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 magically restoring their quality of existence. So killing someone leaves them existent but changes them irreversibly from alive to dead, whereas vanishing them changes them reversibly from real to not-real. This, of course, doesn't make sense, which is why not many people think existence really is a predicate.
The other thing is that on the occasions when we are explicitly told a Vanishing Charm is being used, it is being used on objects that one does not expect to want back (such as failed potions). This suggests that its purpose is to get rid of things permanently rather than suspend their existence temporarily.
Come to that, if Vanishing Charms worked as you propose, they would surely see much wider use in the books in the many instances when an object must be temporarily concealed from a searching enemy.
The next discussion thread is here.
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.)
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.
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