if Voldie is corporeal enough to make a horcrux, why did he need the whole ressurection ritual in the first place?

 

It seems that possessing someone over the long term will burn out the body in use, as if a body can't handle the burden of two souls for very long. Voldemort had burned through all sorts of creatures in Albania, to the point that the wildlife knew to keep out of his range.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was why Quirrel needed unicorn blood and the reason he burned up when Voldemort was expunged from his head by Lily's protection.

Voldemort had worked out a way to sustain a form for the long journey from Albania using the venom of his new horcrux, Nagini (and I think more Unicorn blood was also a part of his baby formula). What Voldemort needed was a new body suited to carrying his soul and without any other souls in residence with better squatting rights.

 

Short answer? Homunculus body is almost useless, worse than possessed human at everything except expiration date. Resurrection ritual gives user a mostly whole and powerful body.
Long answer? Possessed human vessel already failed Voldemort at least once; he's in need of an independent body. With aid of Wormtail he got himself a homunculus. Most homuncular vessel creation methods are very nasty, poor Bertha. Homunculus is better than wraith only at witchcraft, and worse at many other things. It requires a form of potent regular sustenance to function, but can exist longer than possessed vessel. Voldemort cannot impress his followers in such body and even less able to kill a certain schoolboy, but he can kill a muggle or wandless and already half-dead woman to make another horcrux.

 

Now that I think about it, it seems a bit of a plothole that the "terrible cursed fate" that comes from killing a unicorn and drinking its blood never really came up. I have trouble believing it's truly so simple as Quirrel taking all the metaphysical flak for that. Magic of that sort generally doesn't seem to be the kind that can be easily tricked or worked around. Voldemort was at least as guilty of the crimes as Quirrel, if not moreso; he should have inherited the curse as well.

Perhaps that's why events conspired so easily against Voldemort in the final book? The precisely correct sequence of events occurred not because of Harry's incredible luck, but because of Voldemort's accursed luck. It's possible the entire Elder Wand fiasco was at least in part a long-term side effect of killing unicorns to survive. Drinking unicorn blood could also have been what caused his apparent mental degradation.

That's just guessing, though. There are things that could be the curse manifesting itself, but we were never really explicitly told that. It's kind of up in the air.

 

I really don't think so. As I've argued before, I think this might be misunderstanding the effects of unicorn blood. Here is the quote.

Quoting myself, my taking from this is that unicorn blood doesn't save your life and curse you as two separate things. They are the same thing. The curse is the life and the life is the curse.

Drinking unicorn blood gives you a 'half-life, a cursed life'. This will save you from death but at the cost of being trapped in that state. It's not a curse in the same way as the Blasting Curse is a curse but in the classical meaning. You are forced to endure a hellish half existence.

This is backed up by what Firenze is saying. The philosopher's stone will end the 'curse' because it can bring Voldemort back to full life, out of the 'half-life, a cursed life' he gained from drinking the blood. His resurrection in fourth year would do much the same.

 

But does it only grant/extend a half life to someone who is already in that state, i.e. someone subsisting as a shade before he can connect with his/her horcrux? (This is assuming, perhaps falsely, that the shade creature Voldemort became was what happened to everyone that became a horcrux. Which, thinking about it is apropos. The person with the horcrux does indeed live on but as nothing more than a mean spirit unless they can connect with someone to perform some... ritual? Flesh, blood, and bone is "well-known" enough to the point that Dumbledore has heard of it, right?)

What if someone caught a nasty curse in the chest and was bleeding out and somehow managed to kill a unicorn and consume its blood? Would the person survive, but be in the constant pain of having its chest mangled?

 

I didn't imply or say that it was a 'curse' the same way a normal spell is.

You say "your life will be cursed," I think Monkey's Paw or ancient Indian burial grounds. Haunted houses. Marked by the Wild Hunt. Sought out by the Deep Ones. Laid bare before the lidless burning eye, wreathed in hate and rimmed with shadows, naked in the dark.

I don't imagine you'd kill a unicorn, drink it's blood, and then a hex comes flying out of it's immaculate rainbow asshole and smacks you right in the face for 1d4 CON damage.

It would be pretty funny, and I'm sad there isn't a crackfic that's done that yet, but that's not how I expect it would actually happen, no.

I'm expecting the sort of thing where the blood saves you and then slowly kills you or drives you mad over a period of time. Something like constant, persistent bad luck, or a more subtle conjoining of forces where the very world begins to conspire against you.

Or maybe it's not subtle at all, and every day of your life becomes you starring in a horror movie until something finally manages to eat you.

Either way, it's something I'd consider to be a persistent thing, hanging in the background and looming over you, not necessarily easy to discern at first glance, and infinitely more difficult to get rid of than anything you'd get with a mere wand. This isn't spell damage we're talking about. We're talking about an honest-to-God curse.

