Umbridge

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147893

Gerry wrote: 
Actually, I don't think she [Umbridge] wanted [Harry] expelled, she
wanted him dead. She did not know he could produce a Patronus, so the
attack ought to have been fatal. Potter dead, no more embarassment for
the MoM, case closed. I'm sure she would have masked his death as
something completely else so nobody would have known it was a dementor
attack. When he survived the trial was obviously a try for the next
best scenario: Harry expelled. But even that did not happen. How she
must have hated that annoying kid.


Carol responds:
Interesting idea, but a Dementor sucking your soul doesn't kill you.
As Lupin explains in PoA, your brain and other organs continue to work
and your body remains alive. It's just your soul that's irretrievably
lost, which is why Lupin tells Harry that having your soul sucked out
is *worse* than death. (Evidently your soul can't go through the
Veil?) And the poster of a Dementor victim in Snape's DADA classroom
shows a living man staring blankly, not a corpse. So there would be no
way to disguise a soul-sucking as a death. The victim's heart would
still be beating and he would still be breathing.

Apparently Umbridge knew from someone (Fudge?) that Harry could
produce a Patronus and sent a Dementor after him to make him cast the
spell (in a Muggle neighborhood). I'm pretty sure that she wanted him
discredited, not dead (or rather, soul-sucked). The Dementor(s),
however, had other ideas. (I do wonder, though, why there were two of
them. How could Umbridge have anticipated that Harry would be with Dudley?

Carol, not sure exactly what happens to the victim but pretty sure
that he'd end up in a special ward in St. Mungo's, not the WW
equivalent of a morgue