
sucks out one's living soul. Additionally, Lupin states that that a 
wizard who's held too long by the dementors will lose his powers (or 
the way he phrases it, it comes off as being theory rather than 
absolute truth.)

However -- ahhh, I waffle :0) -- the loss of wizarding power and 
one's soul are held to be permanent conditions, whereas that of happy 
memories is not. Sirius presumably remembers happy times with the 
Potters, and Hagrid doesn't seem to suffer from any memory loss; at 
least, there's no explicit mention of amnesia by either one, or from 
Barty Crouch, Jr. (although, to be fair, he's a little around the 
bend.) I highly doubt that the dementors would be so kind as to 
return someone's mental stuffed animals once they've taken them.

Your theory would suggest that the dementors induce a temporary 
amnesia of sorts, banishing good memories to some subconscious depth 
while dredging up bad ones. It has, I believe, better internal logic 
than the idea that happy memories are leached out of the dementors' 
victims. Still, I think the drama of the effect described -- the 
meta/physical act of sucking, emotional vampiricism centered around 
what makes the human condition tolerable (happiness, love, hope) -- 
is greater. But one should never confuse method with effect, so there 
you have it.

It must be a long day at work... I'm so noncomittal today, it's not 
even funny.

(side note: does anyone else besides me get the mental image of an 
eyeless Leech-man, a la X-Files when they're reading PoA or GoF? Or 
is it just me?)

>...the smell of baking bread to a hungry man who thought he'd 
stumbled into a deli that only served unflavored rice cakes.  <

Hey, there's nothing wrong with unflavored rice cakes. We all need a 
bit of non-flavor in our lives every now and then.

And after that, that's usually when I go out and find something 
having to do with curry and a fire extinguisher :-)

HF.