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Something that has always intrigued me in the Harry Potter books is the scene in the Ministry of Magic where Sirius gets drawn beyond the Veil: what is it? Was it a barrier between this world and the next? JK Rowling has finally given a great explanation of what was behind her thinking on that:
It’s the divide between life and death. I tried to do a nod to that in The Tale of Three Brothers – she was separate from them as though through a veil. You can’t go back if you pass through that veil, you cannot come back. Or you can’t come back in any form that will make either person happy anyway.
But when they surround that veil [in Order of the Phoenix], I was trying to show that depending on their degree of skepticism or belief about what lay beyond – because Luna, of course, is a very skeptical character. Luna believes firmly in an afterlife. She’s very clear on that. And she feels them speaking or hears them speaking much more clearly than Harry does. This is the idea of faith. Harry thinks he can hear them; he’s drawn on. But Harry’s had a life that has been so imbued with death that he now has an uncharacteristically strong curiosity about the afterlife, especially for a boy of 15, as he is in Phoenix. Ron’s just scared, as I think Ron would be – he just knows this is something he doesn’t want to dabble with. Hermione, hyper-rational Hermione – ‘can’t hear anything, get away from the Veil.’ So if you walk through the veil, you’re dead. You’re dead. What you find on the other side, well, that’s the question.
Do I believe you go on? Yes, I do believe you go on. I do believe in an afterlife, although I’m absolutely doubt-ridden and always have been but there you are.
I had not anticipated, though really I should have done, how interested people would be to go beyond the veil. And lots of people, including Dan [Radcliffe], wanted to go through the veil. But then that shouldn’t surprise me because teenagers are very interested.
MA: Dan sort of does get to go beyond the veil.
JKR: Yeah, he does, but not literally through the veil
MA: Not charging through. Ginny, Ginny can hear it because she’s been…
JKR: I think women are more likely to hear than men. [Ginny and Harry] really are soulmates. I think she’s like Harry. She’s got an intellectual curiosity and she’s got something of belief. Hermione [is] totally rational. “Let’s all back away from the Veil and let’s pretend we heard nothing.” – source
Of course, when she says that Dan (Harry) sort of goes through the veil, she’s talking about when he had to voluntarily sacrifice himself in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in order to defeat Voldemort. I wonder why this Veil was in the Ministry of Magic, though. Any thoughts on that?
I think the veil was either
1. Some sort of ancient magic that the Dept. of Mysteries was studying
or
2. The equivalent to our electric chair. Dark, I know, but with the stadium seating all around it I really got the impression that it was how they would have dealt with Voldy if they ever caught him. The only thing worse than Azkaban.
The Department of Mysteries collections reminds me of the US Warehouse at the end of the film, “Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It’s a safe place to put mysterious objects and then forget about them.
lowell, i think your take on the veil makes sense. the death chair and stadium seating all seem to fit. i wish jkr would have expounded more on the subject in this interview. i have been fascinated with the veil since first reading ootp. i always wondered what it was and not knowing, hoped sirius would somehow come back later in the series. as far as what you said about them dealing with voldemort by using the veil if they ever caught him, i wonder what would’ve happened if he passed through without the horcruxes being destroyed. it’s all very interesting. thank you for the insight.