Why would anyone want to try to capture Voldemort anyway? Sure, at some point you'll land a spell on him, but you don't know when and you don't know at the cost of how many lives. What's worse is that there is absolutely no evidence from past history that it is possible to capture him or incapacitate him.

Given that, the sensible option of dealing with any fight with Voldemort is to aim at keeping yourself and your friends alive rather than to capture him.

Sure, you can still claim that given enough time, it's going to happen no matter how low the probability, but relying on such a thing during a duel is a good way to kill off the Order.

All that aside, if by some chance you do manage to capture Voldemort, the most likely scenario is that either you have ignored canon facts, or you have managed to write a really awesome story with a shitty ending.

 

Not the topic of this thread. If you want to discuss this go to the thread that this discussion was spawned off.

The original reasoning, if you forgot or didn't know, was to defeat Voldemort without needing Harry to die to achieve it. Whether that's possible or practical is for this thread to decide.

 

I second their point though; there are some people you just don't fight to capture. Especially when you're well aware you don't know all of what he's capable of.

It's pretty much the same reason attempting to imprison Dumbledore is a stupendously bad idea. If they are actually as intelligent, powerful and cunning as they're supposed to be (and not plot props for what is at heart a children's story), that is.

In any case I'm not the person to be discussing the finer points of ethics, and I don't particularly like Harry, so...welp.

 

Ah, I thought the thread was about whether Voldemort could be imprisoned.

That said, hopefully on topic this time, I can think of a way to possibly defeat Voldemort without Harry dying for it and at the same time not as dangerous as trying to subdue him.

The Order could, theoretically, use any of the methods discussed in this thread on Death Eaters rather than on Voldemort himself. Incapacitate the Death Eaters in a way that doesn't allow them to escape and join Voldemort. It would be safer and possibly more likely to provide some measure of success. It would also create a deterrent against people wanting to join him, except for the crazies.

Eventually, a win would be if the Order succeeded to whittle down Voldemort's support to make it a non-entity. Voldemort would still be dangerous, but he wouldn't be able to cause the kind of destruction he did in canon without the support. A mass murderer that everyone is scared of, but not someone likely to take over the wizarding world.


The end goal, if you're familiar with worm, would be where the Death Eaters and Voldemort would be something like S9 rather than Cauldron.

 

The problem with this approach is the assumption that "Death Eaters" are a concrete, easily identifiable tumour that can be neatly cut out of society forever.

Scratch that. They are a cancer, and like many cancers simply excising the tumour is not a solution. The underlying oncogenes are still right there. Forgive my Godwining, but the pretty much utter destruction of the Third Reich on almost all fronts did sweet Fanny Adams to solve the underlying anti-Semitism that's been periodically erupting in Europe for close to a millennium now.

There will always be people who believe in blood supremacy and/or Muggle subjugation, and creating such a martyr-like character for them to rally around isn't wise. Even with how badly he ended up losing and his lack of magic powers, imagine the average neo-Nazi's reaction to the news that Hitler is alive and being held in Guantanamo Bay or something. In fact, I'm pretty sure Eastern European pureblood bigots were more motivated than discouraged by Grindelwald's long years in captivity.

 

Definitely this. It was the only reasonable imprison Voldemort idea I have ever read.

 

Though I would say Nurmengard, I don't really think that it would work, because it says here

So, I would say, find someway to get rid of his magic, then imprison him, because I think somewhere in the books, Dumbledore was able to get rid of Grindewald's magic. (Either that or I'm mixing up fanon with canon.)

 

Kill his supporters and then aim to capture not kill him.
The prophecy(even if it is true) says no one can kill him but Harry, but it doesn't say anything about being unable to imprison him.
Imprison him in an undisclosed mountain, inside a specially designed cell complex which he can't alter or destroy, make a port key to a fair sized room inside the complex, collapse the tunnel leading to the complex to make the portkey the only way in or out. Always port the port key out while people are in there to prevent a jail break.

 

That's not it says, you know

Beyond that, prophecies (in the HP verse, and many universes) are descriptive, not prescriptive. See Eowyn and the Witch-King.

 

Defeating Voldemort is very much possible without Harry dying, but defeating Voldemort forever without Harry dying is an extremely hard feat to accomplish.

