Is it possible to hold Voldemort in a prison cell? Maybe.

But holy shit how the fuck are you going to capture him in the first place?

 

As said above, he has to go down eventually, whether it's lethally or non-lethally. The good guys generally aren't tossing around AKs or the nastiest dark curses anyways, and magical triage is pretty effective. He would just have to be alive, having all of his body parts attached would be entirely optional.

That said, it's not like you'd have to fight fairly. He could just as easily be poisoned, shot in the back by a traitor, tossed a portkey, etc.

 

Why not just obliviate Voldemort Lockhart style? It seems that it would solve most of the problems that occur with Voldemort breaking out. Not to mention that its fairly likely he wouldn't be able to regain much of his knowledge of any powerful magic he knew, not to mention you probably wouldn't have to worry about horcruxes.

 

To capture: how about a blow dart filled with living death? during battle, one person, hidden shots a dart at voldy, with living death.

To hold him: put him in a casket (the ones that you put your dead love ones in), that is spelled to not be crushed and unbreakable, and unending breathable air. Then put the tom in casket in the middle of the ocean . . .pacific? the deepest part, and sink it.

 

To further improve on this thought: cast a Fidelius on the caskets location, Obliviate everyone except the secret keeper of the location, and bury the casket beneath the sea floor.

 

In OotP, Dumbledore said to Fudge: "I have absolutely no intention of being sent to Azkaban. I could break out, of course—but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing". That is a big statement of someone to boast to the Minister of Magic that they could escape from Azkaban so there is no point putting them in there. We've seen Sirius use his Animagus form to escape Azkaban as well as Crouch Jr be let free via outside assistance by having his mother take his place. Even disregarding Sirius and Crouch Jr, I think if any wizard could single-handedly break out of Azkaban by their own magical talent, it would be Dumbledore.

After all, Sirius was an innocent man who probably wouldn't have been motivated to escape if he never saw the Daily Prophet article which had the Weasleys and Scabbers on the front cover. It was that hatred for Wormtail, as well as knowing he was innocent that allowed him to escape. Had Sirius truly been guilty of the crimes he was accused of, I don't think he would have escaped Azkaban. Hell, if the Ministry knew Sirius was an unregistered Animagus then he never would have been able to use his Animagus form to escape Azkaban since in that situation, the Ministry would know Sirius' Animagus form (to catch him easily if someone in the Ministry screwed up and allowed Sirius to escape under their nose) and would have tighter security.

I think its safe to say that Azkaban wouldn't be able to restrict Dumbledore unless Dumbledore willingly chose to stay in Azkaban. I think if Dumbledore had the ability to break out of Azkaban if the situation would come up, Voldemort doing the same wouldn't be that difficult either.

I feel like using Obliviate on Voldemort is the only real way to deal with him without killing him. It would have to be strong enough of an Obliviate to where Voldemort won't gradually regain memories and then oppose the wizarding world once again. I feel like a wizard of Dumbledore's skill could have done it, or even someone like Flitwick who isn't as good as Dumbledore yet still very skilled with Charms. If Voldemort was Obliviated and does not know that he is this extremely powerful wizard, assuming he even remembers that he was a wizard if its that strong of a Memory Charm, then he wouldn't try and break out of Azkaban. He would just sit in Azkaban until the day he died.

Even without Azkaban, perhaps if he was subjected to the Cruciatus Curse and was driven insane by it (e.g. Frank and Alice Longbottom), he would be stuck in St Mungos and would be powerless. Though I think if someone really skilled with using Obliviate used it on Voldemort, and then the Ministry put Voldemort in Azkaban, it would be the most convenient way of imprisoning him.

 

The likely answer to this is that Voldemort is an expert Occlumens. I wouldn't trust a memory charm to take with him.

 

I think I remember reading somewhere that memory charms can be broken. I'm fairly sure it was in the books, though I could be entirely wrong here in which case everything I'm about to type is moot.
I'm going to work under the assumption that memory charms don't necessarily remove the memory, but shield and hide it. If Voldemort were to be obliviated, it might be entirely possible for some follower of his to come along and break the charm.

 

Yeah, in Goblet of Fire. That was how Voldemort found out about Crouch Jr; Bertha Jorkins knew about it but had been obliviated.

 

Voldemort broke Bertha along with the memory charm - considering Lockheart took several years to regain even a fraction of his original personality under supposedly high-quality care at St. Mungos, it doesn't seem there's a fast and reliable method to break memory charms without irreparably harming the individual.

All that aside, previous suggestions w.r.t. drought of sleeping death + fidelius are probably sufficient.

 

As an alternative and assuming Transfiguration is permanent; Obliviate Voldemort to the point that he doesn't know his own name, force feed him the draught of living death, vanish his limbs and transfigure him into a muggle pound coin. Then obliviate yourself of the knowledge that he is the given object.
I think there would be at least some justice in using Voldemorts' body to pay for your groceries. Would that make him a cheap whore?

 

You keep equating taking him down to killing him as though they have the same level of difficulty, but that's obviously not true. As we see in the books, he's eventually killed by a combination of Harry's sacrifice protecting his targets and the Priori Incantatem. Without Harry dying (which, if you recall, was the beginning of this discussion), the final fight would have gone very differently.

