Voldie's old body (was: Voldemort and Elixir)

[Kelly L. <kethlenda@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 49368

Melody wondered:

>You know Richelle, I never thought about this.  Man, that 
surprises
> me.  What did happen to Voldemort's body?  Given the 
circumstances of
> a rebound AK curse, it seems that what happened to him 
would be
> unknown.  I doubt the DE's came to reclaim the body(shell) 
since they
> fled to their own safety.  Had a body been there, then would the 
MoM
> buried it?  Would they just burn it?  It seems that body does not
> exist anymore, since Voldemort cannot re-inhabit it.  But then 
again,
> dead bodies are not inhabitable anyway.
> 
> Wait - it is his soul/spirit that survived, right?  Or is it his life
> force that survived?  If his life was separated and not his soul 
(aka.
> dementor's kiss) then he is still alive per say but bodiless.  So
> then, what does a bounced curse that takes the life out of you 
do?  It
> takes the life out but something happens and you don't die.  In 
normal
> AK's the left body is frozen dead, but it bounced so maybe it is
> destroyed from the ricochet momentum.  Seems he does not 
have a grave,
> so it is possible.  Or maybe, it was destroyed in the house 
toppling.

Kelly L's own musings on the matter:

This has been bothering me for ages.  The question is, what 
was left behind at the Potters' wrecked house, and how did it 
lead to the conclusion that Voldemort was defeated but not 
dead?  I remember at the beginning of PS/SS, the wizards were 
celebrating the fact that Voldemort's power "broke", and that he 
was "gone", but no one says that he is dead.  That to me would 
imply that he did not leave a body behind at the scene.

So what was there?  It couldn't have been a body, but it had to 
have been enough to imply that Voldemort was no longer a force 
to be reckoned with--at least for the time being.  

What we know was at the scene:  A destroyed house, probably 
blasted to smithereens by a curse like the one Pettigrew used to 
fake his death. (***See end of post for speculation about this 
exploding curse.)  James and Lily's dead bodies.  Baby Harry, 
with a lightning-bolt wound on his forehead but otherwise OK.  
And the WW concluded, from that evidence, that Voldemort was 
gone.  Again, he couldn't have left his body behind, because 
otherwise they would have been celebrating the DEATH of 
Voldemort and not his DEFEAT.  They would have thought he 
was deceased.  My best guess is that they somehow discerned 
from Harry's injury that it was the mark of a failed Avada Kedavra, 
though how they would have known this is uncertain, since there 
had never been a failed Avada Kedavra before.  A "Priori 
Incantatem" on Harry's head?  Who knows?

So Voldemort's body wasn't there.  That leaves the question, 
where was it?  My guess is that Voldemort was not, technically, 
in a human body at the time of his initial defeat.  Remember 
Hagrid's comment about how he wasn't human enough to die.  I 
think he was in some other, metaphysically created, sort of body.  
And that this body, when hit with the rebound from the AK, 
vaporized into what we call VaporMort.  The "body" was still with 
him, though not in a solid form.  (I have no idea how this would 
work, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me.)  We know 
that VaporMort is more corporeal than most ghosts, or else he 
would not have been able to drink the Elixir (like he wanted to), or 
drink the snake-venom potion (which he did, turning into 
BabyMort).  Yet he also has to possess people to carry out his 
purposes.  It's a strange sort of existence, and doesn't quite add 
up in my head.  *shrug*  Any thoughts?

***OK, back to that exploding curse thing I promised to mention.  
We know that Avada Kedavra is not the only curse that can kill 
wizards.  Otherwise, Peter Pettigrew's faked death would never 
have been believed.  Sirius wasn't accused of AK'ing Peter; he 
was accused of blowing up the whole street to kill Peter.  We 
also know that the Potters' house was wrecked, quite possibly by 
the same sort of curse.    Avada Kedavra doesn't blow up the 
target's surroundings or  wound them, a la Peter's finger.  If AK 
was really the only way to kill wizards, as has been suggested, 
no one would have believed Peter dead.  Is this just a Flint, a 
remnant of an earlier time when JKR hadn't hammered out the 
specifics of Avada Kedavra yet?  

Kelly L.