Why didn't Voldemort get the prophecy for himself?

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

In Chapter 35 of OotP, Lucius tells Harry

The only people who are permitted to retrieve a prophecy from the Department of Mysteries, Potter, are those about whom it was made, as the Dark Lord discovered when he attempted to use others to steal it for him.

Harry asks why Voldemort didn't try to get the prophecy himself, and Bellatrix responds:

Get it himself? The Dark Lord, walk into the Ministry of Magic, when they are so sweetly ignoring his return? The Dark Lord, reveal himself to the Aurors, when at the moment they are wasting their time on my dear cousin?”

Harry answers:

So, he’s got you doing his dirty work for him, has he? Like he tried to get Sturgis to steal it - and Bode?

(Back in chapter 26 the kids had decided after one of Harry's Voldie!Visions that Lucius had put the Imperius Curse on both Sturgis Podmore and Broderick Bode in order to use them to steal a "weapon" from the DOM.)

And Lucius affirms that Harry is correct:

Very good, Potter, very good… But the Dark Lord knows you are not unintell—

This exchange invites us readers to conclude that Voldemort originally didn't know about the restrictions on the prophecy orbs. Furthermore, once he learned about them from Rookwood, he still never risked entering the Ministry to get the prophecy for himself.

I am wondering, though, whether we can be certain that everything that Lucius and Bellatrix tell Harry here is true. They have every reason to lie to Harry in order to get what they want. Moreover, even if Lucius and Bellatrix believe that what they are saying is true, that doesn't mean it is; it may simply be what they've been told by Voledmort.



First, did Voldemort really not know anything about the restrictions on who could access the prophecy?

Our evidence for this is that Sturgis Podmore and Broderick Bode were supposedly both Imperisued in order to get them to steal the orb. However, this is an idea that is expressed by Harry, and it's possible that Lucius simply chooses not to contradict him.

It could be that Lucius actually had nothing to do with Podmore getting caught lurking outside the DOM. Or, if Lucius did use the Imperius Curse on Podmore, his goal may not have been for Podmore to retrieve the prophecy, but simply for Podmore to get caught trying to break into the DOM. That would remove one of the Order's guards and alert the Ministry that Dumbledore's people were skulking about the DOM. Therefore, Podmore's arrest is not necessarily evidence of Voldemort's ignorance.

Bode's injury is also not evidence that Voldemort was completely ignorant of who could and could not pick up the orb. Since Bode was an Unspeakable, Voldemort may have believed that he had special access to the prophecies. And perhaps Bode usually was somebody who could remove the orbs from the shelves; he just couldn't do so under magical coercion.



Second, did Voldemort really never go to the Ministry, himself, to try to get the prophecy?

What's interesting is that there's a fair amount of evidence that Voldemort did go to the Ministry earlier in the year. We know for certain that Nagini was in the Ministry a few days before Christmas, and Harry was "inside the snake's head" when it bit Arthur. It's possible that Harry visited Nagini's mind because they were both horcruxes. However, since Harry never again had a vision from the snake's perspective, it seems much more likely that Voldemort was possessing Nagini at the time. Indeed, Severus tells Harry:

You seem to have visited the snake’s mind because that was where the Dark Lord was at that particular moment. He was possessing the snake at the time and so you dreamed you were inside it, too.--OotP24

Thus, despite what Bellatrix says, Voldemort very likely did go to the Ministry in the form of a possessed Nagini.

It's also interesting that Bode may have been admitted to St. Mungo's around the same time that Mr. Weasley was, maybe even on the same day. We know that he was definitely there on the day that the kids first visited Arthur. And, in chapter 25, we learn from the Daily Prophet that Bode had been injured "some weeks" prior to his death. According to the HP Lexicon, Arthur was bitten on December 18th and Bode's death was reported on January 14th.

Maybe, then, on the same night that Arthur was bitten, an Imperiused Bode was unlocking and opening doors so that the snake could make its way toward the Hall of Prophecies. And that's why nobody could find the snake afterward.

So, if Voldemort was at the Ministry, then why didn't he remove his orb? Perhaps the answer is that he couldn't remove it.

Note that Voldemort's name isn't actually on the prophecy orb, either as "Voldemort" or as "Tom Riddle." The prophecy is labeled:

S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.
Dark Lord and (?)Harry Potter

Was "Dark Lord" an epithet used specifically by Voldemort, or was it a more general title for powerful dark wizards? Was the prophecy even about Voldemort?

Of course, if Voldemort had discovered that he was unable to pick up the orb, he would never have admitted that to his followers.

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

You know Lynn, I'm beginning to really like this take: Voldemort had no interest whatsoever in the prophecy, he was just using it as a way to get Harry out of Hogwarts, with a reason Dumbles would find plausible. This means Tom was lying to everyone, including Lucius and Bellatrix (because they certainly behaved as though the prophecy record was their goal, and Severus was able to use the failure to obtain the prophecy to taunt Bellatrix later that summer), and that while Dumbles may have used the prophecy as a distraction for Tom, the latter saw through the trick and used it against Harry and Dumbles.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Huh, it could even be, then, that Tom actually did hear the prophecy on the night Arthur was bitten, and then placed it back on the shelf.

