If wizards believed animals had souls :
They would have had a different reaction in chapter 48 when Harry became a vegetarian after learning about parselmouth.
It would have been hinted in a way or another in the Prentending to be Wise arc, or otherwise in all the debate between Harry and other wizards about if soul exists.
In chapter 47 Draco wouldn't have be saying so seriously that muggles don't have souls.
That's not very strong evidence, I admit. But taken those 3 pieces of evidence, combined with the lack of any evidence pointing in the wide belief that animals have souls, it seems reasonable to assume the common belief among wizards is that animals don't have souls.
So it seems Quirrel and Moody are contradicting each other on how the Killing Curse actually works.
What if they believed everything had (some kind of) a soul, including (but not necessarily limited) to plants? The reactions would be interpreted differently. After all, magic beliefs and animistic beliefs were often associated in our history, and wizards actually have things like that crazy violent willow and the sorting hat. They also have examples of magical creatures, including for example centaurs who both have human-like sentience and are magic users (or at least capable of prophecy).
Perhaps Draco has just misspoken, or spoken without thinking. After all, racist beliefs are traditionally not very internall consistent. Maybe the actual claim is only wizard souls go to heaven, or something like that.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 96. The previous thread is at almost 300 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.
Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, .
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: