Another Flint? (Was: When?)

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 118724


 
> Carol responds:
> I agree that the passage describes the sensation--not so much
> mind-numbing as blissfully happy and unaware of anything except that
> feeling--rather than to the actual experience of being Imperio'd. I'm
> wondering whether someone with a little more time on his or her hands
> will present the three passages together for comparison (the Veelas,
> the first Imperio by Crouch!Moody, and the Imperio by Voldemort). If
> the sensation is virtually identical, then I would guess that's what
> JKR meant by "for the third time in his life." Otherwise, I think it's
> a Flint.

<snip>

> Speaking of Flints, has anyone wondered how the Dementors could bury
> the polyjuiced Mrs. Crouch if they're blind? And I half-recall a
> passage in GoF in which Hermione, who is usually right about such
> things, refers to them as if they're able to see through an
> invisibility cloak. (Can anyone find and quote that passage?) I wonder
> if the blindness of the Dementors is something JKR attributed to them
> late in the game, not realizing that OoP would contradict GoF.
> 
> Carol, wondering how the Dementors would have recognized Sirius Black
> if they can't see

Annemehr:
All right, here are the passages. Christelle has already quoted the
Veela one, so I'll copy and paste:

> In GOF, with the Veela:

> "The Veela had started to dance, and Harry's mind had gone
> completely and blissfully blank." (chap8, p94, UK version)

>From ch. 15, in Crouch!Moody's class:

"Harry felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in his
head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable
happiness."

And again, from the graveyard, ch. 34:

"And Harry felt, for the third time in his life, the sensation that
his mind had been wiped of all thought..."

So, a blank mind, wiped of all thought, it sounds like the same
feeling to me.  The fact that the cause was different the first time
is beside the point.  No FLINT, in my opinion.

As for the dementor question, I don't see why blind dementors would
have any trouble burying a body.  I couldn't find the quote from
Hermione you mentioned, although it certainly does sound familiar. 
Still, I just think that if she said "see," it wasn't to be taken
literally, but that the Dementors have some way of sensing when
someone is there (by their emotions?), and invisibility cloaks make no
difference.  There are other ways for humans to recognise that a
person is near without seeing them: by hearing, scent, or feeling
their step on the floor.  Then there are bats which use sonar and
vipers which see into the infrared.  I imagine Dementors, who are so
different from humans, have a different way of sensing people.

More puzzling to me is the question in your tagline, about how the
Dementors were supposed to find Sirius Black.  There'd be no point in
their searching for him if they couldn't pick him out of a crowd of
people, if not by sight then by his own unique emotional pattern.  But
there's canon for thinking the dementors can not tell people apart:
"The Dementors are blind.  They sensed one healthy, one dying person
entering Azkaban.  They sensed one healthy, one dying person leaving
it.  My father smuggled me out, disguised as my mother, in case any
prisoners were watching through their doors." -- Barty Crouch Jr.,
"Veritaserum" ch. 35.  I can only postulate that being near death
clouds a person's individuality to a dementor.

Annemehr