Sirius' death and The Veil Room

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 114355

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman"
<susiequsie23 at s...> wrote:

> 
> 
> SSSusan:
>
> ...edited...
> 
> And I thought that that was JKR's point. As much as it sucks, deaths 
> like that do just happen sometimes.  We can't make sense of them, we 
> don't WANT to believe it, but they're still "proper" deaths.
>  
> I also think it may speak to JKR's interpretation of what death is 
> about ["the next great adventure"].  For children, seeing that death 
> ... may NOT have been designed to get them to question whether it
> was Death or Something Else, but rather to get them to see death in 
> a *particular way,* 
> 
> Siriusly Snapey Susan


bboyminn:

I'm going to use SSSusan's post as a jumping in point to make the
point I always make when this subject comes up, unfortunately, it
doesn't address SSSusan's comments directly.

There are those who suppose that Sirius's alleged death is some grand
conspiracy to fake his death and get him out of the picture for a long
list of assorted reasons, and by a long list of assorted persons,
although Dumbledore is most often the named conspirator.

In response to this speculation, I only ask that you look at the
immense complexity of this ruse. To assume that anyone threw together
the whole 'Voldemort has Sirius' plan so they could fake Sirius's
death is a conspiracy that positively dwarfs the 'Kennedy-Second
Gunman/CIA/Mafia' conspiracy. For anyone to plan that impossibly
complex set of occurances for that purpose is next to impossible to
believe. 

Even if Sirius's fake death was just tacked on to Voldemort's "I've
got Sirius' plot, it still next to impossilbe to predict that in the
heat of a real battle Sirius would be in the proximity of the Veil in
a way that would allow him to /accidently/ fall through. It's a great
fun theory, but functionally and wholly impractical.

Certainly, if Dumbledore needed Sirius out of the picture, there were
many and much better ways to do it. He could have let Sirius leave and
go into hiding back in the land of the large tropical birds. Or, if it
really had to be a fake death, he certainly could have come up with
something more workable than the off chance Sirius might fall through
the Veil. 

Finally, one very important point, the room isn't called the Room of
Tricks, Jokes, Red Herrings, and Elaborate Conspiracies, it called the
Death Chamber. That should really give us a pretty solid clue about
what goes on in there; people die.

To finally address SSSusan's comment, I think she is right on in her
interpretation of how JKR intends to present death to us, and to the
message she wants youger reader to get from the references to death. 

Contained there in are really two messages, the first is that you are
meant to live out your time on earth to it's fullest, you are meant to
live out your destiny and not to circumvent it. And, when your time
does come, it's nothing to fear. Afterall, you are not really going to
be that far away from your loved ones, you're just going to be over
there on the other side of the Veil, living the next great adventure.
In summary, neither life nor death are something to be feared.

Finally, I say Sirius is dead, but the dead we love never truly leave
us or so I've heard from a reliable source. I think Sirius will never
come back to life, but will without a doubt come back into the story. 

All that said, I can't believe that an icon as prominent as The Veiled
Archway in The Death Chamber is a one shot deal, never to be heard of
again. I can't shake this whole concept of traveling beyond the Veil
for some specific purpose, for, most likely, Harry, the hero, to take
a hero's journey beyond the Veil to gain specific wisdom to help in
the ultimate defeat of his enemy. But I am completely baffled as to
how JKR will manage to bring the fight into the Death Chamber again.
It doesn't seem like a place that Harry is likely to want to visit again.

According to Joseph Campbell, who sadly has gone beyond the Veil
himself, all hero's journeys are about death and rebirth, but in a
metphorical sense. In that sense, Harry has already died and been
reborn. At the Dursleys, he was figuratively beyond the Veil, and when
Hagrid brought him back to the wizard world, he was reborn again.
Symbolic deaths and rebirths abound in the book and are at the heart
of all hero's journeys.

So, there it is, for what it's worth.

Steve/bboyminn (was bboy_mn)