harry potter - How was Nearly Headless Nick unpetrified?

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets we see that Nearly Headless Nick is petrified (for lack of better description) at one point by the basilisk:

It was Nearly Headless Nick, no longer pearly-white and transparent, but black and smokey, floating immobile and horizontal, six inches off the floor.

-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter Eleven (The Dueling Club).

I don't recall any mention of Nick recovering in CoS but he does make many appearances in the later books in the series, therefore we know that he does recover. Since he was a ghost he couldn't consume the mandrake potion directly.

Is there any indication of what is done to bring Nick back to his typical ghostly state?

Answer

We notice after Nearly Headless Nick is petrified that:

McGonagall conjured a large fan out of thin air, which she gave to Ernie with instructions to waft Nearly Headless Nick up the stairs. This Ernie did, fanning Nick along like a silent black hovercraft.

- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 12: The Duelling Club

This indicates that anything gaseous (in this case, the fanned air) can affect ghosts physically, unlike solids and liquids which simply go through ghosts. So, I think the most likely way the Mandrake potion was administered to Nick was probably by some boiling or vapourizing process, where the vapours were then fanned into his ghost form. Of course, this is not canon (I doubt a canon answer exists yet), but just my extrapolation from the above.

Comments

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