Speaking of which, how do we know that Tom didn't go to the DOM back in 1980 and listen to the full prophecy before he attacked the Potters? The prophecy goes.

and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives

Maybe Tom believed that he had to turn Harry into a horcrux before he could kill the boy?

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Any of this would certainly explain why Voldemort didn't bother questioning Trelawney about the prophecy when he had the chance.

I don't think that Voldemort could have believed he'd need to turn Harry into a horcrux, though, or he probably wouldn't've been willing to kill him in DH. Back in 1981, maybe, since he had plenty of other horcruxes then, and no reason to think that anyone knew about them. In DH, though, he knows he's down to Nagini (or would be, after Harry's death), and he knows that people have been destroying them. Too risky to destroy a horcrux deliberately, wouldn't you say?

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's a very good point, though I've had this idea for a while that he had been planning to transfer the horcrux in Harry to another object-- Gryffindor's sword, specifically, if he could get his hands on it.

That's why he kept shooting AK's at Harry.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

But destroying/killing a Horcrux destroys the soul fragment, so that shouldn't have worked. Unless, of course, he'd reached a numerical upper limit and needed to open a slot.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Shooting an AK at somebody doesn't destroy their soul (as far as we know anyway), so why would an AK destroy a soul fragment?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Still makes no sense. The Horcrux book says that a Horcrux is destroyed when certain forms of irreversible damage are inflicted on the container. An AK is a form of irreversible damage to living beings. So the AK on Harry should have destroyed the Horcrux. If Tom believed he had the means to transfer a soul- bit when its Horcrux is destroyed it would only make sense if he had some other receptacle, already prepared to become the substitute Horcrus. If he was planning to use what he thought was the sword of Gryffindor (but was actually fake) as the replacement Horcrux then he only had access to it after Severus became headmaster. Yet Tom attempted to AK Harry in Godric's Hollow, the cemetary, the DOM, and the 7P air battle before having access to the (fake) sword. (Oh, and in Godric's Hollow again, while the fake sword was in Bella's vault.)

Also, the memory of the first Godric's Hollow attack doesn't show any kind of action that could be seen as preparing to make a Horcrux, he just attacks Harry after killing Lily. He may have had some intended, pre-prepared Horcrux object on him, because Dumbles thought he was going to make a Horcrux after killing Harry, but there is no sign that the attack on Harry was anything other than a direct, run-of-the-mill AK.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Ah, you're right. Well, there goes that idea. :D

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Basilisk-venom-infused steel doesn't destroy a soul either, but the fragment in Nagini was presumably destroyed. True, Nagini was physically damaged and Harry wasn't, but the soul leaving the body comes across to me as sufficient damage for Horcrux-destroying purposes (it is, after all, supposed to be irreparable barring Chosen One status).

Plus, the only way Voldemort is dead is if Harry is no longer a Horcrux, and since Harry's scar hasn't hurt in nineteen years, either Voldemort is keeping very calm or he's genuinely gone.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

---Any of this would certainly explain why Voldemort didn't bother questioning Trelawney about the prophecy when he had the chance.

Do we know for sure that Trelawney wasn't questioned? She doesn't seem to remember when she's given prophecies, so he may have questioned her but not obtained any new information.

[oryx_leucoryx]

We know he didn't attempt any really heavy Legilimency against her, the kind that might have broken through her trance-induced forgetfulness, because she was up and about during the battle (as opposed to a wreck like Bertha Jorkins apparently became after Legilimency that broke through a memory charm).

[oryx_leucoryx]

How could Tom have done anything with the prophecy that night? Where was his body? If he left his body at home and only went inside Nagini's head he couldn't have removed the prophecy nor replaced it afterwards.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----If he left his body at home and only went inside Nagini's head he couldn't have removed the prophecy nor replaced it afterwards.

Why not? Nagini was agile enough that she could imitate Bathilda Bagshot. Tom's mind, magic, and soul were all present. If he couldn't pick it up because he was in Nagini's body, then, as Corycides suggested, he probably couldn't pick it up when in his own body either.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Nagini animated bathilda Bagshot's body. She used Bathilda's hands. Nagini doesn't have hands of her own.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

She couldn't just wrap her tail around the prophecy?


Although here's another (admittedly far-fetched) idea. I suggested earlier that perhaps an Imperiused Bode assisted Naginin in getting to the Hall of Prophecies. So, what if, once they arrived, Voldemort possessed Bode in order to pick up the prophecy.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

His body could have been at the DoM, but he could have been concentrating on seeing things from Nagini's perspective at the time of the dream.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Wouldn't that be a huge risk? If his mind was in Nagini his body should be rather vulnerable. When he possessed Harry in the DOM his body disappeared - I guess he Apparated it somewhere first? (I'm thinking of Granny Weatherwax wearing the 'I aitn't dead yet' sign when she goes borrowing minds of animals for fear that she'd end up being buried alive by well meaning people finding her body.)