He may not know it's cursed. I know that some people think the turn over rate could be explained by a curse, but does anyone other than Dumbledore (and Harry, eventually, I suppose) definitively know that there is a curse on it?

 

Woops, thought you meant Dumbledore. Aha.

Ignore this, sorry about that.

But I feel like Snape would have at least heard the rumor. I remember it being mentioned as something like common knowledge before Dumbledore's confirmation.

 

The point is that that's just how it played out. Maybe if Voldemort hadn't forced Quirrel to drink unicorn blood, Voldemort would've withered away, and mentally become a wisp of what he once was...or 'die' again. That would allow Quirrel to keep on living, only now without a smelly turban. But this is just speculation, because it doesn't actually matter what would've happened, since it didn't. Unicorn blood and the curse of drinking it is interesting, though.

Whether or not Snape heard about the rumour doesn't really seem to matter, I think. Snape wasn't known for doing what he thought was safe, and you can't blame a guy for not wanting to teach retards delicate arts and instead wanting to brutally show them how to dodge spells in the name of teaching, right? He just probably wanted to teach Defense since he was in school, or something.

 

Hagrid mentions in CoS that people are starting to think it's cursed, because no-one's lasted long for a while (arguable evidence of the general stupidity of the Wizarding World, given that the curse was presumably in effect from before the first war and up until Voldemort's death - that's something between twenty and thirty teachers over the years, right? - and they don't start to wonder until 1992? Or maybe I'm being too literal )

Snape probably did at least have his suspicions - it may have been common knowledge to Death Eaters, in fact. Alternate theory that's just occurred to me: it was an excuse to leave Hogwarts. He couldn't just quit, because he was only out of Azkaban on Dumbledore's good word, and he probably wouldn't trust him not to turn on him. We don't know how many teachers were killed though. Over the course of the series, it's one, two if you count Barty Crouch Jr, and sure, there are a lot of serious injuries/mental trauma, but Snape can always heal from those. Might be a risk worth taking.

 

Interestingly enough, Snape might have been the only one able to break said curse. If he really was countercursing Harry's broom in PS, he was doing an admirable job (albeit, a losing one) resisting Voldemort. He would have no way of knowing that until LV's resurrection, but still. Of course, that was active cursing/countercursing, as opposed to the seemingly passive/permanent curse on the teaching position.

Without confirmation that the position was cursed, Snape may have decided that the highly circumstantial nature of each professor's resignation indicated coincidence. He probably thought each of the teachers was a fool (because they had the spot he wanted and because he's Snape), and that their foolishness led to an otherwise avoidable situation.

 

I think it was Quirrell cursing Harry's broom, not Voldemort.

 

If Voldemort had been killed/had his body destroyed post-4th Year before his horcruxes were destroyed would he have gone back to being a shade or would that shade have vanished completely?

 

Option 1: he would've been reduced to a shade once more, until his faithful followers could cook up a new body for him

Option 2: you now have the kernel of a fanfiction story- go write, young man!
(but don't show it around here unless you've got some game, aright?)

 

If he could die completely before the horcruxes were destroyed then there would be no need to destroy the horcruxes.

 

Unless you want it so when he dies he dies, or atleast is stuck in the same limbo that Harry was and it takes one of his horcruxes coming to life to drag him back to this reality.

 

I wasn't suggesting that he dies in the permanent sense of the word - more that that incarnation of him dies.

 

There is a difference between a horcrux and a person with horcruxes.

You can't kill a person who has horcruxes like you can destroy a horcrux. That's the whole point of horcruxes - they prevent the person from dying. It's not that there are seven pieces of Voldemort, each of which being a horcrux that can be destroyed. There is Voldemort, who is immortal so long as his 6 horcruxes exist.

 

So, just for clarification, if his body was destroyed a second time his spirit/shade thing would survive?

 

His body is effectively a horcrux that he is possessing. Destroy his body as much as you like, his spirit will remain anchored by the remaining horcruxes until all others are destroyed.

Horcruxes are more like anchors than little boxes with a chunk of Voldemort in them. The diary Riddle, by my best guess, was more an echo; a 'memory' than an actual piece of soul.

 

While we're on the subject...

I've seen in multiple time travel redo fics where they say that they have to let Voldemort rebirth himself like in GoF in order to defeat him.

Why?

If you destroy all of his horcruxes while he's in shade mode, shouldn't he vanish as if he'd been killed while having no horcruxes? There's nothing left to anchor his soul, after all. So why give him the time to return to a reasonably powerful state? Just destroy his horcruxes while he's powerless and without followers and be done with it.

If it were limited to a few shitty stories, I'd chalk it up to bad writing, but it seems almost universally present in these types of stories written after HBP, to the point that I'm left wondering if I missed something in canon that refutes the preceding paragraph. From a storytelling point of view, I get it - there wouldn't be a final epic battle if you never let him come back. But there's often no justification, which makes everyone involved who didn't even think of such a simple solution look like morons.

Thoughts?

 

It's a poor attempt to create conflict where there really shouldn't be any.

I agree with you entirely; if Voldemort's horcruxes are destroyed while he has no body, his soul should move on.

 

To be fair, one could argue that if you destroyed his body, then destroyed the horcruxes, there is a slim possibility that he could have found another person to possess (willingly or not) in the intervening time.

To be truly sure, it would be better to destroy the horcruxes, then kill him.

The difference is mostly that one method provides peace of mind and closure, while the other leaves you crossing your fingers and looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life... or, at the very least, hoping like hell that scar of Harry's is an accurate dark lord detector.

 

On that note, does the fragmentation of Voldemort's soul have anything to do with his talent for Possession?

 

Unknown, but Possession is explicitly an ability common to Horcruxes.

 

How many N.E.W.T. is considered normal?
On the same note, how many for excellent students and prodigy?

Did we ever get the number of N.E.W.T.s Voldemort, Dumbledore or Hermione got, or even Ron?

Thank you