The Deaths of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

[Kelly Grosskreutz]

No: HPFGUIDX 70320

Here is what I was working on when I was asking for additions to the list I
submitted earlier today.  Please discuss to your heart's content.  I am
breaking it up by book so it does not turn into one super-long email no one
will want to read.  This was all spurred by the death of Sirius and how we
are supposed to accept that he is dead without a body.  I am one of those
who has a problem with believing someone is dead without us seeing a body.
It promted me to take a closer look at the other deaths in the Potterverse.
One thing I realized on giving a quick thought on this is that we are told
of a lot of deaths, but we don't actually see a body or see them die.  This
leads me to conclude that, in this series, we have to believe a person is
dead if there is evidence that another character in the series at one time
has seen the body or witnessed the death.  Today I decided to look at each
person we have been told has died throughout the series and analyzed how
truly dead they are.  After all, we have had Peter Pettigrew and Barty
Crouch Jr.  What's to stop this sort of thing from happening again?  So,
without further ado:

THE DEATHS OF HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S/SORCERER'S STONE

           JAMES AND LILY POTTER - Could also be called the Most Discussed
Death. People are unsure about the circumstances, all the events leading up
to it, even if they were truly Lily and James. What do we have as proof that
they perished, and that the deceased are who we are told they were?
First, we have plenty of characters who say they are dead. Sirius, Hagrid,
and Dumbledore all verify it. Hagrid was first on the scene. In the books,
he says he pulled Harry out of the ruins. He never mentions dead bodies, but
he says they are dead. Sirius showed up at the house not much later. He got
to see the house and the scene around the area, and even had the time to
take a closer look once Hagrid left with Harry. Sirius, one of James's best
friends, has no doubt in his mind they are dead.
Granted, neither Hagrid nor Sirius ever says anything about looking upon any
bodies, but in my mind, that is the only way they could say without any
doubt at all in their minds that James and Lily were dead. Sirius, in
particular, would be looking for any slender glimpse of hope that either
might live, and if he hadn't seen a body, he'd be going on about how maybe
they escaped to this day. Therefore, I conclude that there were bodies
there, and Hagrid and Sirius saw them.
Dumbledore also says they are dead. I am unsure exactly how he came to that
conclusion. The two obvious ones are that either Hagrid told him what he'd
seen when he went to the house, or Dumbledore visited there himself. Knowing
Dumbledore, I can see him going to the house himself at some point, just to
see what had happened with his own eyes. And we can't forget that he thought
highly of James and Lily. He seemed to like them, and their death was a blow
to him on more than one level.
All of this goes towards how we can be pretty sure that two people died
there, but how do we know for sure that it was James and Lily? Some people
are backing a theory that has even seen its time in print in Unofficial
Harry Potter guides, and that theory is that James and Remus Lupin switched
places at the last minute. Meaning that the man who died that fateful night
was Remus Lupin, and James Potter is the one whom everyone is now calling
Lupin.
Here are some arguments to debunk this theory. First, we can be sure they
weren't using Polyjuice Potion. As we have seen many times, Polyjuice Potion
has to be taken every hour on the hour or else the drinker will turn back to
his/her normal appearance. Going back to Lupin assuming James's identity (I
presume with Lily's knowledge), and saying that Lupin had taken a swig two
seconds before Voldemort came knocking at the door, I would think that the
bodies weren't removed from the wreckage immediately. People kept showing
up, the Muggles probably got involved somehow, and there'd be a lot of
snooping around and marking where things were lying before the bodies were
finally taken away. Probably longer than an hour. And no one mentioned that
the male they pulled out of the wreckage was not the same male that was
originally found to be there. Another thing that could back this up is my
belief that Dumbledore showed up at one point. I don't think he showed up
right away since he didn't encounter Sirius or Hagrid there. He never
mentioned the body transforming. Granted, this could be something he has
chosen not to tell yet so as not to compromise James lurking around as
Lupin, but more on this in the next paragraph.
Which brings me to my second reason why James and Lupin didn't switch. Lupin
is a werewolf. He transforms into a wolf at the full moon. Somehow, I don't
see James and Lupin so intent on switching identities (through some other
method than Polyjuice Potion) that James would ask Lupin to bite him or see
to it that Lupin did it. Nor do I see Lupin ever agreeing to inflict his
curse on another living soul, especially on a man he calls friend. Unless
James was bitten by another werewolf, I don't see this happening. Nor do I
think he could change himself into one, since Lupin's transforming into a
wolf seemed painful, longer, and more complicated than Sirius's changing
himself into a dog.
The final reason I have for why this did not happen is shown us at the end
of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Voldemort and Harry duel and cast
spells at the exact same moment. Their wands join. Harry ends up forcing
Voldemort's wand to regurgitate all the spells it had cast for a certain
period of time. Two of the people that emerge from Voldemort's wand are
James and Lily. Yes, the book had them come out of the wand in reverse
order, but it was still James who emerged. If it had been Lupin Voldemort
had killed, even a Lupin transfigured to look like James, it would still
have been Lupin who emerged. It was James. James Potter is dead, and that's
all there is to it.


PROFESSOR QUIRRELL - The first person we actually get to know in the series
that is said to have died. The last time we see Quirrell, he is described as
shrieking terribly and trying to get away from Harry as Voldemort yells at
Quirrell to kill Harry. Harry feels his arm wrenched away from Quirrell,
then that's all he remembers until he wakes up in the hospital wing.
Dumbledore later says that Voldemort left Quirrell to die. He also says it's
a good thing he showed up when he did, because if he had been much later,
Harry himself would have died. I conclude from this that Quirrell is dead.
If Harry was close to death when Dumbledore showed up, and Harry was only
suffering the same effects that Quirrell was experiencing, then we can
conclude that Quirrell was also close to death. Voldemort, having no more
use for Quirrell, left him. It is unknown how dependent Quirrell's body was
on Voldemort being a part of him at this point, but perhaps Voldemort's
yanking himself out of his symbiotic relationship with Quirrell was enough
to push Quirrell over into death. Or maybe both Harry and Quirrell were
weakened enough by their struggle that they both would have died, but Harry
was given medical treatment and Quirrel wasn't, or Harry just received it
quicker. Regardless, Dumbledore saw Quirrell's dead body, so we can be
pretty sure we won't be seeing him again in the series.


NICOLAS AND PERENELLE FLAMEL - At the end of this book, we are told that the
Sorcerer's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone for non-Americans) has been
destroyed. The Flamels had enough elixir left to put their affairs into
order, but then they would die. We do not know how much elixir they had, or
how long they truly have left to them. We know that they will die
eventually, but won't we all? I don't think we've seen the last of these
two, and since Nicolas is a friend of Dumbledore's, there's a good chance he
might show up before this series is over.

Kelly Grosskreutz
http://www.idcnet.com/~ivanova/