OOP: Professor Binns

[Marie Jadewalker]

No: HPFGUIDX 60187

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Kadoo96801 at a... wrote:
> In a message dated 6/12/2003 1:09:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
>Kelly Grosskreutz" writes:
> 
> > Wasn't it in this book we were supposed to find out more about 
> > ghosts and what makes people become them?  If so, then I predict 
> > we will find out more about Professor Binns.  Mainly, that he was 
> > Tom Riddle's AK guinea pig.

> > Binns falls asleep in front of the staff room fire.  Riddle is 
> > wandering the school halls late one night when everyone's in 
> > bed.  He sneaks into the staff room for some reason and finds 
> > Binns sleeping.  He doesn't care much for Binns because he is 
> > boring.  He has been itching to try out AK on a living person, 
> > but has been needing the right person.  Binns is old, alone,
> > and completely unknowing.  No one will question that he died of 
> > natural causes.  He successfully AK's Binns.

[snip the rest of the Binns theory]

> > Kelly Grosskreutz
> > <A 
PoPo responded:

> Now I have doubt that Binns actually died in the staff room fire!
> 
> That brings up an interesting point....If he did die in the fire, 
> why isn't his body burned and scarred and whatnot?  Nearly Headless 
> Nick died being decappitated, and his head is still mostly chopped 
> off, and the Bloody Baron probably had a bloody death, which would 
> make him bloody...OK, so, does anyone have proof what Binns' body 
> actually looks like now (I dont have time to look...so 
> sorry)?  If it's untouched and unmarked, that would indeed mean 
> Avada Kedravra.  Interesting possibility.
> 
> PoPo

Now me: 

I think you misunderstood Kelly a bit.  Professor Binns was old, and 
he fell asleep in the staff room.  (There was presumably a fire going 
in the fireplace, but the room didn't catch fire).  When he went to 
teach the next morning, he was a ghost, and so everyone assumes he 
died of natural causes -- perhaps just old age -- in his sleep.  In 
that case, he wouldn't have any sort of markings, so it's sort of 
hard to distinguish natural death from AK.  

That said, I do think Kelly has an intriguing theory.  JK has said 
there's a reason some people become ghosts and others don't, and that 
the happiest people don't.  (Obviously, folks like Myrtle aren't too 
happy.)  But we've never seen anything that suggests Binns is 
unhappy; he enjoys teaching enough that his death didn't faze him or 
keep him from continuing.  He might have some other secret sadness 
(or maybe he's gotten over it because he's been a ghost for a long 
time).  Then again, I think Nearly Headless Nick's lack of happiness 
may be partly due to his decapitation, so I think it's possible that 
cause of death made Binns into a ghost, too.  If he's a "new" enough 
ghost to have died during the Riddle years, Kelly's suggestion has a 
lot of merit in my mind.  

~Marie