Can Ghost seat?
justcarol67
justcarol67 at yahoo.com
Wed Feb 11 21:17:10 UTC 2004
No: HPFGUIDX 90721
"Fred Waldrop" wrote:
> I have just finished re-reading HP SS/PS for the umteenth time, and
> once more the same question has came to my mind.
> Can Ghost eat? Well, I should say, can Ghost eat for the first
> hundred years or so after they have died?
<snip>
> I haven't eaten for nearly four hundred years" said the ghost.
>
> Then in CoS, chapter 8, (the deathday party), page 133, it goes on
> to say:
> Sir Nicholas De Mimsy-Porpington
> Died 31st October, 1492
>
> Which is 500 years since his death.
> If the year before he had not eaten for "nearly 400 years", did he
> eat during the first 100 years after his death?
Carol:
I think that 400 years in SS/PS (actually 399--Sir Nick is rounding
off to the nearest ten years) is correct and 500 in CoS is a Flint.
They can't both be correct and ghosts being able to eat for the first
100 years doesn't really work as an alternative explanation--none of
the ghosts in Hogwarts can eat, as evidenced by the horrible deathday
feast.
Why do I think 400 rather than 500 is correct? First, because it's
from the first book and represents her original idea, which I think
she simply forgot to doublecheck for CoS, but also because no one wore
ruffs in 1492. It's a late sixteenth/early seventeenth-century style.
Anyone for having Sir Nick beheaded by Elizabeth I as a supporter of
Mary Queen of Scots?
Carol
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