Except accidental magic use in the Potterverse ignores all known rules of magic. It has young children manage things that aren’t possible without extensive study and a wand. But even ignoring this, the facts that accidental magic stops when a child starts learning spellcasting, even in circumstances where it would save their life, and that children stop being able to perform wandless magic without super-advanced training, suggest it’s not properly integrated into the rest of the setting.
Goes into non-being = ceases to exist = dies if previously alive. Possibly worse than that, since in canon the dead do not disappear but go on to an afterlife.
If I said to you “Bob has gone into non-being”, is there even a slight chance that you would interpret this as “Bob has been temporarily teleported to another dimension” rather than a fancy way of saying “Bob has ceased to exist”?
I dunno. When you told me that a pane of glass went into non-being and it came back a little while later, and this sort of thing happens with all the other examples, what should I think?
We have no canon examples of a person using a Vanishing Charm to make something disappear and come back later. We have accidental magic (which does not appear to follow normal magic rules, as I note elsewhere), we have objects being Vanished and never seen again (including all the entries in the Wiki), and we have Vanishing Cabinets, which we have no reason to believe are the same thing as Vanishing Charms.
To assume that “a thing disappears by magic” = “use of Vanishing Charm” is as spurious as to assume “a thing gets killed by magic” = “use of Avada Kedavra”.
We have no canon examples of a person using a Vanishing Charm to make something disappear and come back later.
We don’t have canon examples of a lot of things.
Which is more likely, that the Vanished animals follow the trends already observed for all the related magics, or that Rowling makes an exception for the animals and Hogwarts is a charnelhouse?
But we have an explicit canon statement by a recognised authority in the spell school in question. That should trump guesses based on inferred similarities between different instances of different spells.
Which is more likely, that the Vanished animals follow the trends already observed for all the related magics, or that Rowling makes an exception for the animals and Hogwarts is a charnelhouse?
Given that
1) the trends you cite are only there if we assume that every instance of something disappearing uses identical magical mechanisms to the Vanishing Charm
and
2) Rowling appears to have no conception of non-sentients’ rights whatsoever (cf. Transfiguring hedgehogs into pincushions, some of which still quiver in fear when faced with pins)
I believe the balance of evidence favours the “charnelhouse” claim. To clarify, I don’t believe that Rowling makes an exception for the animals: whatever magical effects apply elsewhere, the specific spell known as the Vanishing Charm is intended to make its target enter “non-being” and permanently disappear.
...which is consistent with what I just said and does not improve your case. If McGonagall had meant ‘they’re dead’, she could have said as much.
Wasn’t that the Ravenclaw door asking a riddle? And anyway it says “Vanished objects”, it would be a weird non-answer to say “they die”.
So who knows what to make of the answer.
tl;dr: rumors that Rowling is a psychotic who wrote a Hogwarts in which students sadistically murder hundreds of kittens a year may be exaggerated.
considering the glass harry makes vanish in the zoo, maybe the kittens just reappear again a little while later.
Except accidental magic use in the Potterverse ignores all known rules of magic. It has young children manage things that aren’t possible without extensive study and a wand. But even ignoring this, the facts that accidental magic stops when a child starts learning spellcasting, even in circumstances where it would save their life, and that children stop being able to perform wandless magic without super-advanced training, suggest it’s not properly integrated into the rest of the setting.
Goes into non-being = ceases to exist = dies if previously alive. Possibly worse than that, since in canon the dead do not disappear but go on to an afterlife.
If I said to you “Bob has gone into non-being”, is there even a slight chance that you would interpret this as “Bob has been temporarily teleported to another dimension” rather than a fancy way of saying “Bob has ceased to exist”?
I dunno. When you told me that a pane of glass went into non-being and it came back a little while later, and this sort of thing happens with all the other examples, what should I think?
We have no canon examples of a person using a Vanishing Charm to make something disappear and come back later. We have accidental magic (which does not appear to follow normal magic rules, as I note elsewhere), we have objects being Vanished and never seen again (including all the entries in the Wiki), and we have Vanishing Cabinets, which we have no reason to believe are the same thing as Vanishing Charms.
To assume that “a thing disappears by magic” = “use of Vanishing Charm” is as spurious as to assume “a thing gets killed by magic” = “use of Avada Kedavra”.
We don’t have canon examples of a lot of things.
Which is more likely, that the Vanished animals follow the trends already observed for all the related magics, or that Rowling makes an exception for the animals and Hogwarts is a charnelhouse?
But we have an explicit canon statement by a recognised authority in the spell school in question. That should trump guesses based on inferred similarities between different instances of different spells.
Given that
1) the trends you cite are only there if we assume that every instance of something disappearing uses identical magical mechanisms to the Vanishing Charm
and
2) Rowling appears to have no conception of non-sentients’ rights whatsoever (cf. Transfiguring hedgehogs into pincushions, some of which still quiver in fear when faced with pins)
I believe the balance of evidence favours the “charnelhouse” claim. To clarify, I don’t believe that Rowling makes an exception for the animals: whatever magical effects apply elsewhere, the specific spell known as the Vanishing Charm is intended to make its target enter “non-being” and permanently disappear.
No. You do not.
I’m bowing out here. If you really care, as opposed to want to have a cool contrarian belief about Harry Potter, I suggest asking Rowling.