Harry Potter: Veil

8/25/2005 (according to the document modification date)

<begin lecture>

Veiled Archway
Department of Mysteries
Ministry of Magic

Very little is known about the ancient archway, whose opening is covered by a veil, that sits in a chamber in the department of mysteries. There are times when the veil covering the archway flaps, as thought blown by wind, and voices can be heard beyond it. It is believed that the archway is kept in the department of mysteries as a tool for studying death. Beyond that, nothing else if mentioned about the archway. It seems as though the power of the archway is common knowledge in the wizarding world, but that is not known to be a fact.

</end lecture>

You remember that discussion we were having concerning bringing people back to life. Andrea mentioned using the archway or a twin to the archway the brought people back instead of killing them. I’ve seen a fan-fiction that has done this before. It wasn’t very well written but they did use the idea.

For some reason, I was thinking about that today and I came up with an interesting idea. As far as I can tell, no one really knows what the archway does. For some reason, perhaps written history or writing on the archway itself, they believe it to be associated with death. The information we are given about the archway in the fifth book is actually very limited (so much so people debate on whether Bellatrix killed Sirius or falling though the archway killed him). We do know it’s very, very, very old. Perhaps so old that its real use and knowledge of it has been lost in time (extremely possible).

So here is my idea...

What if there was an inscription, on the archway or near where it was found, that gave a warning. Death and suffering to all who path though the veil. Or something like that. But what if passing though the veil didn’t actually kill people, but just made them as good as dead. Trapped somewhere, not in our world (dimension), that they couldn’t of their own will leave. This is where the other archway would come in. The archway in the ministry would be an entrance. The other archway would be the the exit (kind of).

Why I say “kind of” concerning the exit is because trapped people can’t choose to leave though the exit. They must be summed though it by someone on the other side. By summed I’m thinking that the summoner must throw an object belonging to the person they want though the veil and say a certain incantation. They wouldn’t be able to call people who had really died, just people who had passed through the other veil.

The world beyond the veil would not be a nice place. It would be on the negative side of “like death”. It would not be a place people would want to go. I haven’t worked out the details of that though. I do believe that time would pass like it did in our world. There might even be things that grew there (they have to eat something perhaps). Beyond that, I don’t know yet. I was thinking that it might be a cross between the prison world SG-1 got sent to where they found the destroyer of worlds (whose name I can’t spell) and the dark island in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Now you might ask, why would anyone create something like this? My answer would be that it was the ancient form of Azkaban. I place to banish dark wizards or those who committed crimes. It could be both a permanent form of punishment or a temporary form of punishment (hence the way to summon people out).

I figure that by the time of the fifth book, people would have forgotten all this. Perhaps the people who created it died out in ancient times and someone found the veil without knowing what it did, brought it back to their own land, and myth grew out of its use there. The history of the archway in that land might be the history people know.

Anyway, it’s just an idea. I thought it was an interesting one.