I'm not sure what Smully is referring to. And I've never mentioned toast in this entire series of threads.

The name works well. How? We have two words King + Cross. It's literally one of the most famous train stations in Britain, with only Waterloo, Victoria and Paddington to rival it. The name comes from a monument to King George IV, aka Hugh Laurie.

King's + Cross? So, if we say King = Jesus and Cross = Resurrection, then we see King's Cross as a metaphor for the Harrowing of Hell. But this is Harry's party and he's not really dead. So, we don't see any other dead people, except Dumbledore who says he's in Harry's head and the whimpering soul fragment, which had been literally inside Harry's head. It's an imperfect but plausible match.

Kings + Cross? Well, not that I'm looking at toast, but cross could be a verb. Then we'd have some authority figures passing each other. That could describe the meeting between Harry and Dumbledore. They meet at last as equals. No more secrets. And Dumbledore parts with the words, "Then we say goodbye for the present."

As to the abandoned boys, I see a series of Madonna & Child images. Merope who is abandoned by Tom Sr and must give birth to her baby in an orphanage. Eileen Prince, who marries a Muggle and gives birth to Severus, but Tobias Snape hates magic and the couple quarrel endlessly. And Harry, who is the subject of a prophecy that places his life in danger and causes his parents to flee and go into hiding. Merope, as the pregnant Mary who gives birth in a barn, while Tom Sr/Joseph quietly divorces her (no angel appears to say it's okay), and the same with Tobias, who seems to feel annoyed with the miracluous power of his wife and son. (Both Matthew and Luke have genealogies that trace Jesus' ancestry through Joseph's line, though he's supposedly NOT the father.) And James, Lily and baby Harry echo the flight into Egypt.

Added note on ghosts, ghosts in the Potterverse do not behave as ghosts do in the our world. They do not go "on" and then come back. What makes a Potterverse ghost is a wizard so frightened of death and going "on" that it never does die. It's never crossed the threshold, gone through the Veil, or caught a train to "on". Through some enchantment of fear and loathing, a witch or wizard leaves an impression of itself while sacrificing any chance of joining whatever unknowable adventure lies beyond. It's not proof of an Afterlife, but of supreme cowardice in this life. Ghosts in our world go to the land of the dead and return to haunt from this other place; Potterverse ghosts never go anywhere but here.

Merope dies in the same Dickensian fashion as Oliver Twist's mother, Agnes. But this also bears some resemblence to Luke's version of the Nativity with no room at the inn and a manger for a craddle and shepherds instead of wisemen. Certainly Voldemort is a Christ-figure, if one is looking for one.

The word "Cross" in King's Cross denotes a junction of Euston, St. Pancras and Pentonville roads, where the monument to George IV was built. No Christian symbolism there.

And in this case, the soul would be sentient. Another case in point for that is the flayed baby at King's Cross. It looks human (sort of), it looks alive as it struggles for breath. Yet another example is in the locket horcrux; it tormented Ron and anyone who came in contact with it for too long, just like the Ring of Power. The ring wanted to get back to its master...and perhaps the soul bit inside the locket wanted to get back to Voldemort.I tend to think of this as a sort of hologram reproduction. I don't think James, Lily, Sirius, and Lupin had the power to act, only to guide. What they really are, we may never know. I hope this is one of the questions JKR answers this week.

Well, you can survive without your soul. The dementors are proof of that. To truly live, you need all three: body, soul, and spirit/mind. That's why Voldemort needed a body so badly. The soul cannot exist for long without a body to house it in, until it crosses over. Voldemort's could cross over, because his Horcruxes tethered it to this side of the veil.

It could be just as you say, wordsaremagic. AK does split the soul from the body--we see that in Voldemort's memory of Godric's Hollow. He is ripped from his body--he says it is pain beyond pain, but that's probably because he couldn't actually go anywhere, tethered as he was.

It has to cause more damage than that, though. When you lose your soul to the dementors, you continue to exist. The AK must physically kill the body by destroying the other life processes in some way.

I'll think on that one.

Good heavens, davidenglish! I hope you mean Voldemort is an inverted Christ-figure

Known as Queen's Cross until the early 20th century, it was renamed King's Cross after Edward VII of the United Kingdom. The "cross" is a reference to the major intersection formed by William Street and Darlinghurst Road, which forms the locality's southernmost limit.

King's Cross station (often spelt Kings Cross or Kings X on platform signs) is a railway station in the district of the same name in northeast central London

The original "King's Cross" was a monument to King George IV.

The chronicles of these events, as recorded by the historians Tacitus[1] and Cassius Dio,[2] were rediscovered during the Renaissance and led to a resurgence of Boudica's legendary fame during the Victorian era, when Queen Victoria was portrayed as her "namesake". Boudica has since remained an important cultural symbol in the United Kingdom, the subject of art and poetry, and with her name used on several ships.

Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that there isn't Christian symbolism in the passage in question. tongue.gif

Good heavens, davidenglish! I hope you mean Voldemort is an inverted Christ-figure

I wrote Platform 9¾ when I was living in Manchester, and I was actually thinking of Euston. So anyone who's been to the real Platforms 9 and 10 at King's Cross will realise they don't bear a great resemblance to the platforms nine and ten as described in the book, and that would be because I was thinking of Euston at the time.

I am having a bit of trouble with a hologram simile. To me, a hologram would be a pre-programmed artificial image, meaning that someone programmed the stone to produce an illusion. Now it is true that the brother who wanted the stone to recover a lost loved one was intensely disappointed in what he got, since it was definitely NOT a "resurrection" stone. "Resurrection" implies the idea of Standing Up again or being erect again--that is, there is a distinct physical connotation to the word. In the original Greek of the New Testament, the word that refers to the resurrection of Christ is αναστασις, almost literally "stand up." That is definitely NOT what is happening with the Stone. However, I have problem with the stone being a complete hoax in the sense that what it produces is a complete, pre-progammed illusion based upon the user's false expectations. I think the key to all three of the Hallows is that they do, literally, what the brothers asked, but not necessarily what they wanted or expected. So, I think some aspect or part or essence of the soul/breath/spirit/mind of Lily, James, Sirius, and Lupin really did appear to Harry. I do not mean that they returned from the dead; that's the whole point of the stone (and the Hallows) being deceptive

I understand where david is coming from on this one. It is the same image as Voldemort as Alchemist. I get it, even if no one else does. Even John Granger, after whom this thread was named, considers Voldemort a Christ figure of sorts.