CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 12: The Pat

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189943

 
> Carol responds:

> I think that a soul in the Potterverse is immortal in the sense that it will go on to the afterlife unless it's destroyed--perhaps in severely damaged form for those few Wizards who have put half their souls into a Horcrux. (I think it was Pippin who said that Voldemort's soul is so severely damaged that he no longer has the ability to "go on" to whatever constitutes the afterlife for Wizards. (I won't even consider how an afterlife for Muggles, who can't become ghosts, fits in here.)

Pippin:
According to Snape, the ghost is an "imprint" of the departed soul. It seems to be made of the same quasi-material silvery stuff that composes patronuses and extracted memories. To me, it sounds as if the wizard's actual soul may eventually "go on" -- but the ghost self never can.

 The Muggle can't leave an imprint of himself as a ghost, or trap part of his soul in a horcrux, but he still might have to make a positive choice in order to go on. 
Otherwise, he might continue in the sort of painful vaporish existence that Voldemort endured when he was disembodied, "less than the meanest ghost" but without the power to possess that Voldemort kept. Without that power, no one would have been aware that Voldemort still existed. So such a soul might well be called "lost."

Traditionally,  souls doomed to  hell are said to be  lost, so the idea that a soul can be lost is hardly incompatible with traditional ideas of the soul's immortality.

Carol:
> As for the body of the soul-sucked person, which is still alive (at least for the time being), we have two versions--the person with his mind and heart still working but without his soul (and therefore his memories and sense of self and conscience) described by Lupin, which sounds like a Dementor in human form--or, perhaps, something like Voldemort, who was down to the last tiny fragment of a soul. If your mind, heart, and stomach are working, you can live (in the sense of subsisting) and eat and think in the sense of figuring out how to carry out your evil deeds (rather like Fenrir Greyback but with no sense of self) but you're no more yourself than an Inferi is.

> 
> The other description, which seems to fit Barty Crouch better, is the one depicted in the picture on Snape's DADA classroom wall: "a wizard lying huddled and blank-eyed, slumped against a wall" (HBP ch. 9).

Pippin:
According to Lupin, it's the brain that's still working, not the mind. Higher brain functions, such as the sense of self, could be dependent on the presence of a soul, while reflexive actions  such as swallowing are not. 

Pippin