The Department of Mysteries..

Post subject: The Department of Mysteries.. Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 01:51 PM

I'm sorry if there has been a post like this before...close it if there has...but I was just wondering what everyone thinks about the Department of Mysteries? Not the veil because I know everyone's already talked about that, but the other rooms - the locked one, the one with the time turners, the brain room etc... The bell jar with the bird in, does that just represent time, or is there actually something to do with time inside it? And the cabinet that shatters and repairs itself..

Also, the room that is "kept locked at all times", does it actually contain love or something else, and how would they get that force inside the room? The brain room also confuses me...especially after Madam Pomfrey told Ron that thoughts could scar more than anything else...are they actual human brains, and why are they there?!..I suppose that's why they call it the Department of *Mysteries*, but I really hope JKR writes more about it in the next books...what do you think?

I'm all on board for hearing more about the Dept. of Mysteries. I think the bell jar is an accelerated version of the circle of life. I'm not sure what you mean by "time inside it", though. I think the brains may be actual brains, just charmed for some weird reason. Maybe to pull thoughts out of people? Or how about to put thoughts in? I think the cabinet that keeps breaking and repairing itself, is just because of the time turners. I didn't see any other significance to that in particular. I hope we get to see the department of mysteries some more though. Maybe since they have been in there, someone will give them an official tour so they can understand what they've seen (or we can understand what we've read!).

-Tonks-

<span style="color:navy;font-size:small;]<pre> "Let the rabbits wear glasses!" - Rev. Maynard</pre>[/color]

1st Year Joined: Jun 10, 2004 Posts: 73

Yeah, I'd also love to see more about it in the next Harry Potter book. I think all the items in the rooms are for experimentation and trying to figure out about time/ life/ death and how it works and maybe possible ways to change it. I don't think JKR should leave this unanswered, it has to mean something significant.

~Meg

Post subject: Re: Dept. Mysteries Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 06:06 PM

Er . . . um . . . yes, and yet again, check out the topic in the Order of the Phoenix forum, "Everyone's View on the Veil" for a starting point on these thoughts. It might help for there lies some explaning to what the rooms may represent. Thanks folks and happy posting.

*tries to smile*

Moody

<span style="color:darkblue;]

"The essential things are seen with the heart, not with the eyes"-- said the Fox to the Little Prince[/color]

Post subject: Re: Dept. Mysteries Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2004 11:45 PM

Not to be disrespectful or anything, but I didn't see much of any discussion in "Everyone's view on the veil" based on the other rooms in the DoM, so on the pretense of explaining somethings that were hinted in OotP I'm going to write some ideas that haven't vanished yet. One- The ball with the bird, Hermione said that it was time, and though I do understand what you mean by time being inside it, the better description would be that it's the essence of time and shows both the beginnings and the end of a life in it, and much like the theories revolving around the types of universes their are, i.e. Stephen Hawkings theories, its more specific to one theory that once the universe finishes expanding, time will begin to travel in reverse, and the process will complete itself again like the bird in the ball thing.

Another note as to the comments of Madam Pomfrey how she said that thoughts often leave deep scars, this kind of relates to life and how bad or disturbing memories that one experiences may possibly permanently scar or damage a person, though the brain might have a physical portrayal of this idea.

A new thought/explanation to one of the other rooms in the DoM is the one with the solar system in it. I believe that this is a room that they use to study the movements of the planets and/or predict the future like the centaurs. I think that this might be kind of obvious though, and not many have thought to think of what they might use this room for, but it's uses could have far more potential. I hope I answered some of your questions, and have a nice day/night!

<span style="color:navy;font-family:times new roman;font-size:medium;]MSL-- R.S.[/color]

Post subject: Re: Dept. Mysteries Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2004 12:26 AM

Madam Pomfrey's comments about thoughts leaving deeper scars than almost anything else was interesting. I think she was referring to the fact that thoughts, our thoughts, can hurt us almost more than anything else in the world, even if they can be interesting. Thought, good or bad, can change your life and leave you happier, sadder, more depressed or more elated than you were before. I assume that direct physical contact with them would cause some amount of pain and suffering, but not only. Ron did have quite a few scars, but he didn't seem too awfully disturbed by the experience. Not that we saw anyway. I've often wondered, and hoped, that more would be mentioned about this in the next book. I would like to know what was going on in Ron's mind during the attack of the brains.

