Voldemort is Broken, and So is the Potter Universe

Don’t worry. I’m not here to moan about how terrible the books were. They were great for their demographic, which consists of mostly children. I started the Harry Potter series around the age of 11 and followed them faithfully. Starting with the 5th book, I’d finish books on the day of their release. With every book, I’d re-read it over and over until I’d memorized most of them. I was just a wee bit obsessed. It was after putting down the seventh book, however, that I felt some whiplash. I found myself growing more and more unhappy with how things were done and, like any disillusioned ex-zealot, started to rail about the evils of the Potter doctrine. Like all disillusioned ex-zealots, I also calmed down, and I’ve mostly dismissed my arguments with: “You’re not 11 anymore, obviously you’re not going to like it.” Still, in retrospect, I can’t help but find some parts of the series just a little ridiculous, ranging from the wildly inconsistent world to its addled occupants. There’s a great many characters who seem to lack foresight, resourcefulness, and a prefrontal cortex in the Potter universe, and it’s quite easy to pass them off as stupid. But it’s a different thing entirely when, say, Voldemort is chalked up to be this really great and powerful wizard, and turns out, well, not to be.

Voldemort is allegedly the worst thing that’s happened to the Magical World — even worse than Grindelwald. We’re talking about someone who is implied to have precipitated World War II. Even if Grindelwald had only a 2% influence on Hitler and the Muggle deaths of the Second World War, that’s still a huge stack of bodies. Voldemort has to do something worse than the Holocaust, which he didn’t. Mostly, Voldemort was just hell-bent on doing what his ancestor was loony about — bullying Muggles.

Voldemort’s reign of terror was centered in Britain. Unless you count Margaret Thatcher being elected in a landslide election, he really didn’t do much. You might argue that this is a fictional universe, and in that fictional universe, a lot of Muggles did die. Okay, fair argument. What about what he did to Mudbloods and all those wizards who didn’t have pure blood?

Not much history is provided on what he did in the ’70s, but we can consider what he did in his second rise to power (1999) to perhaps reflect what kind of stuff he did back then. After killing Rufus Scrimgeour and taking over, Voldemort rounded up people with impure blood and… didn’t kill them. He had their wands snapped and let them be beggars. Now, being homeless isn’t easy, but… this is supposed to be the most evil wizard ever. No concentration camps. No massacres. What Voldemort’s done isn’t even peanuts, it’s sunflower seeds. Or sesame grains.

Here’s another example of Voldemort’s lack of Dark conviction: his favorite spell by frequency seems to be Avada Kedavra. He seems to really like using the spell. In fact, he seems to use it more than the Cruciatus curse. It’s like he’s actually nice or something and wants to spare his enemies needless pain. In the seventh book, he simply tried to murder Harry, not mutilate his body. Cold-blooded, maybe, but not all that evil. You don’t hear anything like “he hung the Longbottoms’ skins over London” or “castrated Aberforth then let Dementors chew off Moody’s leg.” There’s so little cruelty in his resume that he doesn’t come close to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or even Kim Jong Un, and the only evil thing the third Kim has been recorded doing so far is eating too much cake.

Let’s forget about his evilness. Maybe what people really fear him for is his magical skill. After all, this guy was super good at magic and everything, right? As a youngster and student, he does seem to exhibit extraordinary powers. He’s able to control his magic more than the typical 11-year-old. He’s actually able to take two other kids with him down a sheer cliff drop, or hang someone’s bunny. (You don’t actually need magic to hang a bunny, do you?) But there you go: talented kid, right off the bat. Slughorn and other teachers talk about how brilliant of a student he was, but more than his magical talent, he seemed to have this great ability to schmooze. He had good looks and a way to really play psychological games with other people. He had Slughorn, Dippet, just about everyone except Dumbledore in his pocket while he was at school. I’ll get back to that in a second. As far as magical talent went, he seemed to peak in high school. Let’s consider his resume: he had an interest in Horcruxes. He disappears after graduation and goes treasure hunting and all that, getting all these magical artifacts. Then he apparently does some experimentation, coming back with a face all burned and white and stuff. We’re expecting, of course, a transformed and impressive new Riddle. But, as far as book evidence goes, his trademark innovation was… flying without a broomstick. I guess that’s sort of impressive. And he also… well, that’s about the end of his innovations.

