[HPforGrownups] Re: The Basilisk Didn't Do It ( James & Lilly's ghost)

[Sherry Garfio]

No: HPFGUIDX 45058

bugaloo37 wrote:
> I believe I read someplace that book 5 is going to take up this issue 
> of why certain people become ghosts and others do not.  
<snip> 
> what kind of unhappiness are 
> we talking about here? Unhappy with current life situation (like 
> Myrtle) or simply unhappy to be dead?  IMO, I think anyone who is 
> murdered would be unhappy to be dead.  This would include Cedric 
> Diggory and James and Lily Potter.  All three of these people were 
> young and had full lifes to look forward to.  The Potters had a son 
> to raise-IMO, this qualifies as "unfinished business"

As bugaloo37 points out above, the Potters and Cedric have plenty of reason to
become ghosts, yet we do not see the Potters as ghosts (I, too, think it would
be interesting if Cedric shows up in later books as a ghost).  I wonder if a
Patronus is a form of ghost, or some kind of alternative to becoming a ghost? 
Perhaps this is how James is taking care of his "unfinished business" of
raising Harry?  Just a thought.

Marina wrote:
> That is all very nice if you're travelling between two places that are
> actually *connected* to each other by waterworks. Within a castle,
> certainly. Within a limited city neighborhood, maybe. But Little
> Hangleton is in an entirely different part of the country from
> Hogwarts. Do you really suppose there's a vast underground labyrinth
> of interconnected water pipes covering all of the UK?

I would like to point out that a basilisk is a *magical* creature.  People have
often raised the point that your typical household plumbing wouldn't be big
enough to accommodate the basilisk, and that the plumbing at Hogwarts is
probably not connected to that of a far-off town, as evidence that the basilisk
(at least the one in CoS) couldn't possibly have killed the Riddles.  But as we
have seen on many occasions, the laws of physics simply do not apply to the WW
- they have their own physical laws.  Look at Floo powder - do we really
believe that all of the fireplaces in the WW are connected in the ordinary
sense, the way the pipes in my house are connected to the pipes in all the
houses on my city's water system?  They can even connect non-WW fireplaces
temporarily, which implies that the "connections" are not ordinary physical
connections.

For the same reason, I also don't see the size of the pipes as important.  The
sink that leads to the Chamber of Secrets is normally just a sink with
normal-sized pipes, and I really doubt that many of the pipes in the castle are
large enough to accommodate the basilisk *under our physical laws*, so it must
be able to move through smaller pipes.  Granted, these are Hogwarts pipes,
which may have magical properties, but I'm more inclined to believe that the
pipes are ordinary and the snake is not.  Now, I need to finish re-reading the
series before I decide whether I believe the Riddles were killed by a basilisk
or by AK (I'm currently re-reading CoS), but I don't think anything presented
so far rules out the basilisk.

Sherry


=====
"The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers."

      -Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"

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