1st Year Joined: Jun 30, 2004 Posts: 26

do u think harry could've saved sirius if he had pulled his spirit? was it? out from the arch i'm not sure but he said he could get him if he could get to him before the arch also wat do think the arches role is in the DoP? just out of curiousity

I believe that the 6th book title refers to that locked door inside the DoM and I also think that he'll find out what kind of power is that though he will not be able to use it.

I don't think that the power is love, because Dumbledore said that only Harry can use it, and now, both Harry and Voldy have the same blood, so it can't be love...

just my opinion

As Sherlock Holmes said: Once you eliminate the imposible, Watson, everithing is possible.

I'm not sure I understand why there is debate about what is in the locked room. Can someone clear this up for me? Here's what Dumbledore says, and what I think it means.

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," interrupted Dumbledore, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

Ok, to me this implies that the force that saved Harry from being possessed by Voldemort came from Harry's heart, because his heart saved him, and this power saved him. Unless we are talking the force of his heart beating that pushes his blood around, unlikely, I suspect this is probably love. This quote specifically states that this same power is what is in the locked room. So the locked room contains love. Any holes in my logic, let me know.

<span style="color:black;font-family:Christmas;font-size:medium;]Kreacher wasn't quite as devoted to him as to my mother, but I still caught him snogging a pair of my father's old trousers last week.[/color]

<span style="color:purple;font-family:verdana;]Lead me not into temptation, I can find the way myself.[/color]Edited by: <A HREF=http://p072.ezboard.com/bsiriusblackfanclub.showUserPublicProfile?gid=artemisiasila>artemisia Sila[/url] at: 7/21/04 7:43 am

Can't think of where it is at the moment...wait...got an e-mail of it somewhere...Ah, Order of the Phoenix, Locked door of the DoM, there it is! Goes into that subject pretty thoroughly, so I won't repeat my opinions here.

<span style="color:navy;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:x-small;]If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." -Will Rogers[/color]

Sorry Kaneezle, I was trying to use this thread for discussion of the locked door, since it was started first and the question was posted here originally. I tried to post an answer before that thread had been started and nobody seems to have read it. My mistake.

Anyway, I have some general thoughts about the Department of Mysteries as a whole that I would love people's thoughts on.

Being called as it is, a department of mysteries, it must be dedicated to figuring out the mysteries of life. Obvious I know, but bear with me. The room Harry and co encounter first is the rotating room that all the other doors lead off, so I don't think this has significance beyond that. The next room they find is the brain room, the brains swimming in the tanks with thoughts trailing off them. So this is something to do with the mind and possibly the imagination, or perhaps it is about the past and the thoughts are collected memories.

The room after that is the one Dumbledore later refers to as the death chamber, and I believe there is now a thread about this room so I won't discuss it here except to say that Death is obviously a big mystery we'll all one day have the answer to. Can't be that bad, nobody has come back and complained, have they?

The next one they try is locked, and it's been decided that we aren't discussing that here either. So no discussion, I'm convinced it contains Love and nobody has so far posted anything to convince me otherwise. I'd count that as the biggest mystery of the lot, so it seems that it would be in the department somewhere if not there.

After that we have Time. The room with the time turners and the bell jars with the egg-chicken and comic baby-head death eater. What's so mysterious about time then? Philosophically you could say a few things, why does time flow the way it does, why do moments pass and things become lost. I don't think that's what the Ministry is investigating though. I think they are focussed on manipulating the passage of time to their advantage.