Let's look at the facts;

1). Voldemort is immortal until all of his Horcruxes have been destroyed. Defeating Voldemort does not necessarily mean killing him, but rather incapacitating him.

2). Voldemort, Dumbledore and Grindelwald were on a level of their own, and no average, or even above average wizard could take them on and hope to win.

3). Making an immortal wizard/witch mortal requires the destruction of their Horcrux(es).

4). Imprisoning Voldemort is nigh impossible, see number 2.

With all of these facts accumulated, it can be deduced that defeating Voldemort temporarily can be achieved if someone is able to achieve the level of magical power that wizards listed in number 2 had, or there is such a large number of wizards and witches fighting him at the same time that he is forced to retreat; (see Order of the Phoenix, DoM battle) and as such, defeating Voldemort temporarily is possible, but not that reasonable.

But if the aim was to defeat Voldemort forever, with Harry living, it is a one-in-a-thousand chance.

The criteria for the second aim is listed below;

1). Voldemort would have to be facing either a wizards and/or witches in his own league, or a number of wizards and/or witches that will eventually overpower him.

2). If number one is fulfilled, then it is necessary that Voldemort has no way to escape; i.e. Anti-Apparition charm.

3). If the above two are fulfilled, then it is also necessary for someone to cast a spell that either makes Voldemort unable to move, e.g. Stunning or Petrifying spells.

4). If the above criteria is met, then, and only then is it viable for someone to Obliviate Voldemort of all of his memories, and leave him as a shell of what he once was.

If all of this is met, then it can be assumed that imprisoning the man is.... somewhat reasonable after all of this. But, as it is known that Obliviating someone does not mean that they're memories are gone forever, i.e. Lockhart; one would have to regularly obliviate Voldemort lest he regain his memories.

But, as you can see, all of this is a big NO, and as such should not be treated as a viable solution.

This paragraph long post was only to emphasize upon the fact that defeating Voldemort forever is possible, but is very unreasonable, if the criteria is that Harry is not killed, that is.

 

It would be too risky. Voldemort knew wandless magic even before he went to Hogwarts and the dementors wouldn't do much to him since he barely has a soul.

 

I guess you misread the question. We aren't talking about Azkaban specifically, but the whole world. Anywhere goes, but please be reasonable and give evidence that your plan has some weight to it.

 

That's an interesting question, really: what would happen to Voldemort if he was Kissed? The dementor would be unable to devour all of his soul - as he has stacks upon stacks of Horcruxes in reserve - but those soul fragments aren't in his actual body.

Would he end up a soulless husk like the other drooling Kiss victims, or just carry on about his day as normal? If he survives intact then either the Horcruxes are still part of him, (just in different places), or his body and mind are just so used to operating on a mere fraction of a soul that the final loss doesn't actually bother him too much. Perhaps what causes people to go unresponsive after losing their soul is that it's essentially the individual going into shock after losing a core part of their being.

If Voldemort is able to function essentially soulless, this would make a really cool explanation to how he was able to cooperate with the dementors - he's just like them. Without a soul, or barely having one, he isn't food but rather some twisted sort of peer: they Kissed him, and he got up again.

 

The point is moot because he can offer the Dementors the freedom to feed on as many muggles as they want. They'll take that over giving him the Kiss any day of the week.

 

He can only offer that from a position of power. If we've gotten to the point of imprisoning him, then he's most definitely not in a position of power.

 

In the earlier posts, on page 1, someone argued that "Voldemort wouldn't just stand there and wait for you to throw him in jail". What has that to do with anything? The question is; "Is It Possible to Imprison Voldemort?"

I'd say yes. Voldemort is, when it comes down to it, not that much more powerful than Grindelwald, and he was imprisoned. Granted that Voldemort were deprived of his wand, defensive charms were put inside and around the cell and a sufficient number of Aurors guarding him, I'd say even the Dark Lord would be pretty stuck.

 

The original conversation started with the idea that Dumbledore was wrong to get Harry to kill himself (this thread was sourced from the "Was Dumbledore Manipulative" one). Several people argued that getting Harry to kill himself was the only realistic solution to the problem of Voldemort, which led to this discussion. With that context, the ability to capture Voldemort is just as relevant to the 'possible' in the OP as the ability to hold him.