The Curious Case Of Voldemorts Missing Body
by MuggleNet·June 27, 2015
More than a few strange things happened that fateful October night when James and Lily Potter were murdered in Godrics Hollow. We all know that little Harry Potter became the first, and so far only, wizard to ever survive a killing curse. We also know that Lord Voldemort unintentionally transformed Harry into one of his Horcruxes. Furthermore, we know that Voldemort survived that night because of the existing Horcruxes he had already created. But what we still dont know is what in the wizarding world happened to Voldemorts body after he was ripped from it that night.
To help us solve this case, lets review a couple of crucial facts that we do know about the extraordinary happenings of October 31, 1981.
I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost but still, I was alive.
There are a few key pieces of information about that night that we do not know, which are going to make solving this case difficult for us, including the following:
Now, let us come to a conclusion.
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His Own Spell Destroyed Him
When Voldemort learned from Snape that there was a prophecy that would vanquish the Dark Lord, he immediately sought to find out more. Knowing that a child would be born that could beat him, he set out to eliminate the child – not knowing if it was the half-blooded Harry or the full-blooded Neville, who were both born on the same day. He went after Harry due to the fact that he and the child had something in common: they were both half-bloods.
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When Voldemort showed up and attacked, he took out both James Potter and Lily Potter – however, Lily’s love cast a protective spell on Harry and therefore Voldemort’s Avada Kedavra spell backfired. When he was ‘destroyed’ it was the result of his own spell, and this protection of a mother’s love.
Why Did Harry Survive Voldemorts Curse In The First Place
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Every Harry Potter fan knows why Harry survived the first time Voldemort tried to kill him. Its all thanks to his mothers love. Yet that protection wore off once Harry reached the age of 17, which he had by the time he met Voldemort in the forest.
This time things are more complicated. His mothers protection does play a role, which well get into later. For now, all you need to know is that it had supposedly worn off when Harry met Voldemort again since he had reached the age of maturity in the Wizarding World and was no longer living with his Muggle aunt and uncle.
One of the complicated reasons why Harry survived has to do with the Elder Wand. Though Voldemort had the wand at the time, Harry was its true master. Therefore the wand wouldnt allow Voldemort to kill Harry. When Voldemort tried, he instead destroyed the Horcrux that he never intended to make in Harry.
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He Couldnt Control Harrys Mind
While Voldemort could invade the minds of others, implant memories, and control them, he was unable to do so with Harry Potter after a few first attempts or chose not to. At first, Voldemort didnt realize that when he was using his abilities on Harry, the connection went both ways. However, in time he figured it out, and then decided to sever this connection himself, because he was afraid that it would allow Harry to know what he was doing.
This may have been a usual hazard of Occulumency, with powerful wizards able to create a two-way connection between minds, but it seems that this was only seen in the series with Harry there is no mention of Voldemort having this issue with any of the other witches or wizards that he influenced over the years.
What Is The Voldemort Fetus
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Voldemort’s soul in Limbo greatly resembles the rudimentary body that Voldemort used during the film version of Goblet of Fire. Although, based on the description in the fourth and seventh novels, the appearance of Voldemort’s stunted form does match.
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Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write “I am Lord Voldemort”, Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny’s fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes.
How Did Voldemort Become Fetus
Pettigrew mixed up a potion for Voldemort using unicorn blood and the venom of Nagini. With this potion, they were able to create a new body for Lord Voldemort to finally return to. However, this body was not what Voldemort needed to return to his fearful leadership form. Instead, it was that of a scaly, hairless baby.
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How Did Voldemort Know Where Dumbledore Was Buried
Location of Dumbledores grave was no secret. When Voldemort came for the Elder Wand he broke the Tomb and took the Wand from Dumbledore. After the Hogwarts war and Voldemort was finally vanquished, Harry mentions that he will return the Elder wand to its rightful location, which is the Tomb of Dumbledore.
He Doesn’t Need A Wand
As the Harry Potter movies show, most wizards need a wand in order to cast their spells. When a wand breaks, as has happened on numerous occasions throughout the movies and books, the wizard or witch becomes incapable of casting spells . Of course, many magical children find that they have magical outbursts at a young age, without the use of a wand, but these are uncontrolled – and the wand is used to direct and control their abilities.
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However, a young Tom Riddle had figured out that he had special abilities – and he had a shocking amount of control over them. He could move things with his mind and he could speak to and occasionally control animals, among other things. As an adult, he was accomplished at non-verbal and wandless magic, using it to move and control people with a hand gesture alone on many occasions.
