11

In Order of the Phoenix, Bill vanishes a bunch of top secret Order of the Pheonix scrolls:

Bill took out his wand, muttered, "Evanesco!" and the scrolls vanished.

If he had to go to the trouble of Vanishing them to ensure that Harry and co. didn't see what was on them, they were probably pretty important, enough that they would need to use them again. But in Deathly Hallows, McGonagall says this about where Vanished objects go:

"Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything."

Does she mean that they are permanently Vanished? It sure sounds like it.

Mithical
  • 38,898
  • 17
  • 178
  • 229
CHEESE
  • 18,571
  • 6
  • 64
  • 131
  • I'm assuming some spells can perform differently depending on how they are cast. If Evanesco is cast with a specific destination in mind, the items vanish and reappear at that destination. However if Evanesco is used with the intention of just causing the items to vanish from existence completely(as Snape did to Harry's potions repeatedly in OoTP), it so occurs. Of course there is no canon supporting this and I can't seem to remember any other spell with a dual purpose like this, so I've just commented and not answered. – ʀᴇᴅ_ᴅᴇᴠɪʟ226 Feb 16 '16 at 17:20
  • There's also the shipment of Invisible Book of Invisibility from the PoA. The man at Flourish & Blotts said they couldn't find them and lost out on an entire shipment. – Anoplexian Feb 16 '16 at 17:47
  • @Anoplexian You mean Bill could have made the scrolls invisible? – CHEESE Feb 16 '16 at 21:48
  • @CHEESE It's a possiblity. I see no canon evidence of that event. The book says vanished, but there's no definitive evidence that said it "vanished from the planes of existence". It very easily could have just been made invisible, such as when Dumbledore says he doesn't need a cloak to turn invisible. – Anoplexian Feb 16 '16 at 21:59

2 Answers2

6

No, or at least not immediately.

Otherwise, after Hermione vanished Harry's potion, they could have recovered it. This way Harry would have avoided a zero.

Instead, it sounds like she regrets doing something irreparable (emphasis mine):

At the end of the lesson he scooped some of the potion into a flask, corked it, and took it up to Snape’s desk for marking, feeling that he might at last have scraped an E.

He had just turned away when he heard a smashing noise; Malfoy gave a gleeful yell of laughter. Harry whipped around again. His potion sample lay in pieces on the floor, and Snape was watching him with a look of gloating pleasure.

“Whoops,” he said softly. “Another zero, then, Potter...”

Harry was too incensed to speak. He strode back to his cauldron, intending to fill another flask and force Snape to mark it, but saw to his horror that the rest of the contents had vanished.

“I’m sorry!” said Hermione with her hands over her mouth. “I’m really sorry, Harry, I thought you’d finished, so I cleared up!”

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, chapter 29, “Career advice”

Oriol
  • 4,307
  • 2
  • 24
  • 47
  • 2
    We don't know what spell she has used though, it might not be Evanesco, but Scourgify for example which is different – Shana Tar Sep 30 '18 at 14:14
1

Canon indicates thata vanished items do reappear. In Order of the Phoenix, Fred and George force the Slytherin Quidditch captain, Montague, into the Vanishing Cabinet (the cabinet that Draco uses in Half-Blood Prince to get the Death Eaters into Hogwarts).

‘Malfoy just docked us all about fifty points,’ said Harry furiously, as they watched several more stones fly upwards from the Gryffindor hour-glass.

‘Yeah, Montague tried to do us during break,’ said George.

‘What do you mean, “tried”?’ said Ron quickly.

‘He never managed to get all the words out,’ said Fred, ‘due to the fact that we forced him head-first into that Vanishing Cabinet on the first floor.’

Hermione looked very shocked.

‘But you’ll get into terrible trouble!’

‘Not until Montague reappears, and that could take weeks, I dunno where we sent him,’ said Fred coolly. ‘Anyway ... we’ve decided we don’t care about getting into trouble any more.’

Order of the Phoenix - Chapter twenty-eight, Snape's Worst Memory - Page 552 - Bloomsbury

While Harry is receiving Occlumency lessons from Snape, Draco enters the room to tell Snape, rather excitedly, that Montague has reappeared from being vanished, and is jammed down a toilet in one of the boys' restrooms.

‘They’ve found Montague, sir, he’s turned up jammed inside a toilet on the fourth floor.’

‘How did he get in there?’ demanded Snape.

‘I don’t know, sir, he’s a bit confused.’

‘Very well, very well. Potter,’ said Snape, ‘we shall resume this lesson tomorrow evening.’

Order of the Phoenix - Chapter twenty-eight, Snape's Worst Memory - page 563 - Bloomsbury

Slytherincess
  • 164,854
  • 146
  • 684
  • 899