You could say inventing stuff isn’t important, but how much magical power he had. But what could he do that other people couldn’t? I can’t think of anything. Pettigrew, friggin’ Pettigrew was able to do better. He blasted thirteen Muggles to bits, leaving a crater in the streets.

So the “greatest Dark Wizard of all time” isn’t super evil. He’s not very magically gifted. And as it turns out, he’s not even all that smart.

Voldemort’s motivations for his actions were two: power and blood purity. He tells Harry that “there is only power, and those who too weak to seek it.” This kind of makes sense. He has this sense of self-entitlement since he was a kid, and is completely fascinated with magic, so it follows he’d worship this power mongering. So that’s a good motivation. But the blood purity thing is kind of weak. I mean, he also never stops talking about blood purity, which is pretty lame, given how powerful he is. It’s clear that there’s no magical difference between purebloods and non-purebloods, and since Voldemort himself is half-blood, he should know this better than anyone else. Still, he goes on about this stupidity. It might make sense if he’d grown up in the ancient aristocratic magical families, like Draco Malfoy, but he was an outsider. Someone like Snape was vulnerable to it, because he had an inferiority complex and wanted friends badly. Tom Riddle was neither of those. The only reason one could argue that Voldemort would go off preaching blood purity was to gather followers and win political points, much in the same way that politicians might support issues that don’t actually match their personal beliefs. But let’s look at this another way: Voldemort could’ve used his schmoozing a lot more instead of turning to straight-up terrorism. He could’ve easily climbed up the political ladder using his superpowers of sucking up and good looks and then get all the bigots on his side, starting a dark age endorsed by all the big names. But instead, he goes out and experiments with wild magic and makes himself turn into some sort of monster, and then starts some terrorist cult. I guess some people roll that way, but I wouldn’t call it something brilliant. It’s the difference between Osama Bin Laden, who died after a decade of hiding in caves, and US Presidents, who can assassinate innocent civilians and overthrow democratically elected governments and still get a pension. Brilliant, see?

You might argue that Voldemort’s true genius lay in his Horcrux plan. You know, the scheme in which he makes a bunch of backups to his souls. He’s aware, from the very beginning, talking to Slughorn, that it doesn’t quite mean immortality, and that he still has to find a way to get his body back. So I can only chalk it up to stupidity that he didn’t prepare body-recreation stuff ahead of time. He spent, what, 10 or 11 years wisping around as a wimpy ghost because he couldn’t get his body back sooner. He could’ve gotten the Stone much earlier or prepared that simple concoction of enemy’s blood, dad’s bone, and servant’s flesh, and kept a cauldron in one of those giant spacious magical pouches. He could’ve had these concoctions ready in the pocket of a cryogenically frozen Death Eater, with a spell that wakes them up in the case of his body’s death. See? Not that hard to think of solutions.

Voldemort’s intellectual failures stretch on, though. Let’s look at his schemes, starting with the first book. He attempts to get the Philosopher’s Stone so he could get out of his near-death state. Instead of using Quirrell to, oh, I don’t know, Imperius other people to do the job, or Imperius Nicholas Flamel himself to just take it out, he goes in himself, in his weakest form, to Hogwarts, into the very fortress of the most powerful wizard on the planet. I mean, he was only a little flesh baby when he orchestrated the events of the fourth book, managing to Imperius the undoubtedly well-protected and high-ranking ministry official, Barty Crouch. So why did he have to take such huge risks in the first book just to snatch the Stone?

