Voldemort, the Prophecy and the HBP

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 110263

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mandy" 
<ExSlytherin at a...> wrote:.
> 
> Now me:
> Very interesting.  I'm confused over your statement that 
possession  is usually fatal. Could you give examples, because I 
don't think it  has to be?   Is it not possible for the possessor to 
choose to keep the host alive?  Or perhaps if the host, in this 
case Tom Riddle,  dies the possessor will die too?  We have 
seen that LV kept Quirrell  alive because he needed a living body 
to inhabit; perhaps your  possessor does the same? <

Pippin:
"I sometimes inhabited animals -- snakes, of course, being my 
preference -- but I was little better off inside them than as pure 
spirit, for their bodies were ill-adapted to perform magic ... and 
my possession of them shortened their lives; none of them 
lasted long...." --Voldemort, GoF ch 33

Considering what happened to Quirrell , what almost happened 
to Ginny (who was looking pale and sickly even before Riddle 
drained the life from her in the Chamber) and the way Harry felt 
when Voldemort was possessing him in OOP, it seems that  
possession inevitably shortens the life of the host. The only way 
around it is doses of unicorn blood, but that weakens the host as 
well.

Mandy:
> Also, I had always assumed that Tom went through his 
dangerous  transformations after he left Hogwarts and 
disappeared into the wilds  of Romania.  Perhaps the daemon 
possessor, and I agree with Kneasy's  theory that the possessor 
is Salazar Slytherin, entered and possessed  Tom as he opened 
the Chamber, kept him alive and encouraged Tom's  decent 
deeper into the Dark side of magic?  The combination of Tom 
and Salazar Slytherin creating Lord Voldemort. <

Pippin:
Hmmm... I agree about the timing of the transformations. 
However, Salazar wasn't like Voldemort to begin with. Riddle, 
according to the latest from Edinburgh, never cared about 
anybody, and couldn't have become what he is if he had. But 
Salazar was a great friend of Godric Gryffindor. Possibly Salazar 
summoned the daemon and was possessed for a while, but  
fought off the possession and trapped the daemon in the  the 
basilisk and the basilisk in the chamber.  He then  fled the 
school so that the other Founders wouldn't find out what he had 
done.  The basilisk's life would have been shortened thereby, but 
since basilisks live a very long time (FBAWTFT), it managed to 
survive  until Riddle arrived. 

Riddle was then possessed by the daemon, and he knew that 
his life would be short unless he could magically transform 
himself into an immortal being. Just IMO, that is.

Pippin