Godric's Hollow

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 149847

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "latha279" <brahadambal at ...> wrote:

Brady:
> I don't know if this has been asked and discussed before. Although,I 
> have seen posts asking and discussing about what happened to or how 
> PP came to have Voldy's wand and maybe robes - I have not found much 
> being asked about his body itself!
> 
> The AV doesn't destroy the the body to the extent that it can't be 
> seen, right? We are always left with a body behind. But in GH, till 
> date, there has not been any mention of James', Lily's or Voldy's 
> body! Why? what happened then? 
> 
> We do understand from the interviews that there was someone else 
> there. The question is not who, but what did this other person do 
> after Voldy's seventh soul-piece was separated from his body? His 
> body would still have been there, just like the diary, albeit dead. 
> So what happened to his original body? why couldn't he have possessed 
> the body itself instead of wandering in the forests of Albania as 
> something lesser than a ghost?
> 
> Hope we get off discussing Snapey for sometime. Am a DDM!Snaper, but 
> still, too much of anything can cause some indigestion! :)

Geoff:
I think Voldemort's own comments imply that his body was destroyed:

'Where there should have been a back to Quirrell's head, there was a face, the most 
terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for 
nostrils, like a snake.
"Harry Potter..." it whispered.
Harry tried to take a step backwards but his legs wouldn't move.
"See what I have become?" the face said. "Mere shadow and vapour... I have form only 
when I can share another's body..."'
(PS "The Man with two Faces" pp.212-13 UK edition)

'"I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost...

Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest creature alive and without the means to 
help myself... for I had no body...

...surely, one of my faithful Death Eaters would try to find me... one of them would come 
and perform the magic I could not, to restore me to a body..."'
(GOF "The Death Eaters" pp.566-67 UK edition)

My interpretation of the use of "a" body in Voldemort's last comment  was that he no 
longer had one of his own; als,o the spell which Wormtail performed in the graveyard drew 
on elemental ingredients and not a surviving body.