Well, never mind all that. Voldemort was already well aware of another way to get his body back: the same method he used in the fourth book. Once he’d gotten a hold of Quirrell, he could’ve just used Quirrell’s body, some bits from his dad’s graveyard, and blood from whatever enemy, he had plenty; it didn’t have to be Harry Potter. You could argue that Voldemort would want Harry’s blood, because it’s special in the same way that he picked Hogwarts founders’ artifacts for his Horcruxes. But both Voldemort and Dumbledore also explain in the first book that both the Stone and unicorn blood were temporary and imperfect, yet Voldermort was totally okay with them if it meant getting him back on his feet long enough to do something better. If Voldemort had even an imperfect body he could really accelerate his plans.

This is the point where I give Voldemort’s stupidity a break and rag instead on JK Rowling’s magical universe. In a book where you talk about something that already exists, like a car, you don’t have to explain how the car works. Everyone already knows. Fantasy and sci-fi books are a little different. They bring in made-up elements. Readers aren’t quite sure how these things might work, so fantasy and sci-fi novels have to explain how a magic carpet, spaceship, or magical ring works, especially if it plays an important role in the story. People have long criticized the Lord of the Rings series for Tolkienn’s generous use of the Eagles. Even Tolkienn admits that they kind of just show up whenever it’s suddenly convenient. This is basically how they work: they’re intelligent beings that live in these mountaintop kingdoms, where no one ever sees or communicates with them. But they’re very nice beings and swoop in to help every now and then. For example, they save Sam and Frodo from Mount Doom, or save Gandalf from Isengard, kill a few Nazgul, and suddenly swoop in and save Gandalf and his motley crew from hungry Wargs. Thus fans have complained: why couldn’t they be there the whole time to help fight Sauron? All they had to do was fly right over Mount Doom and drop the Ring. So that’s a problem right there: Tolkienn created an element in the story that could’ve — and should’ve- — drastically altered the story, but didn’t.

In sci-fi’s early ages, the genre was criticized for just this reason: if you could make anything up, you could make the story work however you wanted just by explaining plot holes away with “science” or “magic.” Isaac Asimov, one of the biggest names in sci-fi, claimed that the criticism was wrong. He showed through his books that he was able to make good stories happen regardless of what fictional elements were present. He did so by making fictional rules clear and consistent. JK Rowling says quite boldly that she never read any sci-fi or fantasy, and the resulting Harry Potter books confirm that.

So back to Voldie. There’s a lot of fictional ambiguity because Voldemort’s half-life state is never clearly defined. After he tried to attack baby Harry, he was torn apart… but into what? Was it just his soul? Was it floating kidney gas? We don’t know. We simply have to work with what we’re given. What we do know is that he had the power to possess animals, and latch onto people’s heads, but what else? It’s not clear. This makes it highly convenient for Rowling to do whatever she pleases. If I asked, “why couldn’t Voldemort just have stolen the stone earlier?”, it could be easily explained in a Rowling Q&A session with “oh, he was too magically weak” or some bollocks like that. So this whole half-living-half-dead thing was just a bad excuse to let Harry get old enough to enter Hogwarts. I mean, Voldemort could definitely travel really far: he went from Britain to Albania, so there’s that. Also, after his defeat in the first book, Quirrell’s body crumbles but Voldemort somehow gets away once again: right in front of Dumbledore. Dumbledore says he came in just as Harry was being smothered by Quirrell, and somehow Voldemort hops off and flies away from the scene without the “Greatest Wizard Alive” noticing.

Between the first book and fourth, it’s explained that, somehow, feeding off Nagini’s venom could turn ghost-Voldie into a flesh-baby. So, let’s get this straight: Voldemort blows himself up in 1981 and becomes a floaty soul thing. 10 years later, he becomes a piece of face sitting on Quirrel’s head. By the fourth book, he became a flesh baby. I don’t even.

