either must die at the hand of the other, Contradiction or Clue?

[saraquel_omphale]

No: HPFGUIDX 139763

Saraquel:
Well, this is definitely the primordial soup of the Potterverse that 
we are all swimming around in here. I suppose it's down to whether, 
with enough random bumpings of ideas together, we will finally come 
up with a Potterverse probable reality :-)

Thanks, Ceridwen and Valky for moving me on from a stuck place with 
some excellent lateral thinking.  Ceridwen, I just loved your take 
on why Voldemort's body looks like a snake (reflecting his 
patronus), and Valky's comment about Voldemort now being too heavily 
weighted to the spirit side.

Ok, I want to introduce magical power into the mix here and possibly 
equate it with spirit.  I recently posted some musings on what 
magical power is: 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/139703 I'm going 
to base the next bit of my argument on parts of what I said in that 
post, so you may wish to read it, if you haven't already done so.

One thing that has always puzzled me about the Potterverse, is the 
apparent ease with which objects can be magicked out of thin air.  
>From chairs and inanimate objects (many examples, DD in  Harry's 
hearing) to organic things like food (Sandwiches in CoS) right up to 
living birds (Hermione in HBP).  I have always wondered how that was 
possible.  Continuing on from my speculations in my previous post, 
that magical power is an entity in itself, we could speculate that 
the world as we see it is created from it and probably our bodies as 
well. Although I still have a slight problem with this – as there is 
a fine distinction to be made as to whether magical power is 
transmuted directly into matter, or does magical power function as a 
type of mould into which matter is poured, giving it shape and 
infusing it with life-power? Because of what happens in the CoS, I 
think I'm probably going to have to go with the latter – more on 
that later.

As I've said, you become a witch or wizard, because you have an 
ability to channel this power which muggles don't have. The bodies 
of both muggles and witches are both, however, made from this.

In my last post, I speculated about having powers if you don't have 
a body, but I reread the passage in GoF, and I realised I was 
wrong.  This is what Voldemort says: p566 "You all know that on the 
night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him" and then on 
p567 "Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of 
others."

I speculate that the ability to possess a body is a power of the 
soul, as the soul inhabiting a body is what normally constitutes a 
human being in the Potterverse.  But all other powers were lost.  
The memory of the spells was there because Voldemort also says 
p567 "for I had no body, and every spell which might have helped me 
required the use of a wand."  So I am agreeing with Valky here, that 
Vapormort was in fact his damaged soul part and that the power to 
think/remember resides in the soul.

But it also becomes clear that creating things from magical power 
does require a body.  So putting all that together, it is possible 
to transmute magical power into real objects by use of the 
combination of body *and* soul.

So now let's try and apply this to the two situations that are 
causing us problems – what happened in the CoS and how Voldemort 
made both foetal body and reconstituted body and why he looks like a 
snake. 

In CoS, we have a chip of soul stashed in an inanimate object, which 
interacts with a complete soul with a body and an ability to tune 
into magical power (Ginny for short :-) ).  We know that the HSP 
(Horcrux!Soul part, for anyone who is wondering) possesses Ginny and 
sucks her life force out of her – not her soul, but her life force.  
So, going along with Ceridwen, let's call this her spirit, and 
further, also equate it to magical power. Once the HSP is in a body 
using possession, it has the ability to start to create something 
out of thin air – a body for itself.  It seems to me that the 
magical power supports the reality and physicality of the body (see 
my speculation about moulds above).  As the life force/magical power 
is withdrawn so gradually Ginny's body, now increasingly unsupported 
by the mould, will cease functioning (physical death) and then decay 
away.  Whereas the HSP is filling the mould he created whilst 
possessing Ginny with the life force/magical power/spirit, a mould 
for the body that it remembers having (memory is a property of 
soul), 16 year old Tom Riddle.

What happens with Vapormort.  Well, as a soul-fragment he has the 
ability still to possess a body.  So he possesses animals.  He 
cannot perform magical spells through them, because GoF p567 "
their 
bodies were ill adapted to perform magic." But we have something 
special about unicorn blood and snake venom.

Along comes Quirrel, who is possessed by the soul-fragment that is 
Voldemort.  In this case, it would appear that Voldemort simply 
shares Quirrel's body with him.  Obviously, in Voldemort's opinion, 
the PS, will provide him, somehow, with an immortal body.  I must 
admit to being a bit confused here, as in an interview (sorry don't 
think it was the MN/LC one but another one when HBP was released), 
JKR said that Voldemort preferred the concept of horcruxes because 
they didn't rely on something external like a stone, which could be 
stolen or destroyed, but, in GoF, he mentions immortality in the 
context of the PS.  GoF p567 "I did not manage to steal the 
Philosopher's Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life."