Hermione is allowed the time-turner so she can take all the subjects she wants to. Seems a bit of a trivial reason to go messing with time, to my mind at least. So what if the Ministry wants to give out time-turners to people to see what happens when they use them? They are obviously well tested in terms of their operation, but what about the ways people use them if given the option, and the things they might do or find out? I know it could be just a simple case of a special privilage for a model student, but is there an alternative explanation?

The next room is the prophecy room. So what is it doing in the Department of Mysteries? The prophecies are mysterious because precognition is mysterious, not everyone has it and nobody really knows how it works. Sometimes there is a mystery concerning who the prophecy was made about, as was the case with the one about Voldemort. But is this really such a huge mystery as to justify a place in this department? Surely if they wanted to know how precognition worked, they would have Seers in there as well as records of what they have said. Perhaps they do, in an area we didn't see. Maybe this is just the most secure place for some explosive predictions. If so, I wonder what other predictions are there. I know we caught bits of some that broke and these have been debated elsewhere.

We don't see the planets room directly, Ginny just says it is a dark room with planets, that it was odd, and that some of the time they were just floating in the dark. Is this just about space, is it part of the Universe in miniature that is being studied? Do wizards study cosmology? I doubt any Centaurs would liase with the Ministry to interpret planetary movements, and Firenze said that very few humans have the gift. The Ministry would know who they were though, but why have a room when people can look at the stars and planets any time they like? This is the room that puzzles me most, and it's the one we know least about. What do people think it's for?

<span style="color:purple;font-family:comic sans ms;]Follow him, he speaks in sentences - Eddie Izzard.[/color]

<span style="color:black;font-family:Christmas;font-size:small;]Imagine wasting your time and energy persecuting Harry Potter readers when there are little toerags like tabloid journalists on the loose.[/color]

<span style="color:black;font-family:georgia;font-size:x-small;]The molecules shift, then everything goes back to normal. But everything's different. Fragments of what used to be flutter in the mind but can never be made real again.[/color]

<span style="color:purple;font-family:comic sans ms;]Lead me not into temptation, I can find the way myself.[/color]Edited by: <A HREF=http://p072.ezboard.com/bsiriusblackfanclub.showUserPublicProfile?gid=artemisiasila>artemisia Sila[/url] at: 7/21/04 3:22 pm

Hi Atemesia, just a note so that you don't get the impression you are being ignored. I will read your post thoroughy when I have time and get back to you on it. It's just that I may not have time today..uggghh, work, gets in the way of everything!

Hope you have a nice day in the meantime!

<span style="color:navy;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:x-small;]If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." -Will Rogers[/color]

I, too, have wondered a lot about the Prophecy room. Why do they keep them and why are the only people who can touch them the ones about whom it is? Are there that many important prophecies? The description of the Prophecy room led me to believe that it is quite large, almost warehouse like, but that could be because I�m American where things tend to be quite a bit, almost exaggeratedly, large *ducks flying objects while trying to explain that that is not a criticism, just a conclusion drawn on personal experience*.

Anyway, there were a lot of prophecies, not just a few. Why is it so important to keep an exact record of them all? Is it because they might turn out to be important? I�d also like to know who the guy is who takes care of these prophecies and if he is a seer or just a librarian (would also like to know what sort of name JKR would choose, how about Prudence Sage, Crystal Divine or Etoile Gazer ?).

Enough of the questions, although I would like to hear anyone�s speculation as to the answers.

I do think there must be seers working in the DoM. However, I can also imagine that they might have a difficult time finding qualified seers to work there. I say this considering what McGonagall and Dumbledore have said about seers and the science of divination. Indeed, the only qualified seer we have ever seen is Firenze, and of course the other centaurs, but he was born to that life and centaurs, as we now know, are not keen on sharing their talents. Real human seers are few and far between and even if you find one, they would have to be the right sort of person to work at the Ministry. The study of divination for developmental purposes, as most likely takes place in the DoM, would by nature have to be �scientific�, but scientific and divination do not go well together. I imagine most seers would shun such an atmosphere of study of their talents, if not because of the nature of the work, then because giving prize to their secrets might open up the field and render their �calling� less select.

