Faking Sirius' Death?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 91676

Cindy wrote:
<snip> 
I know there's no canon to support this, but the veil seems like a
method of execution, or maybe even euthanasia.  The room has 360
degree stadium seating, with the veil being right in the middle.  It's
like there's supposed to be witnesses when someone "crosses through".
 When I first read OOTP, I just visualized it that way; it seemed to
make the most sense. So please understand this is just my speculation...

Carol:
Don't worry about speculating. It's all any of us can do with regard
to the veil. But my reading is a bit different. We haven't seen
anything like the death penalty in the Potter books. even the very
worst criminals--say Mulciber, who murdered the Prewetts--are sent to
Azkaban. Maybe the idea is, to use a pair of cliches, that Azkaban is
a fate worse than death or death is too good for the DEs. But still,
you'd think that Crouch Sr. would want such people removed from the WW
forever, and sending them through the veil (if it's a doorway to
death) would do that, yet he doesn't choose that option. 

I think that the veiled archway somehow allows the Unspeakables to
study death--not as a coroner does, to discover the cause of a
particular death, but to study death itself as one of the great
Mysteries (the others being life, time, the mind, and probably love)
that have intrigued philosophers since the time of the Greeks. How
they could do it, I don't know, but maybe they have ways of
communicating with the spirit voices that Harry and Luna hear behind
the veil. But the archway is described as ancient and it's placed, as
you say, in an amphitheater, so maybe it was used as a place of
execution in Roman times and the Department of Mysteries was built on
that spot specifically to study death and only later expanded to
include other Mysteries--followed in modern times by an entire
building dedicated to bureaucracy.

Well, you see where my speculations led me! Not an ounce of evidence
except the word "amphitheater," which suggests the Romans or their
Romanized Celtic contemporaries (Druids practicing in secret?) and a
crumbling, clearly ancient archway.

Carol