Welcome foolish mortals... I am your blogger, your... BOO blogger... here to discuss some matters of spirit with all of you, the nature of ghosts in the wizarding world, and wait? I already covered that? Well, that only leaves one creature of the supernatural to go over... and that is... Peeves the Poltergeist.
Now from what we know about poltergeists are that they are unpleasant, mischievous things and often don't take physical shape. In addition, they have never been alive as a human. Interestingly enough Peeves is also especially potent and obnoxious for a poltergeist, leaving us to the following conclusions.
1) Poltergeists are resident to places with plenty of children, or where order is hard to maintain. (thus why the Weasleys don't have their own resident poltergeists.
2) They are manifestations of chaos. Not inherently evil or good, but often acting in a way that promotes the overall sense of chaos.
3) They are most powerful with multiple individuals around, and can become more solid, less solid, turn invisible or do as they wish at will if they are strong enough. Usually, they are just invisible and manipulate objects though.
4) It is near impossible to remove a poltergeist, but they can be coerced by individuals that can cause order.
This should explain why Peeves behaves the way he does, and give insight to poltergeists elsewhere. Though this raises question why the other two schools do not have poltergeists. This answer would be because the students are kept under closer control, with Beauxbatons and Durmstrang possibly being more strict in handling the students. Furthermore, while it appears that the Weasleys would be prone to having poltergeists, they rarely had all the children there at once, and Mrs. Weasley was rather good at imposing some sense of order.
So why hasn't Peeves been removed? Knowing that he feeds off of chaos? If I must guess, I would say that most of the headmasters reasonably tolerated peeves, and were able to keep him from doing much, as well as seeing him as a teaching opportunity for students, so they may learn to tolerate poor behavior from others, and brush it off. With that in mind, I think that perhaps, that would be the reason Dumbledore would pull for not removing or coercing Peeves, being strikingly similar to the explanation of Snape as a professor.
I'm interested that you didn't comment on the actual name of Peeves and the pun within it!
ReplyDeleteAlso Bill and Percy were not very chaotic, and we don't know about Charlie. Just the tweens might not be enough. Also I guess it takes a long time for poltergeists to manifest.
ReplyDeleteCould the ghoul in the attic have been some kind of possible predecessor to a poltergeist?
DeleteI been thinking about Peeves. Not sure about the other headmasters but Dumbledore seemed to have a sense of humour and I can just see him enjoying someone like Peeves. Yes he got up to mischief but did he really hurt anyone. Lets see if I can remember, he tipped icy water on them, threw chalk, made them set fire to their pants before he would let them through. . no real harm and there are more dangerous things in the castle. Not to mention the curses, quidditch accidents, kids doing way worse to each other with spells. In the huge scheme of the castle, Peeves was just a nuisance but not harmful in the full extent.
ReplyDeleteDo we know though how long he has been in the castle. For Poltergeists usually stem from a teens torment. . . if we could pinpoint that maybe we could work out who created him from their tormented mind. . . maybe it was Myrtle . . now there's a thought . . .