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How Did Voldemort Lose His Body
When the curse hits a living, organic target it invariably kills themwithout injury.
How did the Avada Kedavara curse vaporize Voldemort’s body?
- AncientSwordRageSep 2, 2012 at 0:32
- Maybe it’s the effect when you are killed by Avada Kedavra but you have horcruxes protecting your Soul?
Lily’s protection bounced Avada Kedavara spell back at Voldemort. Right?
Wrong. 🙂
The spell did not bounce back as:
- During the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry puts a sacrificial protection on everyone, but Voldemort’s spells do not bounce back, they simply are not binding.
- Had the spell bounced back there would have been no explosion, as you say.
So what happened? We see for instance during the duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort what happens when a Killing Curse doesn’t hit living matter: it releases energy, which destroyed the stone sculptures.
So the spell hit the love protection, and was diverted by it. Some energy leaked out, as the ricochet of a bullet leaves a mark on the wall.
This curse was very special for Voldemort, as it was the accomplishment of the prophecy and the creation of a horcrux. He probably put a monstrous amount of power in the curse which is already the most potent one. So it made a huge boom, and Big V was vaporized…
But Not As Strong As He’d Like To Be
Like Dumbledore, Voldemort seems to know a great deal more than most people in this novel. But Voldemort’s performance of all-knowing superiority is a lot less successful than Dumbledore’s. Voldemort may like to bully people, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually as strong as he pretends to be. We get to see the cracks in his façade when Harry and Voldemort’s wands meet. Voldemort’s “red eyes wide with astonishment” when the Priori Incantatem starts, and Voldemort even looks “astonished, and almost fearful” as the ghosts of his victims begin to come out of his wand. Voldemort has weaknesses, even if Harry doesn’t know exactly what they are yet.Something else that neither Harry nor Voldemort seem entirely to understand though Voldemort catches on quick in Book 5 is the curse scar. Harry’s lightning bolt-shaped scar is what connects him psychically to Voldemort. Whenever Voldemort is feeling especially angry, Harry gets flashes of it, as when Voldemort murders Frank Bryce and when he casts the Cruciatus Curse on Wormtail. So, through Harry, we can get signs of how Voldemort behaves in his off hours when he’s just hanging out, and it’s not a pretty picture.
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He Could Speak Parseltongue
Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter shared a special skill: they are both able to speak and understand Parseltongue. Harry used this early on when he spoke to a boa constrictor and helped it escape the zoo. Voldemort used it for more nefarious purposes, though he mostly used it to communicate with his snake servant Nagini. This power allows wizards and witches to speak to and influence serpents, and is very rare.
Almost all Parselmouths are descendants of Salazar Slytherin, and there are only very rare exceptions – with Harry Potter as the most obvious example, as he gained the ability when Voldemort attacked him when he was a baby – part of Voldemort became a part of Harry. Speaking Parseltongue is often seen as the sign of a dark wizard or witch – although Dumbledore has mentioned that there are a few good individuals who can speak it as well.
His Wand Had A Weakness
After Voldemort regained his body in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and used the blood of Harry Potter to create a potion that finally allowed him to physically attack the Boy Who Lived, the two had a duel. While Voldemort was a master duelist who had defeated some of the best wizards and witches in the world, he was unable to beat Harry Potter.
This was because there was another protection set up to save Harry’s life. Voldemort’s wand was unable to overpower Harry’s wand, which came as quite the surprise to Voldemort. This was due to the fact that the two wands had the same core – that of Fawkes’ phoenix feathers – which meant that they shared a connection. This helped Harry survive, as the shades of his mom, dad, and Voldemort’s other victims showed up to help him escape from Voldemort.
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He Drank Venom And Blood To Survive
Voldermort’s time piggy-backing on Quirrell’s head was cut short by a 12-year old Harry’s intervention in The Sorcerer’s Stone. After losing his chance at being physically revived by the Stone, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named fled once more to start from scratch on his resurrection plan. Fortunately, he was eventually reunited with an old follower: Petter Pettigrew.
Determined to prove his doggish loyalty, the Death Eater managed — under his master’s instruction — to perform a ritual, creating a temporary body for Voldemort while he waited to be fully restored. The body was described as “hairless, scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black” and the size of a child. Worse was the potion he drank to sustain the form: snake venom, unicorn blood and something “indescribably” awful.
