Voldermort's "death"

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 119373


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "whimsyflower" 
<profwildflower at m...> wrote:

Wildflower: 
> Like others, I have had JKR's question about why didn't LV die when
> his AK curse rebounded onto him in PS/SS rolling around in my 
head.  The
> other day I was listening to PS/SS, and heard, in a new way, 
Dumbledore's
> telling Harry, "not being truly alive, he (LV) cannot be killed."  
(p. 298,
> PS/SS, US edition).  So Voldy wasn't "truly alive" from the very 
beginning.  

Geoff:
I'm not sure that I read that into the narrative. When Harry first 
sees Tom in the flashback through the diary in COS, he appears to be 
perfectly normal.

When Diary!Riddle and Harry meet in the Chamber, Tom says to Harry 
that he /is/ Lord Voldemort and, in his "memory" form appears as an 
echo of a normal living person.

Hagrid's view was "Dunno if he had enough human /left/ in him to 
die." (My emphasis).
(PS "The Keeper of the Keys" p.46 UK edition).

Hence I feel I cannot agree with him not being truly alive from the 
very beginning. So, that begs the question, when did he cease to be 
truly alive? 

At Godric's Hollow? 

Or earlier perhaps when he "disappeared after leaving the school... 
travelled far and wide... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, 
consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many 
dangerous, magical transformations that when he resurfaced as Lord 
Voldemort, he was barely recognisable." 
(COS "Dobby's Reward" p.242 UK edition)

As a follow-up to that last quote, we know, from Riddle's own 
testimony, that Dumbeldore suspected that Tom was up to something and 
kept "an annoyingly close watch on me" (COS "The Heir of Slytherin" 
p.230 UK edition). But did he, at that time, know that he was calling 
himself Lord Voldemort?