[HPforGrownups] Mortality question

[Peggy Wilkins]

No: HPFGUIDX 153566

On 6/6/06, zanooda2 <zanooda2 at yahoo.com> wrote:

zanooda:
> One of my questions concerns GoF. In the cemetery scene, in his speech
> to DEs, LV describes his return to a human body and says:"But I was
> willing to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortality. I
> set my sights lower...I would settle for my old body back again, and
> my old strength." (GoF,p.656 US ed. or p.569 UK ed.)
>
> This is very frustrating, but I can't figure out why he is talking
> about mortality here. He still has his Horcruxes, hasn't he? Until
> they are destroyed, he is immortal, right? Please, please give me some
> general idea of where to find the answer(off-list, if you think it's
> too boring for others to read). Thanks in advance!


Peggy W:
I think this is an excellent question, and your asking it led me to
think about it enough to (I hope) have something interesting to say
about it... Here goes...

We have seen two ways to attempt immortality, both of which have flaws.

First, there is the Philosopher's Stone which makes the Elixir of
Life.  The flaw in this method is that you have to keep drinking the
Elixir to keep from dying; and indeed, we see that Flamel and his wife
both die once the Stone is destroyed.  Voldemort reports this in GOF,
so we know that he is aware of this.

Second, there are Horcruxes which can keep one from being killed.  The
flaw in this method is that if the Horcrux is destroyed, one becomes
mortal again.  We haven't seen this directly, though it seems likely
that Grindelwald had a Horcrux, and Voldemort knows full well what
happened to Grindelwald.  This suggests that Voldemort would not be
happy with merely having a Horcrux: it's not good enough.

So now we come to what Voldemort is trying to achieve.  We know from
Slughorn's memory that he wants to make a 7-part soul, and he has
chosen 7 because it is "the most powerfully magical number".  That is
all he ever says about it, since Slughorn becomes alarmed and cuts him
off.  My interpretation of this is that Voldemort expects something
"big" to happen if he achieves a 7-part soul, something magical; and
it would be something that has never happened before.

Voldemort talks about his "experiments" and says that he has gone
"further along the road to immortality" than anyone else.  So it would
seem that his 7-part soul is a big goal for him for a reason.  We can
only guess what the reason is... and my guess is, he expects to
achieve true invulnerability once he has achieved it.

Voldemort went to Godric's Hollow expecting to kill Harry and to use
that murder to make his final Horcrux, achieving his 7-part soul.  He
expected that killing Harry would make him invulnerable.  That failed
because of Lily's sacrifice, but Voldemort didn't give up the plan.
Surely he again expected to kill Harry at the GOF graveyard, and use
his murder to finally achieve his 7-part soul.  That also didn't work
out.  So where does that leave us now?

Voldemort knows that the Diary/Horcrux was destroyed; Dumbledore
believes that Voldemort used the death of Frank Bryce to make Nagini
into a Horcrux.  He would have done that to replace the Diary.  Since
Voldemort doesn't know the ring Horcrux was also destroyed, this still
leaves him by his own belief one Horcrux short of achieving his 7-part
soul.

The implications of this should be pretty obvious now.  The reason
Harry is being "saved" for the Dark Lord (as various Death Eaters
remark in the HBP tower scene and as Snape says while fleeing) is so
that Voldemort can kill Harry and use him to complete his 7-part soul.
 The death eaters perhaps don't know about the 7-part soul plan, but
that has to be why Voldemort wants Harry saved for him only to kill.
He will then use Harry's death to make himself invincible--or so he
believes.

So ultimately the idea is that Voldemort must expect something
tremendously magical to happen at the precise moment he achieves a
7-part soul; and he probably expects this to be "true" (infallible)
immortality, an order of acheivement better than the fallible Elixir
of Life or the random Horcrux.

-- 
Peggy Wilkins
enlil65 at gmail.com