Anyway, how did he find Nagini or how did Nagini find him? Rowling could say something like “Nagini was a Horcrux, so the souls were connected, and hence they have built-in GPS signaling.” That’s still a bad theory because first of all, it took him at least 13 years to get together with his pet. Second, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione were prancing around Britain smashing his Horcruxes like daisies, he didn’t even notice. Dumbledore points out that he’s apparently so detached of being human that he doesn’t realize when a part of his soul is being destroyed. So that really wipes out any possibility of having any connection between Horcruxes, snake-cows, and GPS signals. Anyway, how does snake venom make a ghost turn into a flesh baby? None of this is ever explained. How does a soul-ghost-thing even drink snake venom? Why is snake venom even nutritious? Does Nagini have snake-nipples?

So, yes, the Potter universe is fairly broken. But let’s get back to Voldemort’s inadequacies.

In Book Two, Voldemort only indirectly fights Harry, and, of course, loses again to a tween. If you’ve got the power of a Basilisk, there’s a lot of awesome things you can do. But Tom Riddle, fifty years prior, only uses it for petty terrorism. He could’ve killed Dippet. Or Dumbledore. Or important people. But instead, he kills a few students. This is the equivalent of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda bombing civilians and somehow thinking it’s a decisive victory against the USA. While such tactics have limited but quantifiable value to a rag tag team of gun-toting cave-dwellers, it’s pretty pointless to go this route if you have, say, a Basilisk in your arsenal. What Riddle did had no effect or influence on the Wizarding world. I suppose you could put it down to teenage experimentation.

In the Chamber of Secrets, Riddle meddles with Harry through his diary, which contains his echo. Once again, Rowling doesn’t properly explain how a soul works or how a memory works. If we were to guess, it seems that the diary’s pretty much alive and sentient. (It can learn, it can converse, it’s intelligent, and it can even do stuff like possess people or show them visions).

As an aside: Only Wizard God knows why Lucius Malfoy slipped the book into Ginny’s cauldron at Flourish and Blott’s. If Malfoy had any idea how important it was, he wouldn’t have done it. But he had to know. See, while he didn’t know it was a Horcrux, and while the book’s not clear on whether he knew if it was Voldie’s diary, it’s kind of implied. I mean, the book was entrusted to Lucius by Voldemort himself. You’d think he’d remember who gave it to him.

So why in the world would he put it anywhere else except for right next to his wizard porn stash? What if it got confiscated? And what if someone, you know, stabbed it with a basilisk fang and you know, killed a part of Voldie’s soul? Why would he even want to open the Chamber of Secrets anyway? We are told that Lucius is an opportunist, who abandoned Voldemort immediately after his fall and blended back into the Wizarding World, where he did quite well for himself. Opening the Chamber doesn’t even usher in a new Dark Age, it just creates a climate in which things get really shitty for all ex-Death Eaters.

So if Malfoy knew anything about Dark objects, which the story clearly implies that he did, then he should’ve — must’ve — known that the book was a bit more important than some prank weapon to use against the Weasleys. Anyway, let’s just chalk it up to Malfoy being an absolute idiot, having learned from Voldemort, after all.

“Wait! you say. Malfoy wasn’t playing a prank. He was trying to get the Heir of Slytherin stuff started again! He knew that book would unlock the Basilisk!” Cool theory, assuming Lucius Malfoy even knew anything about the Basilisk and Tom Riddle’s involvement. Let’s assume he did. Then why did he give it to Ginny? Couldn’t he have, oh, I don’t know… given it to his own son, maybe? Told Draco what to expect? Even if he didn’t want Draco to do anything, he could’ve just talked to the diary himself, said, “Hey Voldie, lemme explain how things are going to turn out in your future. So here’s your chance to undo it… you could start with opening the Chamber through a minion I can plant with my connections — No, wait, my Lord. Actually, let’s give it to an 11-year-old girl.”

Anyway. Tom Riddle’s diary ends up with Ginny, but he really wants Harry. So he drives Ginny bonkers, (after, for whatever reason, attacking random students and failing every single time to actually kill anyone) and makes her throw it in a toilet where it just happens to be found by Harry, because possessing Ginny and making her give Harry the book would be too hard.