Interestingly, Voldemort uses the term, immortal *life*.  From what 
we know about the Elixir of Life, which is created from the stone, 
it prolongs the life of the body until you stop drinking it – then 
you die.  So the concept of life, is very much tied up, in this 
context at least, with a body – and the body, as I have speculated 
is the thing created and sustained by the life-force/magical power, 
as distinct from the soul.

Also, at this point, Quirrelmort drinks unicorn blood.  We know that 
possession shortens the life of the thing possessed, and I think 
it's logical to assume that it applies to both humans and animals.  
So Quirrel's life-force is currently sustaining both of them and 
ebbing away.  Hence, I think, the drinking of the unicorn blood to 
keep Quirrel alive.  Is the burning up of Quirrel's body when he 
touches Harry in the CoS a result of the curse associated with 
drinking unicorn blood?

With the PS and Quirrel gone, Voldemort is back to square one and 
needing to find some way of creating a body for himself.  Enter 
Pettigrew and Nagini. From what he says on p 569 of GoF, it does 
seem that Vapormort did not possess Pettigrew, but used him to 
perform magic. 
"However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed, and poor wizard 
though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave 
him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a 
body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential 
ingredients for true rebirth 
 a spell or two of my own invention 
 
a little help from my dear Nagini <snip> a potion concocted from 
unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided 
I was soon 
returned to an almost human form."

So how did he do this? Well I have no idea, but it seems that it was 
somehow formed by transfiguring(?)  the potion of unicorn blood and 
snake venom.  Heave 
. Eeeew, that is so disgusting.  

Unlike the situation in CoS, he was not actually possessing anyone 
at the time, so it seems to be a different case from being able to 
conjure a body from `thin air'.  In CoS, he didn't care about Ginny 
dying, so making a body out of her life-force was an option.  But in 
this case, Voldemort states that  (p569) "the means that I used to 
break the Memory Charm upon her (Bertha Jorkins) were powerful, and 
when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and 
body were both damaged beyond repair.  She had now served her 
purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her." Which says to 
me, that he was not able to use Bertha in the same way as he had 
used Ginny.  Presumably, Pettigrew was useful to him, so he did not 
want him dead, so he didn't posses him either.

Somewhere in this mix, is the thought that proper human bodies are 
created (hopefully) out of love.  The body that Voldemort has 
created (as I've said before) is a mix of something extremely pure 
(unicorn blood) something poisonous (snake venom) and something evil 
(the help of a traitor and murderer.)  No wonder it is so disgusting.

When Voldemort re-creates his body in the graveyard.  He uses a 
different potion, and presumably the memory (as I'm speculating he 
did in CoS) of it retained in his fragmented soul.  As he did not 
use unicorn blood,  has he side-stepped something of that curse.  If 
life is associated with the existence of the body, then it may be, 
that the foetal body no-longer exists and was not used 
(transfigured) to create the new one.  Hence, if the inability to 
touch Harry was an effect of the unicorn blood curse, then it is no 
longer upon him.  That's just a thought, and I'm not particularly 
tied to it.

It now occurs to me, that in some senses, if Voldemort has created 
life for himself in the form of a body – does he have some sort of 
life-debt to those who helped him create it?  Harry, Tom Snr and 
Pettigrew are sort of parents to him.

I think I'm going to stop here and mull things over a bit more.  I'm 
quite pleased with this theory so far as it doesn't seem to be 
contradicted by canon.  I hesitate to say it is supported by canon – 
I think that's claiming too much :-)  I hope you guys will pull it 
apart for me so that we can see where the inconsistencies lie.

Other thoughts that I'd like to take up, but not in this post, are 
why Voldemort looks like a snake.  Which I think, using Ceridwen's 
suggestion, could be worked into this framework.  And also, using 
this framework, how does it reflect on the horcrux situation. 
Then we might almost be in a position to think about the prophecy 
(we can but dream!) Maybe, if you like what I've said so far, you'd 
like to take those up and run with them.

Saraquel
Who apologises for not yet replying to some posts on my OFH!Snape 
post.  I'm on to it!