[HPforGrownups] Re: Impossible timetable/Dementor's kiss

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 38478

IGrey Wolf quotes me:
> > But, as Bernadette asks, does the WW actually *know* what happens to 
> > the victim's soul? After all, presumably no-one's come back to tell 
> > them. Do they care?
> > 
> > Eloise
> 
> No-one come's back, but many, however, *stay* after death, so all 
> wizards are acutely aware that, when the body dies, the soul can have 
> an independent existance: that of a ghost. I imagine that it's not 
> based on faith (as it happens with us RL muggles). Instead, as in most 
> fantasy books, the knowledge of what "happens after" is based on facts 
> in the Potterverse, to a point.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> 

Not really, in that I was referring about the *victim's* soul. I'm not aware 
that any of the ghosts we encounter has been kissed by a Dementor in an 
earlier existence.

But I take your point, in that the existence of ghosts in the Potterverse 
does imply that one can exist without a body. It seems pretty unequivocal 
that the ghosts we encounter do have souls; they're people who happen to be 
dead, not mere shadows, or echoes. 

But no-one else other than Dumbledore (IIRC) has talked of the 'next great 
adventure'
(I've always wondered if she got that from Peter Pan: '...to die will be an 
awfully big adventure'.), so we're not sure what they think happens to the 
soul when one dies properly, as it were. The only other hints also come from 
Dumbledore:

             'You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us?.........Your 
father is alive in 
              you Harry...................so you did see your father last 
night Harry, you 
              found him inside yourself.'

I'm not sure that helps, at all!

Eloise



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