I’m getting sidetracked. Remember, Tom Riddle’s diary is now aware who Harry is. He wants to kill Harry. How does he do it? Well, he could’ve just possessed Ginny earlier, let loose the Basilisk, and, oh, I don’t know, kill Harry? But no, Tom Riddle’s too fancy for that. Instead, let’s kidnap Ginny and put her in the Chamber of Secrets, which by the way, isn’t guarded by anything else except for a few words of Parseltongue behind a girl’s bathroom (a truly dignified entrance to proud Slytherin’s secret chamber). Meaning, Dumbledore could’ve just blown apart the bathroom and slid down the hole. This is a safe assumption to make because if Salazar Slytherin wanted only the heir of Slytherin to enter, he would’ve cast wards that could detect his bloodline, not just some dumb snake-talking parlor trick. It’s made clear in the books that Parseltongue isn’t limited to Slytherin’s heirs, and that plenty of people can do it. What I’m trying to get at, is that by kidnapping Ginny, you do not ensure that Harry’s the only one who’ll show up. In fact, what’s a lot more realistic is that Harry and the rest of the students get evacuated while wizards like Dumbledore and Moody come kicking the door down. If the Basilisk got smacked down by a phoenix and a 12-year-old, then I’m sure Dumbledore alone could’ve zapped the overgrown worm in a second. Tom Riddle’s plan was so full of holes that the only valid explanation for such a bad plan was that he’d outsourced it to Kreacher.

I have to stop for another second to rag on the universe again. How in the name of Dobby’s tea cozy is it that no one ever found the Chamber of Secrets? The most prestigious school, like ever, is terrorized with student deaths, with all this talk about Heirs of Slytherin and whatever. Dippet must’ve been really incompetent if he was willing to accept the explanation that Hagrid (clearly the likeness of Salazar Slytherin) had done it. Anyone could’ve just Veritaserum’d Hagrid and found that he was raising an Acromantula, which might I remind you, was nowhere near being fully-grown. Acromantulas do not instantly kill, as JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them tells. In fact, they’ve got these pincers (on spiders?) that they more or less use to gore their prey to death. The Basilisk doesn’t do that. It just stares the life out of you. So even if Dippet threw Hagrid under the bus out of political desperation, you’re telling me that Auror CSI couldn’t put two and two together, that these were Basilisk deaths, not spider? It should’ve been at least enough to warrant Veritaserum-ing Riddle. If not, then they could’ve at least searched for the Chamber of Secrets, which might I remind you, is under a girl’s bathroom protected by nothing more than Parseltongue. They could’ve interviewed Myrtle, who they knew was the victim. Three 12-year-olds were able to crack the mystery that no one else in the magical world could figure out for decades; including Dumbledore. Either Dumbledore was idiotic and never figured it out, or he did know, and by implication, must have decided it was perfectly fine to run a school atop a basilisk nest.

Voldemort is thwarted again by Harry, Hermione, Ron, and, of course, his own idiocy.

Moving on. At the end of the third book, Wormtail escapes from Harry and his crew, dooming Sirius to a life of hiding. Wormtail then finds Voldemort within a single summer… even though no one else managed to do so for 13 sodding years. We’re talking about Peter Pettigrew here, an incompetent, cowardly wizard. As far as looking for Voldemort goes, he has much bigger competition. First of all, you’ve got to consider the fact that all these (much more competent) Dark wizards like the Lestranges (with Dark Marks!) were out looking for Voldemort after his vanquishing. They couldn’t find him. Secondly, you’ve got to also consider, well, Dumbledore. Either Pettigrew beats Dumbledore him to it, and finds Voldemort in less than two months, doing what Dumbledore failed to do in 11 years, or Dumbledore, who believed Voldemort was never killed, just never bothered to search for the most powerful and evil wizard to have ever lived. Now, you might say that Pettigrew has the Dark Mark, so maybe that was an easy way to find Voldemort, but so did the Lestranges, and they didn’t find Voldie. And Snape worked for Dumbledore, so Dumbledore could’ve utilized his Dark Mark. But of course Dumbledore didn’t, because he and Voldemort are equally stupid.

