In one of the middle books, the Transfiguration class is practising Vanishing Charms on mice (I think). Hermione, being Hermione, progresses to practising on kittens by the end of the lesson.
In Book 7, it is explicitly stated that a Vanished object disappears from existence. I guess, strictly speaking "annihilating" is more accurate than "disintegrating".
I think there's a point of philosophical contention here. I gather you're talking about Professor McGonagall's answer to the Ravenclaw Tower door?
The riddle is, "Where do vanished objects go?" to which she responds, "Into unbeing, which is to say, everything."
To me this implies that in canon "existence" is a predicate (common metaphysical opinion is that it isn't in the real world), which means that whilst vanished objects lose the property of existence they keep all their other properties and can be re-substantiated just by ...
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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 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
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.)
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