“I was afraid of death,” said Nick. “I chose to remain behind…”
OotP, American Hardcover, page 861

These are the words the Gryffindor house ghost, Sir Nicholas (a.k.a. Nearly Headless Nick), told Harry after being confronted about his life after death.

Harry was distraught about Sirius’s death by-stumbling-through-a-mystical-veil in the Department of Mysteries. That night he would be full of anger and sadness and almost loweredhimself into killing Sirius's murderer, Bellatrix Lestrange.

Following the event at the Ministry of Magic, Harry was walking through the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, reminiscing about his godfather, when he saw Nearly Headless Nick… Right then and there he ran and cornered Nick and questioned him about his presence even though he is dead.

After questioning him, Nick says that only wizards can come back as ghosts and that they had to have left an imprint of themselves where they once walked. Nick also says that few wizards choose this path and squashes Harry’s hopes of Sirius coming back.

~~~

ES (Emerson Spartz): MuggleNet "Ask Jo" contest winner Asrial, who's 22, asks, "If Voldemort saw a Boggart, what would it be?"

JKR: Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death, but how would a Boggart show that? I'm not too sure. I did think about that because I knew you were going to ask me that.

ES: A corpse?

JKR: That was my conclusion, that he would see himself dead.

This was taken from Part 2 of the Mugglenet and the Leaky Cauldron interview with Joanne Kathleen Rowling. After reading this I pondered for a year and questioned whether there is a connection between this and what Nearly Headless Nick said.

If Voldemort is afraid of death, wouldn’t he go to extreme measures to survive? We already know that he had made the Horcruxes, but in the mean time he could have tried to figure out how he could’ve made this “imprint” on earth so he’ll be turned into a ghost.

What kind of “imprint” could this be, I wonder? Maybe he does something at a place that he will be remembered for? Maybe he does a charm that leaves his presence in a area? To this day I have no idea, but if someone like nearly Headless Nick or Moaning Myrtle could do it then Tom Riddle could do it easily.

Maybe this “imprint” doesn’t mean anything at all, just a way Nick was trying to tell Harry that Sirius couldn’t come back without questions. The reason I say this is because Moaning Myrtle was only a teen muggle-born student who couldn’t possibly know how to leave such an imprint. Or, maybe people leave this “imprint” without knowing that they do it

So maybe the fact that being scared of death and choosing to come back is enough to become a ghost. In this case it will be very easy for Voldemort to come back if he ever truly died.

Knowing Voldemort and his urge for immortality he will probably choose this path. So if and when at the end of Book Seven and Harry kills Voldemort, who isn’t to say that he’ll choose to come back to glide around the earth in a new transparent form. He may even find a way to get a body also if he were to come back being as clever as he is.

So the only question that remains is will we being seeing Voldemort after his second demise to Harry?

4/17/07

Posted by: Rachael