Voldemort makes no appearance again until the fourth book, when finally he’s able to become flesh-baby. With the help of Wormtail, he kidnaps Harry Potter. So here’s Voldemort, sitting on his couch while Nagini fetches him coffee with his favorite snake-venom creamer. He’s discussing his plan with Barty Crouch Jr. and Wormtail, about how they’re going to totally recreate his body and how awesome it’s all going to be.

“Barty, my faithful servant,” said Voldemort, after Wormtail changed his diaper for the fifth time that day, “You shall kidnap only the most paranoid and adept Auror there is: Mad-Eye Moody.”

“… my Lord?”

“You shall have the help of my incompetent servant, Wormtail.”

“O-of course, my Lord. This will be difficult, but I’m sure my Lord takes risks only for the best of reasons.”

“Obviously. Now, I need you to impersonate Moody with Polyjuice because he’s teaching at Hogwarts and hence will be near Harry Potter.”

“My Lord, if I may be so crass… er, plenty of other people are going to Hogwarts this year. It’d be a teensy bit easier to kidnap them, my Lord, without anyone noticing.”

“Silence! Crucio!”

When the torture was over, the floor was stained with blood. Crouch’s fits left him cut and bruised.

“O-of course, m-my Lord. Your plans are p-p-perfect, my Lord.” He kissed Voldemort’s baby feet. “My Lord must have a great plan in store that requires, strictly, using the Auror Alastor Moody…”

“Yes. I need the underage Harry Potter to join the Triwizard Tournament.”

“..?”

“We shall make it so that he violates the rules to join, that he beats all the other seventeen-year-old wizards, while under the supervision of Dumbledore and Fudge and Crouch and whoever.”

Crouch swallowed, too fearful to speak.

“Then — and listen closely, fools — then we shall make him touch the Triwizard Cup — which will be… wait for it, fools… wait for it… a portkey!”

Even Wormtail coughed.

The plan had Kreacher written all over it again. Voldemort’s goal is to get Harry’s blood sample. That’s the most important part. The second part is to kill Harry. So really, what this all amounts to is kidnapping Harry Potter. Sure, it might be kind of hard to do that, but why in the name of Slytherin’s aged wrinkles would you put him in the Triwizard Tournament? To grab a portkey? I suppose enchanting a spoon and handing it to Harry would’ve just been way too hard. Apparently portkeys override the “no Apparating on Hogwarts grounds” rule, because the final maze was on the Quidditch pitch, which is still part of the grounds (And if the Quidditch pitch isn’t, then that’s just damn idiotic on Dumbledore’s part). So really, Crouch Jr. could’ve given Harry a portkey nearly anywhere, and still would’ve achieved the same goal. This means that Crouch Jr. could’ve impersonated anyone, not just Mad-Eye, to get into Hogwarts. He could’ve impersonated Ron, or Colin Creevey, people who the rest of the world might not miss at all, people who are much easier to kidnap than a paranoid ex-Auror. (Hell, Crouch Sr. was Imperiused, he could’ve done the deed himself.)

Forget the whole portkey thing. How about kidnapping Harry earlier, before the start of term? Look, Voldemort didn’t even need Crouch Jr. to begin with. He could’ve easily deduced that Harry was going to be at the World Cup. Clearly, security sucked because a couple of drunk Death Eaters were able to torture muggles without anyone stopping them. I mean, literally tens of thousands of wizards were running for their lives while a dozen drunkards sang Death Eater songs. Wormtail could’ve clubbed Harry on the head and dragged him back to Voldemort’s cave. Or, obviously, make Harry touch a portkey. Hell, he could’ve just Imperiused Harry, because, well, clearly no one’s capable of detecting an Unforgivable Curse if Crouch Sr. had his own son under it 24/7.

