Nagini!Bathilda (Was: Albus again/ Chapter 29 ???s <snip>)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184420

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> > Carol responds:
> > But was Bathilda's corpse an Inferius? My impression was that Nagini
> > was inhabiting/possessing the corpse, able to beckon and walk clumsily
> > but not to remove items from shelves, start a fire, etc. (not to
> > mention clean house!) and, of course, she spoke only Parseltongue--not
> > something an Inferius could do. I think that Nagini, not Voldemort,
> > was controlling Bathilda's corpse, and the ruse worked only because
> > Bathilda was very old and known to be senile.
> 
> Potioncat:
> 
> Bathilda was a dead body being animated by a Dark Wizard. Having a 
> snake inside made her a deluxe version, I suppose. I would not have 
> wanted to be on the CSI team that evaluated her body.
> 
> At any rate, it's close enough to an Inferius for me. I mean, I was 
> right there with Harry and Hermione not even catching on that she was 
> dead--of couse I couldn't smell the odor, and that might have tipped me 
> off.
> 
> It's sad though. Sounds like her house had been un-lived in for a 
> while. Wasn't anyone checking on her? Maybe there was an enchantment on 
> the house that caused visitors to forget to call.
>
Carol responds:

I still think that Nagini was the animating/possessing force
(Otherwise, how could a twelve-foot snake get inside the body of a
little old woman?) and that Bathilda wasn't a normal Inferius (if an
Inferius can be called "normal"!). I don't think that either
Bathilda's body or Nagini herself was directly controlled by
Voldemort. Nitpicking, maybe. 

As for people not acting on the spell, many if not most of the
residents of Godric's Hollow were Muggles, and I suspect that the
cottage had Muggle-repelling charms on it. Her old neighbors, the
Dumbledores, were long gone. The Potters (except for Harry, who didn't
live there) were dead. It's not clear how many Witches and Wizards
remained in Godric's Hollow. Harry recognized a few family names on
the gravestones, but many of the Wizarding families seemed to have
died out in the male line.

We can figure out a bit of the timeline from Rita Skeeter's interview
with Bathilda, which took place after DD's death in June but before
the excerpts from her forthcoming biography came out around mid-July.
(Oh, the advantages of writing with a Quick Quotes Quill!). Bathilda
could have died (been brutally murdered, I mean) any time within the
five- or six-month time frame between June/July and Christmas. If
Nagini!Bathilda routinely wandered around at night watching the
graveyard and the neighborhood of the Potters' cottage, the people who
knew of her existence might have thought that she was alive but nearly
blind and deaf and completely off her rocker. The smell and her
behavior would probably be sufficient to deter Wizarding visitors.

Carol, just guessing and not really wanting to know the source of the
smell!