CoS versus the Dark Mark (was Re: Sirius,Snape,Lily,CoS)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 105925

Nadine wrote:
<snip>
> Your post reminded me also of something Voldemort said in the 
> graveyard scene in GoF. He said (The Death Eaters Chapter) : «.. I 
> was willing to embrace mortal life again (...) I set my sights 
> lower... I would settle for my old body back again and my old 
> strength.»
> Did he really settle for his old body ? Voldy needed three powerful 
> ingredients : (1) Flesh given by a servant; (2) His father's bone 
> and (3) The blood of a foe. What bugs me is that Tom Riddle Sr. was 
> not a wizard. The Salazar Slytherin's blood that used to flow in 
> Voldemort's old body came from his mother and I presume it was 
> destroyed in Godric's Hollow. Somehow, the «new» Voldemort seems to 
> be walking around minus the old Salazar Slytherin component. Is he 
> a «quarter» blood sort of Lord now ? Maybe that is the explanation 
> for the look of triumph in DD's eye. There seem to always be a half 
> something (or someone) missing somewhere. What part am I missing ?

Carol responds:
I think maybe you're reading a little too literally, applying Muggle
genetics on the assumption that identity, including Parseltongue and
other traits inherited from Salazar Slytherin, is in the genes, which
are in the body, and that without his body (changed as it was in the
time between Tom Riddle's departure from England and his return as
Voldemort), he can no longer have the traits he inherited through his
mother's line. Am I interpreting you correctly here?

If so, I don't think that's how JKR views the mind/body connection. I
think for her the mind exists independently of the body. For example,
when Harry "becomes" Goyle by drinking the polyjuice potion, which has
what we could consider to be the "genetic" Goyle in it, added to the
potion via his hair, Harry is still Harry. His body is Goyle's but his
mind is his own. (Even an animagus keeps his human mind in addition to
the animal mind that exists only when he's in his animal form, but
that's a more complex matter that I've already hypothesized about in
another post.) If I'm right, then the Voldemort that escaped when his
body was destroyed is the essential Voldemort--his mind and spirit,
his memories, his hatreds, and (when he regains his strength) his
abilities--including Parseltongue and whatever other traits came to
him from his Slytherin-descended mother. His old body isn't necessary
because these traits belong to his *essence* (or essential *self*),
which is spiritual and mental, not physical. (I don't mean that his
essence can't change over time--becoming corrupted through his use of
Unforgiveable Curses, etc. I just mean that this essential self is not
dependent on his physical form. Unless he's possessing a snake, in
which case his own thoughts merge with the snake's perceptions to
create a seemingly united self that's really "in essence divided," to
steal DD's words from another context.)

To return to Godric's Hollow, what I don't understand is how anyone
knew Voldemort wasn't actually dead if his body was found, and how
anyone knew he was (nearly) destroyed if it wasn't. Wouldn't people
think that he had just left the scene when he failed to kill the baby
along with the parents? (I'm assuming that there wasn't a witness, or
if PP was there, he didn't tell what he knew for fear of implicating
himself.) I guess DD deduced that only Voldemort could or would have
killed the Potters, and the fact that Harry was alive and "marked"
indicated that he had somehow (through no will or effort of his own)
"defeated" Voldemort, who somehow was also not dead. DD must have
passed that knowledge or interpretation on to the WW at large, maybe
the Daily Prophet, very quickly, considering the celebrations the very
next day.

I tend to think that Voldemort's body was *vaporized* and that DD knew
that would happen if the AK was deflected onto him. But if there was
no body, how would anyone besides DD know that Voldemort had not
simply gone into hiding? Would Harry's survival alone have conveyed
that when the WW as a whole was not aware of the prophecy? Would they
simply have taken Dumbledore at his word?

Carol, who is more confused now than she was when she began this post
and who hopes that everyone at least understands *why* she's confused