Forget even the World Cup. Dobby — freaking Dobby — was able to stop Harry and Ron from getting onto the Hogwarts Express. Even Wormtail could do better than that. Harry’s so badly protected his security detail must also be designed by Kreacher.

And then the big moment. Voldemort gets Harry to Little Hangleton. He carries out the whole shabang, making his body anew. (Strangely enough, even though Voldemort wants to be perfect and gets Harry Potter’s blood, he’s totally fine with a useless idiot’s hand like Wormtail. Why not Crouch Jr.’s hand?).

(By the way: the resurrection spell, as I pointed out earlier, is not an invention of Voldemort’s. Dumbledore, who believes Voldemort isn’t dead and is going to come back, should’ve been able to predict he’d try the spell. So Dumbledore could’ve just… you know, taken Tom Riddle Sr.’s bones, right? It’s the one ingredient that Voldemort has no flexibility with, so destroying the bones would’ve stopped Voldie from ever getting his body back.)

So now Voldemort’s got all his Death Eaters back, he’s got Harry tied to a tree, and he’s got his old wand back (How? Was it stuck up Nagini’s arse all these years?). Being a man of grandeur, I suppose, he tortures Harry a bit then duels him. He’s completely surprised when Harry’s wand creates the Priori Incatatem effect between them. I suppose you can excuse Voldemort for not realizing this, even though he was an amazing student and everything.

Then, his wand begins to spit out his spell history. Somehow, besides torturing and killing Frank the Muggle and Bertha Jorkins, and making Wormtail’s hand, Voldie’s wand has done absolutely nothing since killing Harry’s parents. I suppose he likes getting his diaper changed manually.

Anyway, these ghosts of people can somehow talk and interact, even though there’s apparently no way to bring back the dead. They’re referred to as ‘echoes’, which Dumbledore emphasizes is not a real person or soul; but how do you explain the fact that they are aware that they’re dead, and that they can clearly form new memories, talk to people, and even give Voldemort a group hug so that Harry has time to escape? The resurrection stone pretty much does the same thing; some great magical artifact it is.

Voldemort did not destroy the portkey or set up anti-escape spells. A dozen Death Eaters and the most powerful Dark Wizard in the world couldn’t stop Harry from running about fifty yards to a portkey. In fact, Harry dragged a corpse with him while doing it. (And he even Accio’d the Cup, which means that all the competitors in the tournament — Fleur, Krum, Cedric — could’ve just said “Accio Cup!” and won the tournament.)

So Voldemort’s back in business, except his only plan after 15 years backfired, foiled by a wounded fourteen-year-old. Somehow, his followers are still with him. Well, he’s now working on a new plan: getting a prophecy. For a whole year, Voldemort puts all his effort into finding out… well, to be honest, I don’t know what Voldemort really wanted to find out. The book says he wanted to figure out the whole prophecy since he didn’t hear the whole thing (Snape being bad at reporting this kind of thing). I guess that’s a nice scientific approach, except even if Voldemort got the thing, it’d tell him nothing new. In fact, he never does get to hear it, and he’s somehow not disturbed by that at all in the next few books. So why is he so hell-bent on getting the prophecy in the fifth book? He’s an idiot, that’s why.

Let’s not even get into all his lame attempts to get into the Department of Mysteries. He could’ve really put his efforts elsewhere, like taking over the Ministry from the inside out or assassinating people from the Order. But for the whole book, he does absolutely nothing. That’s an entire year he just handed to the Order to use as they please. And what did he get in the end? Nothing. He failed his one and only objective, once again. Look, the goal was to get the prophecy. Now, the only people who can touch a prophecy without going nuts are the people whom the prophecy concerns. The Department of Mysteries was completely unguarded and empty the night of the whole final battle. Voldemort himself even shows up at the very end. So why did they need Harry to do it? Why not earlier? Why not just grab the prophecy himself? Why did he go through a whole year of making stupid images in Harry’s head and somehow hoping that Harry Potter, a 15-year-old hotheaded underaged wizard stuck in Hogwarts under Ministry scrutiny, would pop over to London, infiltrate the Ministry, and stroll over to the prophecy? He’s an idiot, that’s why.