 

Speaking of true curses, where Tom could find something like DADA curse and why didn't he used it on anything and anyone else? Thing is so far above his competence that I wouldn't entertain idea of him creating it himself.
And there was immensely useful gaze-casting... Which was applied exactly once and promptly forgotten by both sides of the conflict. Bar Legilimency, but even then Voldemort is forced to use his wand and verbalized incantation - yet another proof of his incompetence.

 

There was never any implication that Voldemort put the curse on the DADA job position deliberately, or that it was a spell of any kind. I always read it as the job being cursed by mere association with Voldemort - he was so pissed at being rejected that the job became cursed automatically. A rather deeper, more mysterious level of magic than that of wand waving and incantations. The same kind of deep magic as that behind Lily's sacrifice.

 

Taure: accidental magic in this universe is fickle and manifests in brief outbursts. Pissed Voldemort can blow up, paint or burn something, but to create permanent curse with horcrux anchor? Most unlikely.
Lily's blood magic was definitely entirely deliberate, though it-self appears to be filled with erumpent-sized plotholes.
Like that unspeakable invisible thestrals issue.

 

1. I wasn't referring to accidental magic. I was referring to something rather more esoteric, such as the spontaneous development of sentience by a car.

2. The magical results of Lily's sacrifice were almost definitely unintentional.

Incidentally, your casual disregard of Voldemort's magical abilities isn't convincing anyone. The guy made terrible strategic decisions, but his magical ability was probably the highest in the books. He would have beaten Dumbledore in the duel in OotP, for example, if Fawkes hadn't taken a hit on Dumbledore's behalf.

 

1. You wrote it as an issue of emotion-induced accidental magic, I did referred to it as an accidental magic. Sentience is easy, a botched animation spell or consequences of crashing a highly enchanted object in a highly magical three.
2. Consequence incinerating Voldemort could be unplanned. But intent was there, was it not? Otherwise she could just grab Harry and teleport away.
3. He strong. Not smart, wise or all-powerful. Most definitely weaker than most of his predecessors. But he was born out of most recent prejudices, fears and weaknesses of Wizarding Britain, so wizards of Britain fear him more than Grindelwald, who bathed an entire world in blood and flames. And notorious for its lust for powerful wielders and treachery Elder Wand does not entertain Tom as its true master despite serving thieves and traitors before.
And you disregarding Dumbledore's own prowess. In that duel Dumbledore didn't use anything remotely serious, intending to stall and distract Tom. Which Voldemort himself quickly noticed, but failed to act upon.
In my opinion, Dumbledore could crush Tom if he allowed himself to maim and kill. He is equally if not more powerful, far more knowledgeable and experienced and does have better wand. Alas, he has to be an utterly moral old goatbugger.

On an unrelated note, is there a canon-version of Tempus spell?

 

But did Dumbledore fight with everything that he could in that duel? I think not. Whereas Voldemort resorted to all sorts of curses, dark arts and what nots, Dumbledore wasn't like that at all.

It's restraint, perhaps regret too, when it comes to Dumbledore, that made Voldemort seemingly the better dueler, the 'stronger' wizard than, not how Voldemort could dish out AKs like candy.

 

You're assuming that the Dark Arts are inherently stronger than other spells. I don't think Dumbledore avoiding use of the Dark Arts makes him any weaker a fighter, nor do I think him suddenly using darker spells would make him any more likely to win. Dumbledore was fighting to capture Voldemort, which is basically about the same difficulty as killing someone. Either way you have to overcome their defences.

Also, Voldemort used a lot of magic that wasn't Dark Arts in that fight too. He used Killing Curses either as opportunistic attacks or as an intended finisher after using other magic to manoeuvre his opponent into a tricky spot.

 

They are more suited for killing/maiming people, as that kind of is their shtick.

I'm not sure by what we can measure the 'strength' of a spell, but we can measure their lethality with what they might do and how lethal they might be.

 

Not Dark Arts, there's much more in magic than Killing Curse. Intent itself matters. You could beat a man blue and black without breaking anything, you could kill by showing same man into a wall.

 

What a spell does to a person when it hits is not necessarily related to its ability to bypass their defences.

The only exception is the Killing Curse, but not using that doesn't disadvantage Dumbledore any, given that Voldemort can defend against it with his conjured silver shield.

Saying that Dumbledore didn't want to kill Voldemort doesn't mean that he was working below 100%. Trying to knock someone out and trying to kill someone is basically magically identical. It's just you'd use a slightly different spell to finish them off after getting past their defences.

 

Again, it isn't much about Killing Curses, or any point and shout curses for that matter. You can kill a skilled dark wizard with household charms just as easily - take Molly Weasley for example. Intent matters, knowledge matters, cunning(in which Tom is quite inept) matters. Reflexes, when it comes to fighters that are equal in everything else. Not abstract magic power, as you oft like to think. And even in power Dumbledore is definitely superior, if only for the Elder Wand.

 

True.

You got me slightly confused here, could you elaborate, please?

 

I think he means that normally knocking someone out is harder because you have to make sure you don't accidently kill them. With magic on the other hand, it's just a matter of using a Stunning Spell instead of something lethal.