Skip to main content

harry potter - What is in the locked room in the Department of Mysteries?


In Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, Harry encounters a locked room in the Department of Mysteries. Dumbledore hints later that this room holds the emotion of love. Is this confirmed anywhere? How does a room 'hold' an emotion?



Answer



J.K. Rowling addresses the "Love Room" at the Department of Mysteries in an interview with The Leaky Cauldron. The emotion of love is studied in the Love Room; however, as JKR has said as well, love induced by a love potion, Amortentia for example, is not truly love. However, inducing the effects of love is the best the Unspeakables (the wizarding "researchers" who work in the Department of Mysteries) can do in order to study it.



SU: Well, we have a lot of questions still for you, Jo. Like stuff about that mysterious Department of Mysteries. Can you tell us what was in the Love room? (MA: Oh yeah.) I mean…

MA: (laughs) We’ll just call it the Love room.

JKR: (laughs) What was that mysterious room we don’t know what it was in- the Love room? Yes, it was the…

SU: Yeah. (All laugh) Thank you. (JKR: Well…) See, I told you, I’m in Hufflepuff, you know I’m not…

JKR: No, no, no, I think what’s in the Love room, it’s the place where they study what love means. So that room, I believe, would have at its center a kind of fountain or well containing a love potion, a very powerful love potion. You know that the first time they ever enter Slughorn’s Potions (SU: Yes.) class, and he starts talking about Amortentia, the love potion, and he says it’s the most dangerous one in the room, well, that’s what they would have found in the Love room.

SU: Oh…

JN: Interesting.

JKR: So you would see wizards and witches taking it, they would study the effects. The room of course has to be locked. And, you know, again, there’s this thread running through the books, what love does, and it raises people to the heights of absolute heroism, (SU: It does.) as in Lily, Harry, Neville, and it also leads them into acts of foolishness and even evil, which is Bellatrix and also Dumbledore. He became foolish, he lost his center, his moral center, when he became infatuated. So that’s what it does, that’s what makes it dangerous. In Bellatrix it was- as I think is clear, but I doubt that people will be particularly shocked to hear- because I’m sure they’ve deduced that Bellatrix is madly romantically in love with Voldemort. This is, that’s the obsession of her life.

CHAT WITH J.K. ROWLING - POTTERCAST 131 FROM THE LEAKY CAULDRON 01.02.08



The door to the Love Room would, of course, have to be kept locked, in order to keep the love-potion-infused subjects from running amok through the entire Department of Mysteries. I think J.K. Rowling's point above is that love makes people do unimaginable things, for both good and bad.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...
Post a Comment
Read more