Product of the Department of Mysteries

[sunnyskywalker]

On oneandthetruth's last DH chapter commentary, an interesting thread compared the Mirror of Erised to the Resurrection Stone in its seductive (and potentially deadly) powers of showing something/someone you want

Comments

[blahblahcakes64]

The origins and potential powers of the Mirror of Erised depend a lot on if it's a modern silvered mirror (invented in 1835, according to some quick Googling). The gold frame and carvings suggest something more rococo-esque, but it's pretty impossible to tell without a more detailed description. (Although, the image of French royalty looking longingly into a mirror that reveals their deficiencies is very poetic and triste, and kind of hilarious.) Whether or not it's made with glass doesn't really help us either, because glass mirrors of various kinds have been around since the first century

[oryx_leucoryx]

How did you figure out the date of the Peverells? Is that based on the info for the Elder Wand? IIRC in Beedle it is mentioned that someone had it in the early middle ages. When that could have been depends on which chronology one follows. Europeans consider the middle ages to have started with the fall of the western Roman empire in 476, but I understand Brits use a different convention?

[blahblahcakes64]

Argh, apparently links=spam. Sorry about that!

[sunnyskywalker]

I was thinking Post-Seclusion for the mirror, since it's just so big (though I suppose wizards could have extended any glass they made and so manufactured large sheets easily before Muggles did) and Harry doesn't note that it looks unusually ancient, just fairly old. I wouldn't expect him to know the difference between "maybe a hundred years" and "maybe three hundred years," but I think he would notice if it looked, say, a thousand years old. He certainly noticed that the Veil looked incredibly ancient, and he was in the middle of a life-or-death chase at the time. (I agree the Veil is probably far older than the British wizarding government in any form, let alone any individual department.)

Though on second thought, we don't really know whether the mirror and the frame were originally made together, and it's possible that the frame is a replacement for the original and the mirror itself is much older. Who knows? But anyway, I think there isn't anything that makes it more likely that the mirror predates the Peverells, or the DoM, so

[oneandthetruth]

Re the Veil, the only use of it I've seen in a fanfic is in notwolf's Death Eater No More. In that story, Lucius angers some goblins. They get revenge on him by kidnapping Narcissa, putting her in a coma, and throwing her through the Veil. Several chapters are devoted to her rescue. The Veil is explained as having been created 1500 years ago by a group of wizards and witches as a means of communicating with the dead and learning from them.

That's a good catch on the similarities between the Veil, the mirror, and the Hallows. The most annoying undeveloped aspect of the Potterverse to me is that stuff in the Dept. of Mysteries. The hummingbird that endlessly cycles through life, the tanks of brains--that's all great stuff that could have made that world so much richer and more interesting. Instead, we get endless crap about teen love angst (both present and past) and useless camping trips. What a waste!

[attilathepbnun]

Yet more evidence for the theory that Rowling didn't actually plan the series in much detail, whatever she publicly says. She wrote the first book, maybe with a reasonable start on the second and third, in case the first one took off; but with only a vague idea of what else would happen. Then Book One was a rousing success; she had to write the rest of the story but wasn't really up to the task ... at least at the pace she set ...

[oneandthetruth]

I think she kinda sorta had a plan, but it wasn't laid out in detail. So when she was writing the individual books, she would come up with great ideas and just throw them in there willy-nilly, without any thought of what she might do with them later, or whether she'd do anything at all. They were just cool and provided atmosphere in the now.

There's also the possibility she knew how she wanted to start and finish the story, but was vague about the middle. Given her "oh, dear, maths" propensity, there's a cartoon that's appropriate. It shows two people standing at a blackboard. On the left, one of them has written the beginning of a complicated problem. In the middle of the board it says, "Then a miracle occurs." On the right it says, "Solution." The other person says, "That's a good beginning, but you need to be more explicit abut the middle and the end."

[sunnyskywalker]

Interesting-sounding fic - I'll have to look it up sometime!

