Souls, ripped and otherwise

[deborahhbbrd]

No: HPFGUIDX 141538

The question that has started to fascinate me – especially in view of
all the recent posts about the effects of causing someone's death –
is, what in the Potterverse constitutes a soul?

We heard, with Harry and Luna, sounds of twittering conversation from
behind the veil. Luna is confident that they are the dead. How does
she know? By faith? By optimism – who would not want to see their
beloved parents again? Just by having been born into the WW and
knowing things that Muggle-reared Harry does not? And are these the
"souls" of the dead, assuming that she's right, or are they something
else? 

The images in portraits and photographs seem to be capable of
interacting with living people; obviously the headmasters and
headmistresses, but also poor Penelope, hiding her pimply nose behind
the picture-frame. But perhaps they can't interact on a creative
level? You could ask a headmistress about school admin and get an
answer, but she might well not be able to make up a story or a
knitting pattern if she didn't do such things in life. And the images
in the Mirror of Erised are similar. Harry's family wave at him
cheerily, but nothing more. Just doing what they would have done in
life to a beloved baby. 

So, can we eliminate these images as storage places for souls, and
count their apparent liveliness as just preserved fragments of their
own former reality?

And yet we know that there are souls, and they do get damaged when
murder is committed. And JKR loves Macbeth ... "This even-handed
justice commends the contents of our poisoned chalice to our own
lips".  Deliberate, destructive damage to someone else causes
destructive damage to the soul of the murderer. So far, so good.

How long does this last? We know that LV is fleeing from death; he
demands physical immortality, being perhaps unwilling to take the leap
in the dark which is faith in an immortal soul. So his soul, if it
will never be immortal, must be redundant. Disposable. Rippable. And
he might as well use it to do something useful, like horcrux creation.
 I could imagine that when all the horcruxes (horcruces just doesn't
look right!) are destroyed, the one wizard who shunned death most
passionately could be the only one to suffer total and eternal
extinction of self. Not a bad irony, but rather trite.

Or is the WW definition of "soul" more like "moral centre of the
self"? That would work all right, since most of the DEs conspicuously
lack such a centre and kill without a backward glance.  And then, on
that assumption, there would be no Muggle-centric ideas of the harps
and haloes kind of immortality, or indeed eternal lakes of fire etc
either. The damage to the moral centre of the self would last for a
(wizard-length) lifetime only. (But the veil?)

Like other wounds and injuries to the body, it is possible that a
ripped soul could mend itself and the repentant murderer could regain
moral wholeness. Do I hear the faint squeaking of a distant rat?

The trouble with understanding WW souls is partly that we have never
been told what they are, but also that most people aren't clear in
their minds about Muggle souls. Lots of Muggles say that they believe
in the immortality of the soul, but their own words and behaviour seem
to suggest otherwise. (Twenty thousand souls died in the disaster,
people say. Really? Why not say that twenty thousand people died, or
even bodies?) What do witches believe? Or are they like Terry
Pratchett's Discworld witches, who would never think of believing in
gods because they knew them – it would be like believing in the
milkman. Like Luna, in fact, confident of her own reality. Godric's
Hollow seems like a useful place to start finding out. 


Deborah, who doesn't think the ghosts prove anything either way (but
she's been wrong before!)