As for the infamous locked door, my thoughts from the other thread, and yes, I still agree with Sila on this:

Quote::

what is behind the door may not be fluffy and lovely warm when it's cold out side. Having said that, Love is one of the most terrible things on this planet. Bear with me here: I just watched "Love Actually" the other night for the first time and laughed at a scene, which really wasn't funny if you're in that situation. It's the one where the little boy tells his stepfather that he has a problem. Now he's expecting bullying at school, drugs, psychological problems, etc. When he pops out with "I'm in love" the dad laughs and says it that all? Whereupon the kid responds something to the effect of, I'm suffering one of the worst and most painful states known to man and you ask is that all! The kid was right. Love is one of the most horrible things in life if it doesn't go the way you want it to. Love can tear your innards out, make you not eat, lose sleep, you can't think of anything else, it can drive you insane (literally) and it can even make you want to kill yourself. It's no wonder they have ha knife-melting door for that room. If thoughts could do that much damage to Ron, imagine what raw love would do to you

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." -Will Rogers[/color]

Post subject: Re: love Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 05:37 AM

I completely agree on the love thing.

Quote::

There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature

That is what Dumbledore says to Harry, and it pretty much sums up what love is. If you love someone, or someone loves you, then the love itself is a wonderful thing, but if your love is not returned, or you lose someone you love, then the emotions that come with that are "more terrible than death". Also, I think that the room definitely does contain love because Dumbledore says "that power took you to save Sirius tonight", and Harry went to save Sirius because he loved him.

About the prophecies, I think the reason only the people who they refer to can touch them is because otherwise, if an important prophecy was made about you and someone completely unrelated took it, you would never know something that maybe you needed to know. I think there probably are quite a few important ones, maybe not as important as the one they were protecting from Voldemort, but I don't think a Seer would make a prophecy if it wasn't important. Also, what confuses me is the fact that several people could retrieve a prophecy if it refers to them. For example, the prophecy about Voldemort and Harry. Putting aside the fact that Voldemort couldn't get the prophecy because it would alert the ministry to his return, what if he had got it and Harry hadn't? That could have changed everything. But if Harry got it and Voldemort didn't, that could also have changed everything. What if one person gets the prophecy and the others don't have any idea what it says? Couldn't this change things from what they would be if everyone heard it?

This is completely off topic, but why did Dumbledore hire Professor Trelawney? Is it because he thought she might turn out to be a good Seer, or because he was concerned that she would make more prophecies about Voldemort and he wanted to hear them? Because he said in OOtP:

Quote::

The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post.

It's a bit of a coincedence that she made the prophecy right after Dumbledore gave up on her, isn't it?

Another thing that I wonder about the prophecy room is how do they get the prophecy records there? Does the Seer make a record and send it? Or do they automatically appear there?

Post subject: Re: love Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 09:27 AM

Jasmine, it is lovely to read a post from someone who has put so much thought into it and I like a lot of the points you make.

I'm not quite sure where to discuss the Trelawney thing, there are two threads about the prophecy, but none about her and I don't really feel like starting one. I posted something on the prophecy thread you started about her and why I think Dumbledore hired her. It did seem to be going in the direction of talking about her. There's also the one about why the prophecy needed to be protected, there might be something on that about her.

<span style="color:purple;font-family:comic sans ms;]Follow him, he speaks in sentences - Eddie Izzard.[/color]

<span style="color:black;font-family:Christmas;font-size:small;]Imagine wasting your time and energy persecuting Harry Potter readers when there are little toerags like tabloid journalists on the loose.[/color]

<span style="color:black;font-family:georgia;font-size:x-small;]The molecules shift, then everything goes back to normal. But everything's different. Fragments of what used to be flutter in the mind but can never be made real again.[/color]

<span style="color:purple;font-family:comic sans ms;]Lead me not into temptation, I can find the way myself.[/color]