He Could Fly Without A Broom
As shown throughout the Harry Potter series, wizards can’t fly without support. Most use brooms, which is the classic way for magic users to fly. However, there are other magical objects and creatures that allow wizards and witches to fly. Hagrid has his flying motorbike, and other characters mention magic carpets, and use everything from the Flying Ford Anglia to Thestrals.
Unlike other wizards, Voldemort can actually fly without the use of any support. He trained himself to fly just by using magic and thus he doesn’t need the help of a broom. He also taught this skill to a number of Death Eaters, which is how they were able to swoop in for attacks without using anything to support themselves.
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He Had A Daughter With Bellatrix Lestrange
In the stage play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” which became part of the “Harry Potter” canon in 2016 we learn that Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange had a daughter together named Delphini.
The exact date of Delphini’s birth is still a bit of a mystery, but she must have been born sometime between Bellatrix’s escape from Azkaban in “Order of the Phoenix” and the Battle of Hogwarts in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” during which both Voldemort and Bellatrix died.
His Greatest Fear Was His Own Death
Boggarts are magical shape-shifters that transform into whatever a witch or wizard fears the most.
In a 2005 interview with the fan site Mugglenet, Rowling said that Voldemort’s greatest fear is “ignominious death,” and if he ever encountered a boggart, he would probably see his own lifeless body.
Even without this insight, it is clear that Voldemort does everything in his power including fragmenting his soul seven times throughout the series to live up to his name and beat death.
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How Did Harry Become A Horcrux
Harry Potter became a Horcrux when the love from his mother protected him from Lord Voldemorts curse. Instead of killing Harry the curse backfired and destroyed Voldemorts body and all his power. In the course of this battle, Voldemort accidentally gave part of his powers to baby Harry as well as a piece of his soul.
How Did They Come Up With His Final Death
Even though the tree was a pretty wild idea, it was a good jumping off point for what eventually became the final concept.
Influenced strongly by Blade Runner, they decided to channel the same vibe of one of its characters wide shot deaths and he explained, The character is not quite human just kind of stops having whatever was inside him that kept him operational. Voldemort, the shell, the humanoid form, is definitely gone, but what happened to the evil part? How do we make that go away?
Somebody brought up the idea, I like him there in the middle of this whole thing, but can something be rising up off of him? We started doing little black particles coming up off of him as if thats the dark energy, his evilness is drifting off of him like some kind of gritty smoke.
From there, the idea snowballed. He said, We thought, What are we gonna do for the close up? And we thought of the idea that his skin peels off, but it peels off in such a thin, onion-skin kind of tissue that there would be multiple layers. It would pick up in the wind.
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To be honest, were kind of curious about what the original Voldemort death would have looked like. What did you think about the cinematic end of Tom Marvolo Riddle? Did you prefer the book or the film?
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He Created An Army Of Corpses By Murdering Muggles
The books reveal that an Inferius is a corpse that’s been reanimated by dark magic.
Fans may recall the scene in “Half-Blood Prince” when a swarm of Inferi surrounds Dumbledore and Harry in the cave as they try to retrieve the locket Horcrux.
What they may not know is that Voldemort by murdering vulnerable Muggles and reanimating their corpses.
He Probably Could’ve Gotten A Job At The Ministry Of Magic
As one of the top students in his class, Tom Riddle was bound to have many opportunities presented to him after finishing at Hogwarts.
In his final year, Professor Slughorn offered to set him up with job interviews by using his connections at the Ministry of Magic.
Instead, after getting rejected for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts, Riddle went to work at Borgin and Burkes antique shop. It was this job that gave him the opportunity to acquire both Salazar Slytherin’s locket and Helga Hufflepuff’s cup, which he turned into Horcruxes.
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His Blood Betrays His Beliefs
Like his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin, Voldemort has a keen hatred of witches and wizards who aren’t pure-blooded. These are either half-bloods, a magical family with Muggle ancestry, or Muggle-born witches and wizards, like Hermione Granger. Racial supremacy is something valued by other families like the Malfoys, but Voldemort took it to the extreme.
The sad irony of his beliefs is that he himself is a half-blood — born to a Muggle father and a pure-blood witch. The incestuous nature of his mother’s family to preserve purity coupled with a loveless childhood instilled a self-hatred in Voldemort that helped fuel his fanatical prejudice. Though he claimed his lineage was pure, the truth ate away at him.