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Was The Bloody Baron ever violent towards students?

I recently played through the 2001 Harry Potter 1 PC game, and in the castle, the Baron is dangerous to touch but does not chase you, then there is one dungeon where he actually chases you and tries to kill you (there is no way to fight back, you just have to avoid/out-run him.)

Is that purely a game mechanic, or was the Baron actually dangerous canonically?

For comparison, Nearly Headless Nick, and other unidentified ghosts, are not dangerous (unless Peeves counts.)

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    Peeves does not count as he is Poltergeist, which in the Wizarding World is a separate and distinct entity from a Ghost.
    – Skooba - Stands Against AI
    Commented Jan 30 at 20:09
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    It's been a fair while since I played the game, but wasn't being caught an instant-fail rather than health-damage? i.e. the same rules as the night-time mission with Filch. He's not actually harming/killing you, but if he finds you then you get reported to the teachers (most probably Snape!) and punished/expelled, so it counts as a "Game Over, return to checkpoint"
    – Chronocidal
    Commented Jan 31 at 11:46
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    @Chronocidal For the Baron, not instant fail, but reduces health. for Filch it is instant fail. Maybe you're thinking of the PS1 game? the PS1 and PC games have a lot of differences for some reason. Never played the PS1 game myself, but seen some youtube videos of others playing the PS1 game. BTW in the HP2 PC game, the Baron is not dangerous at all.
    – hanshenrik
    Commented Jan 31 at 12:06

2 Answers 2

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There is no indication, in the books and other extended material, that I can find, that the Bloody Baron is violent, or even harmful to touch, for the students at Hogwarts. Like the other ghosts, it seems that the worst he can do is startle and scare by his appearance. It seems this is a video-game invention, much the same as how such games often have players damaged by normally harmless objects and characters simply to provide a game framework.

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  • harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Bloody_Baron
    – Valorum
    Commented Jan 30 at 16:30
  • playing HP2 PC game now, and in this game, Bloody Baron is not dangerous at all :)
    – hanshenrik
    Commented Jan 30 at 18:27
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    Warning: TVTropes link, proceed at your own risk unless you have too much free time.
    – Orlahm
    Commented Jan 31 at 8:22
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    "I survived the TVTropes link and visited only 30 seconds"
    – Clockwork
    Commented Jan 31 at 13:55
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    There is no indication in the books that it is even possible to touch the Bloody Baron, is there?
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 1 at 22:26
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In general the ghosts of the Wizarding World cannot interact physically with the living.

Although ghosts could talk to the living, they could not physically interact with the living world - but if a student were to accidentally walk through a ghost, they would experience an icy chill.

Wizarding World : Fact File : Ghosts

Therefore, although the Bloody Baron is scary in appearance, he is harmless to the student body (and all humans) at large.

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    We see various ghosts interacting with the physical plane though. Myrtle causing a splash and poltergeists moving objects...
    – Valorum
    Commented Jan 30 at 20:21
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    …and talking involves moving air
    – Bergi
    Commented Jan 31 at 0:46
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    From years of neglect, Harry Potter is severely anemic. The icy chill may be enough to finish him off. That's why he's called the Half Blood Prince.
    – Clint Eastwood
    Commented Jan 31 at 15:06
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    @ClintEastwood SPOILER: Harry Potter isn't the Half Blood Prince.
    – Captain James T. Kirk
    Commented Jan 31 at 16:37
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    @Valorum Poltergeists aren’t ghosts, though. We see Peeves interacting with the physical world all the time (dropping stink pellets on students, unscrewing a chandelier, knocking over a Vanishing Cabinet, etc.), so poltergeists clearly can. Myrtle causing a splash always annoyed me as plotholish, but apart from that, we don’t see ghosts interacting with the physical world anywhere that I can recall. In fact, the Vanishing Cabinet was knocked over by Peeves precisely because Nearly Headless Nick persuaded him to, presumably because he wasn’t able to do it himself.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 1 at 22:33

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