The DoM just has that feel of a Very Significant Place We'll Be Seeing Again, So Pay Attention. We spend so much time there in OotP, with passing significantly nearby the portentous hallway before the trial, Harry's recurring visions, Nagini's attack on Arthur, and then the battle when we get a lovingly detailed grand tour, and Dumbledore making a point of what's behind that knife-melting door during his wrap-up when we expect to hear about significant things. And then... we never bother with it again? What? That just doesn't fit our narrative expectations! If you're going to break an expectation like that, it should be for a point, not just because it was a neat bit of scenery that got out of hand

[oneandthetruth]

Apropos of attila's suggestion about the mirror being a sorting tool, and throwing in your thoughts about the DoM, maybe the mirror was designed as an interrogation tool. You could plop down an enemy in front of it, and when they're thoroughly hypnotized, ask them what they see. You then (falsely) promise to give it to them in exchange for what they know.

[sunnyskywalker]

Ooh, that's an interesting idea! Now I'm wondering if the mirror-makers were inspired by the Sorting Hat too...

But a closer connection might be that Foe-Glass of Moody's, come to think of it. It somehow knows what you don't want (your enemies) rather than your deepest desire. Not quite the mirror's opposite number, but pretty close. And the Foe-Glass most certainly does seem like something the Ministry might have developed for its own use. Or at least they might have improved on it, if it's an older idea. I imagine something that shows you your enemies would be something people would have wanted to create not long after they figured out they could control magic, even if it took different forms than a mirror.

[dracasadiablo]

Nothing much to say about the Mirror (aside from the general "Yes, it was a dark object and most likely connected to death. And exposing Harry, or anybody else, to it was criminal) but this:

They also have the locked room full of either love or Amortensia, depending whom you ask.
^Is the most terrifying part of Department of Mysteries to me.
Moral and emotional cripples i.e. wizards messing with time travel, death, brains . . . all of that is scary. But giving them power to make others feel slavish devotion and obsession? That's pure Nightmare Fuel.
I could easily imagine some believer in the Greater Good and a "muggle lover" using it on all muggles and / or wizards to end conflicts.

[oneandthetruth]

Word on the scariness of these losers having that kind of power over others.

I read a fanfic in which Lily made a love potion from a recipe in Witch Weekly and gave it to Severus. When it worked, she was so embarrassed she didn't have the nerve to tell him what she'd done. The potion caused him to drive away a girl who loved him because he was never able to love her the same way. Decades later, he found out by accident what had happened and was finally able to take the antidote, fall in love, and have a happy life.

[sunnyskywalker]

It is terrifying! The things they could do with that...

This also suggests yet another way Voldemort made an ineffective Evil Overlord, though. He'd taken over the Ministry. If the research resulting from that room was in any way usable, why didn't he use it? He could have had all the Ministry employees not just obeying the new regime out of fear, but actually devoted to him. Just to start. Then anyone who had tried to keep working there in hopes of sabotaging from within or passing information to a resistance would abandon their plans and tell Voldemort everything, out of desperation to please him. Or maybe they'd be like Harry under Veela influence and think jumping off cliffs would be a dramatic and pleasing gesture of devotion, should he tell them they needed to atone for something.

And after that, the world...

[mary_j_59]

I don't know who first theorized this - I think it may have been Swyhyv or Jodel - but I'm pretty sure, wherever the veil came from, the chamber of the veil is an execution chamber. Trials would be held there, and then wizards or witches who were found guilty would be shoved through the veil and killed. I think the setup is probably very ancient, and any study on the veil would be recent - after Azkaban took the place of summary execution.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, that sounds like a very plausible use too. Talking to the dead if you can, and sending people bodily to the land of the dead in any case, in a very clean and tidy way. Maybe you're supposed to walk through it under your own power for an honorable(ish) death, sort of like the old Roman "honorable suicide."

And I wonder if occasionally people would petition for the right to die by Veil? Say if they were very old or had a terminal disease and wanted to die peacefully and quietly at a time of their choosing instead of lingering painfully. Meeting Death as an equal, if you will.