 

A corporeal Voldemort is extremely difficult to fight, but an incorporeal one is much more manageable. So, ideally ... you could spam Killing Curses at him until one hits, wait until he turns into soul smoke, and capture him in an Unbreakable container that will be set inside a sealed chamber in Nurmengard. If that place held one Dark Wizard for decades, it could hold another long enough for everyone to find Voldemort's Horcruxes in the case of his undoubtedly inevitable escape.

The trouble would be getting close enough to do all that and being good enough to do it without getting killed. And I imagine that herding smoke into a mayonnaise jar might be a bit tricky.

 

Or you could spam Killing Curses (which are explicitly difficult to cast) until one of his (he has a lot more experience with both Unforgivables and combat in general than most) hits you and all of your allies instead.

Again, Voldemort was duelling McGonagall, Kingsley and Flitwick all together, and that was with Harry's protection on them. Your second paragraph acknowledges the difficulty inherent in it. At what point does this plan become better than 'let Harry sacrifice himself in order to put Voldemort down for good'? Not to mention that even you point out the necessity of taking care of his Horcruxes, which means Harry has to die anyway, so the entire discussion ends up being moot.

There's no reason to believe that the 'soul smoke' is even capturable, considering the ease with which he escaped the chamber in PS. It's not his animagus form like the beetle was Rita's, after all.

 

Aside from Nurmengard and the glib bit about Voldemort being easier to deal with when he's not in bodily form, my suggestions would work pretty well ... in a crackfic. Anyone wanting to capture him alive would have to throw everything they had at him to do so, yeah, it would be hard even getting close to him without being killed. Like I said, "ideally," he could be struck down. And if not by the Killing Curse, then some other spell with deadly results.

The mayonnaise jar is negotiable.

And in my admittedly improvised thoughts from that first post, hunting down the Horcruxes would be a backup in case of Voldemort's escape. It's always a good idea to have a backup and Dumbledore or Harry don't strike me as the type to just let something like Horcruxes sit around once they know of their existence. Since keeping Voldemort captured but alive is the endgame in this whole scenario, Harry needing to make a sacrifice isn't on the agenda.

Hopefully it wouldn't come to that. Nurmengard could be enough to hold a Dark Wizard without a body. It certainly kept Grindelwald, a man who could only be defeated by Dumbledore, in.

There's not a lot of solid info on just how Voldemort's incorporeal form works, as far as I remember. But if he was able to be captured in that form, his chamber in Nurmengard would have to be sealed, as I said, to prevent him from leaving if he managed to get out of his tiny, Unbreakable container.

 

Dealing with the Horcruxes by necessity entails dealing with the Horcrux in Harry's scar, though, so he does need to die in order to remove Voldemort's safety net. Voldemort's power base would also still be flourishing, while Grindelwald's seems to have been broken post WWII.

Ultimately, it's a solution that could maybe work, but it has too many holes and potential liabilities to be seriously considered, given the ramifications if the safety measures failed. Voldemort came a hair's breadth away from conquering Britain twice. He would not fail a third time.

 

On the topic of Fidelius+Obliviate, I don't think that'd be possible - or at least, I don't like the idea. Since the secret is hidden inside someone's soul, as they say, either the obliviation wouldn't take because it only affects the mind, or the charm would fail because the secret is no longer hidden within.

 

There were points in time when it was entirely possible to incapacitate Voldemort. Even if we exclude when he was at full strength, he spent over a decade possessing various animals in Albania, and almost a full year as Babymort, being taken care of by Wormtail. In these forms, he was virtually helpless. Apparently he was easy enough to find for both Quirrell and Wormtail, so why did Dumbledore not put more effort into locating him in Albania?

When Voldemort was at full strength, Dumbledore had tunnel vision regarding the prophecy, and seemed to aim for a stalemate when he confronted Voldemort. In the duel in the ministry atrium, for example, wouldn't it have been possible for Dumbledore to cast a strong enough anti-disapparation jinx to prevent Voldemort's escape? After all, he had the Elder Wand and decades of experience over Voldemort.

 

In the ministry atrium Dumbledore just wanted to stall him until Ministry workers could see that he was back. I think that he didn't cast an anti-dissaparation jinx because he feared someone else getting hurt from Voldemort.

After all, there might have been enough people to take him down but I remember them being frozen in shock and terrified of his name alone. Also, Dumbledore didn't have the horcrux's yet so maybe that's why he didn't try as hard? I don't really know, please correct me if I'm wrong

 

That's definitely an amusing solution, but the one concern might be if the coin is accidentally destroyed or melted down. Transfiguring him into a diamond or something else nearly indestructible and then storing it in a safe place would likely be more secure, although less fun. Perhaps stick the Volde-gem on one of the Voyager probes?

Yeah, I agree that it violates the spirit of the magic. You could still argue that technically the secret is stored in the soul, not the mind, and therefore erasing knowledge of the secret would not remove the secret itself from the soul. The Fidelius is incredibly powerful already though, so abusing it further just seems unfair.

Besides, you could simply pick one of the seven billion muggles in the world at random and have them store the secret, and then self-Obliviate the knowledge of who the secret keeper is. If you suddenly remember where Voldemort is stored, it's time to pick a new secret keeper.