Voledmort's "immortality" (Was:The Philospher's Stone)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 119509


Eloise wrote:
<snip>
> In fact, why did Voldemort go through all those dangerous, 
> disfiguring experiments in his own search for immortality when the 
> answer, in the form of the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of
Life was there all the time? Are we really to believe that Voldemort,
pre his downfall wasn't powerful enough to have gained control of the 
> Stone then? Did he really have to wait until he was himself
powerless in order to try to win it? Something doesn't add up there.
> 
> There are two ways I can see to explain the anomaly. One is the 
> boring one: the Philospher's Stone plays kind of a central role in 
> PS/SS and if account were taken of all my objections, then there 
> wouldn't really be a plot.
> 
> The other is that the kind of immortality being offered is
different, though what that means, I'm not sure. Voldemort seems to be
working towards making himself innately immortal, rather than
dependent on an elixir but I can't explain why he couldn't make use of
the one method whilst working for the other. <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree with your last paragraph--Voldemort was trying to become
immortal in a way that didn't depend on drinking an elixir, or even
possessing the Philosopher's Stone or the formula to make one.
Possibly that was a step he intended to take all along, but it wasn't
the only thing he was doing.

Somehow the transformations that resulted in his snakelike appearance
were also a step on his journey toward earthly immortality, that is,
deathlessness (as opposed to eternal life after death, a condition in
which he's not interested). I'm wondering if he turned himself into
various kinds of snakes or even drank small doses of their venom in
order to immunize himself against death by poison, or certain kinds of
poison. Note that Nagini's "milk," which would kill anyone else, even
a wizard, or at least put them in mortal peril, as it did Arthur
Weasley (assuming that the snake LV possessed was Nagini), keeps
Baby!mort alive or, if he's already immortal, sustains him and gives
him sufficient strength to hold a wand and cast a spell. (Peter
Pettigrew must have suspected or believed that the thing was deathless
and possessed the power to harm him even in that form, though, or he
wouldn't have tended it. Either that or he *wanted* Voldemort restored
to his former self, but I'm getting sidetracked as usual.)

Anyway, I think that snake venom was somehow involved in Voldemort's
search for immortality, which suggests that immunity to poisons of
various types might have been one of the steps he took (a possible use
for young Severus Snape when he joined the DEs). Perhaps there were
other forms of death to which a wizard is subject (AK, of course,
being one of them, and old age another) that he also tried to make
himself immune to. So the steps Voldemort took, I'm guessing, were
protections against particular kinds of death, that is, against death
by a particular means, rather like Muggle vaccinations against Polio
and influenza.

The problem for me is, in part, that we still don't know exactly what
can kill a wizard. Would a Muggle weapon, such as a policeman's
pistol, kill or harm an ordinary wizard like Lucius Malfoy? What about
an enchanted Muggle weapon, such as Godric Gryffindor's sword, or
possibly Macnair's axe? Are all wizards immune to that sort of death,
or has Voldemort placed some sort of special protection on himself
against death from physical injury that somehow enabled him to survive
the AK that disintegrated his body at Godric's Hollow? Or maybe
physical injury and AK were separate protections? There may be other
spells, like the one that blew Benjy Fenwick apart or the one
Pettigrew used to blow up the street, that can kill a wizard.

Carol, wondering how Alastor Moody could lose a leg, an eye, and a
part of his nose after battles with DEs and yet, presumably, be pieced
back together good as new after being "splinched"