Vampires in the Hp Universe- Help please?

[sophineclaire]

No: HPFGUIDX 46127

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Ellen & John Anglin" <anglinsbees at y...> wrote:
> Hello
> Been thinking about vampires recently, 


Haven't we all?? Well, maybe just me....


> 
> About all that we do know is; 
> 
> Garlic repels them somehow- Neville was confused by this while 
> writing his Paper in POA.
> 
> They buy Blood Flavored Lolliepops at Honeydukes. (POA) This 
> suggests to me that they might be slightly more accepted in Magical 
> Society than, say, werewolves- we don't hear of anyone marketing 
> anything to them.
> 



Interesting points, but we may actually know more about Vampires then
 we think, it all depends on who you're basing your idea of Vampires
on: The literal sense, the folkloric view, The Bram Stoker sense, or
the "Pop Culture" mythos.
 
( I attended a lecture on Dracula presented by Dr. Elizabeth
Miller, a Dracula scholar, a couple of weeks ago and got a free book
so what I'm about to write comes from her scholarly studies, not mine)

In a literal sense, a vampire is someone who drinks blood. Pure and
simple. There are actual documented cases of 'Vampirism'.

In Folklore, Vampire-like creatures have existed for a long time.
However, they were not handsome aristocrats, but corpses, often of
those who committed suicide.

In the Stoker sense, Here are Dracula's Traits....

 He is potentially immortal and survives on the blood of other.
He has the strength of twenty men and can shape-shift into the form
of a wolf or a bat.  He can appear as mist or elemental dust and has
no reflection in a mirror. He casts no shadow and has hypnotic power
over his victims. He can turn victims into vampires.
He may not enter a household unless he is invited in and he loses
his supernatural powers during daylight hours. He must sleep on the
soil of his native land. He can cross running water only at the slack
or the flood of the tide. He is repelled by garlic and holy symbols
(crucifix, holy wafer). He can be destroyed by driving a stake
through his heart and decapitating him ( though in the end he is
killed with Knives).

Notice that Stoker never said that Dracula COULD NOT go out in
sunlight. In fact, he would walk around during the daytime, but with
diminished powers.

In the Hollywood sense, Vampires cannot go out during the day and
they're quite hot. The modern version of Vampires, as exemplified by
the likes of Anne Rices Brood, as being handsome and upper-class stems
from a story by Lord Byron's doctor, John Polidori, called "The
Vampyre" ( It was actually a fragment that Byron had discarded *, and
Polidori reworked. Many think that the story was written by Byron.
Even Goethe claimed it to be Byron's best work). The Vampire, as we
know today, is actually based on Lord Byron.

 In the end, it all depends on what JKR is basing her knowledge of
vampires on, or if she is even creating her own sort of vampiric
race/culture.


 For more information, go to Dr. Elizabeth Miller's site:
 http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/

I would like to reiterate that all information in this post is based
on Dr. ELizabeth Miller's work and research and not my own.

 -Sophineclaire
    ( So Snape can go out in the sun......)

*This story, which preceeded Dracula, was the result of a challenge
that Byron put towards Percy and Mary Shelley. Another story that came
out of the challenge was Frankenstein.