[HPforGrownups] Re: Some questions on the series as a whole ...

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 181891

>> > Samadjar Wrote:
>> >
>> > 1. What happened to Voldemort's body in Godrics Hollow?  If his
>> > dead body was found in the ruins, then why did people think he
>> > disappeared?
>> >
>> > If his body was not there - on what basis did everyone in
>> > wizarding world guess that something happened to him
>> > and started celebrating?
>
>> > Geoff:
>> > There is an interesting series of comments which Hagrid makes to
>> > Harry in PS which might give food for thought:
> ...snip quote...
>> > The implication being that there was no body at Godric's Hollow.
>
>> Shelley:
>> In Deathly Hallows, we get a further answer.
>> ...In Voldemort's memory of the killing night, he says something
>> to the effect of "he knew he couldn't stay in that home in the
>> broken state he was in", and so that answer is correct- there was no
>> "body" to be found could verify that Voldemort died, because Voldemort
>> himself decided to leave the house before he was discovered to be
> broken.
>
> Kemper now:
> IF you can supply the quote when you get a chance...
> In King's Cross, DD says of Voldemort:
> He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he
> committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parent,
> the attempted killing of a child.  But what escaped from that room was
> even less than he knew.  He left more than his body. ...
>
> DD seems under the impression that there was a body.

Shelley again:
Two thoughts about that quote:
1) It's based on Dumbledore's guesswork. While he's often right, guesswork 
isn't necessarily fact. By contrast, Voldemort's memory is first-person 
documentation of what really happened that night.
2) There was a body at the time of the Horcrux split, but the question was 
"was there a body left at the house that others could find when they found 
Harry alive?" The answer is yes to the first, and I think no to the second.

Now, onto the quote. Chapter 17, Bathilda's Secret.
scene set up: Harry and Hermione miraculously escape from Nagini by jumping 
out a window. Voldemort revels in the pain of the moment- being so close to 
killing Harry and failing again. He relives that entire scene of killing 
Harry's parents, and then to (attempted) killing of (baby)Harry.
(page 345 in my book, hardback, American version)

"He pointed the wand very carefully into the young boy's face: He wanted to 
see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child 
began to cry: It had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, 
he had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage--
"Avada Kedavra!"
And then he broke: He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must 
hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child 
was trapped and screaming, but far away... far away...."

So, Voldemort did not leave behind a body to remain for others to discover- 
he dragged whatever sorry-ass part of himself that remained in flesh 
(Vapormort, or however else you want to think of him- that baby in the 
King's Cross station that Harry imagined after he died, who knows what he 
really looked like?) off to hide somewhere else. What Dumbledore explains 
him leaving behind was not his body at the house, but that very second in 
time where Voldemort became a Harry-horcrux and a less than human body who 
was held to this earth by the Horcruxes he had made.

I guess you could read that the soul-Voldemort is what escaped, and the 
body-Voldemort remained, but then how would Dumbledore ever start to guess 
that Voldemort wasn't really dead, and that Harry was a Horcrux? If there 
was a body, everyone would just think that Voldemort was dead for good, but 
we know that the Death Eaters searched for him, and immediately the smarter 
Wizards knew he wasn't gone for good. The real question is "hide himself"- 
hide merely his soul, or hide the body blasted by the spell as well?