The Veil in the Death Chamber

[annemehr]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Judy" <judy at j...> wrote:
> Fran wrote:
> >... the Veil is contained in a room 
> > called the Death Chamber... Could it be where wizards are put to 
> > death, or were at one time put to death?
> 
> I remember that this was discussed on HPfGU shortly after OoP came 
> out.  That the room was an execution chamber was one popular theory.  
> However, having it in the Department of Mysteries implies that it was 
> used to *study* death.  And death, of course, is one of the great 
> mysteries of life.  So, speculation was that people were exucuted 
> there, and their deaths were studied as they died, or perhaps very
> old or ill wizards volunteered to go through the Veil, to contribute
> to wizarding knowlegde. 

Courtroom Ten and the Death Chamber may predate the MoM, though.  They
seem older and different from the normal office-style building which
is the rest of the MoM.  The archway itself looked ancient to Harry. 
I wonder if the MoM weren't built around these two rooms (and perhaps
others -- maybe the locked one, too).  My guess is that the D.C. had
once been used as an execution chamber, but certainly not since the
DoM was built around it; can't have  lots of people traipsing through
there now.

Annemehr