Powers of the Veil

[frost_indri]

No: HPFGUIDX 89534

lizvega2:
> In OOP the room with the veil is referred to by Dumbledore as 
> the 'death chamber'. 
> Does this mean that the wizarding world has an equivalent to the 
gas chamber/electric chair?
> 
> I was under the impression that all wizards, even the really bad 
> ones, were sent to Azkaban. <<snip>>
> All of the death eaters who were caught were sent to Azkaban, not 
> one word about being executed. 
> If these people, surely the worst of the worst, weren't even 
> sentenced to death, who would be?
> 

Frost:
 	 I always assumed it was. The set up of the room makes it 
reasonable to seem so, as its compared by Harry to the Wizenmoget 
court room, and it's "auditorium like."  Also, the choice of the 
words "Death Chamber" is rather strong, and has a set meaning in 
both the USA and British English.  
  	I thought the Arch, being ancient, might be an old way of 
ritual killing.  It's neat, quick, and seemingly painless.  You have 
a good point about the Death Eaters not being executed, but I think 
it would still make sense for the Death Chamber to have been a room 
for formalized executions. After all, in our world its a modern 
thing to be against the death penalty.  It used to be that a good 
hanging, or beheading, was a afternoons entertainment.  Kinda' 
grizzly, but who is to say that the death chamber isn't a remnant of 
an older time when Wizards did use the Death Sentence.  And maybe 
they still do, in extremely extreme cases.  Such as if the had 
actually Captured and tried Lord Voldemort.  

lizvega2:
> Of course, the veil in the 'death chamber' may not be there to 
serve that purpose. Perhaps it is there as a portal to death? Death 
would  be one of the mysteries the the MM would study in the dept. 
of  mysteries, surely?
>> But, if it is a portal to death, and not a death device, then why 
couldn't Sirius be retrieved?
>>

Frost:  
	That's one problem I have with the Death Chamber being an 
room for experimenting with death. The other is that all the adults 
seem to know and understand what the veil was, and Lupin didn't even 
question that Sirius could come back.  His voice was breaking with 
emotion as he held Harry back from going in after Sirius.  He knew 
that Sirius was dead, and I don't think he would have been so 
certain if Sirius just got a stun to the chest.  I could see it as a 
place where they have stored a powerful artifact that represents the 
crossing into death, or the veil of death or what not.  But I don't 
think they can experiment with it very much other than "whoops, 
there's another dead owl." There seemed to be a certain accepted 
finality with passing through it.  

Frost