The Afterlife (was Re: Of Sorting and Snape)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 175859

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Judy" <judy at ...> wrote:

> The Resurrection Stone:  This seems to summon something almost 
> exactly like a ghost, except that the person summoned HAS moved on, 
> and therefore may appear in a healed form that a ghost would not 
> have. I would assume that you can not use the Resurrection Stone to 
> summon someone who is already a ghost; instead you would just go talk 
> to the ghost. It's unclear to me why, in the "Three Brothers" story, 
> the woman who was summoned back was unhappy, but Harry's loved ones 
> are not unhappy. Perhaps the woman in the story was unhappy because 
> she had been summoned back for a less noble reason, or because she 
> wasn't just summoned back briefly, as were Harry's loved ones?  

Geoff:
I think that your ideas are part of the answer.

The second brother was acting out of selfishness and also arrogance:

'Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he 
wanted to humiliate Death even further and asked for the power to 
recall others from Death.'
(DH "The Tale of the Three Brothers" p.331 UK edition)

'Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home, where 
he lived alone. Here, he took out the stone that had the power to 
recall the dead and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement 
and his delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to marry 
before her untimely death appeared at once before him.

Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though 
she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there 
and suffered.'
(ibid. p.332)

Compare this with Harry's experience:

'And, again, Harry understood without having to think. It id not matter 
about bringing hem back for he was about to join them. He was not 
really fetching them, they were fetching him.

He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times.'
(DH "The Forest Again" p.560 UK edition)

Harry was not trying to drag his loved ones back to selfishly hold them 
in the mortal world. He was seeking company for what he thought 
would be his last journey and his last hours in the mortal world. It 
was a brief reunion before "shuffling off this mortal coil" and promised 
better things to come. So they came willingly and warmly to encourage 
and accompany Harry through this as he "screwed his courage to the 
sticking point".

For me, as I believe it is also for many other readers, this is one of the 
crowning and pivotal moments of the whole HP series.