Here’s another weird thing. Even after being so powerful, Voldemort still can’t beat Dumbledore in a duel. He resorted to possessing Harry. So by that measure, Dumbledore could still beat Voldemort. Why doesn’t he? Why doesn’t Dumbledore get a team of Aurors and just go hunting? There’s only like, a dozen Death Eaters ever, so it shouldn’t be much of a battle. Remember how Dumbledore flicked basically all of them aside with a swish of his wand? You could say that the prophecy says only Harry and Voldemort can kill each other, except that Dumbledore explains that the prophecy more or less means nothing. He basically chalks it up to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because the prophecy was made, Voldie attacked Harry, and now Harry wants revenge. So if the prophecy means nothing, why can’t Dumbledore just, I don’t know, kick Voldie’s arse personally? Because he’s an idiot too, that’s why.

So, in summary: Voldemort spends 13 years trying to get his body back. After he does so, he tried to kill Harry, too. Didn’t work out so well. So he changed his plans: off to steal a prophecy! That failed, too. So, what does Voldemort do next? He threw out all his plans about taking over the Ministry and killing Harry. Instead: Let’s kill Dumbledore!

Well, if the idea is to kill Dumbledore, how should we go about doing that? I know! Listen — guys, listen — I have the best ide — guys, listen, I have the best idea, why don’t we — listen — why don’t we — guys, listen! I have the best idea. Why don’t we make Draco — guys, Draco — why don’t we make Draco do it?

(“But wait!” you say. “That whole plot was just a way to punish Lucius!” Sure. But if you really believe that, you have to believe in one of two things: (1) That Voldemort did nothing else for the entire year except for focus on punishing Lucius (since there’s no evidence to show he was working on anything else), or (2) it really was his objective to kill Dumbledore. Option 1 makes Voldemort look like he really does copy Kreacher’s homework, so we’re forced to embrace option 2, even if trusting a sixteen-year-old with murdering the most powerful wizard in the world is a plan even Crabbe and Goyle would question.)

Voldemort now sits back, cackling. This plan will surely work!

Draco, fortunately, is a bit smarter than Voldemort, because he actually comes up with a plan that doesn’t involve failing. Even though he’s an incompetent wizard, he still attempts to fix a cabinet that will make a magic tunnel to Hogwarts. (More evidence of Rowling’s Broken Universe: Hogwarts is the safest place in the world but a mere magical cabinet can somehow cut through its defenses? Whatever. Let’s pretend Salazar Slytherin himself made the cabinet or something (even though his track record with the Chamber of Secrets is lousy at best)). Draco takes an entire year to fix this cabinet. He could be asking any expert wizard how to do it but instead he just keeps trying fruitlessly, wasting an entire year. Still, it’s a better plan than anything Voldemort’s come up with. The plan works, and Dumbledore is killed, but only because Snape does it. In fact, the whole plan only worked because Dumbledore wanted it to. So, Voldemort: 0, Dumbledore: 6. Or 50. Whatever. It’s not like Dumbledore outsmarted Voldemort. We’ve established that Dumbledore could’ve found and killed Voldemort at any point. So, really, we have to conclude that Dumbledore allowed himself to be murdered for basically no reason.

Then suddenly, out of pretty much nowhere, in Book Seven, Voldemort’s crew takes over the Ministry. Just like that. If it was a subtle takeover of three years of Imperiuses and bribes, then it might make sense that it took so long. No, Voldemort took over violently. They had to murder Scrimgeour to do it. So if they did it so quickly, then why in the name of Hagrid’s giant bollocks did they not do it earlier? Voldemort came to power at the end of the fourth book, but decided to bide his time. The Order of the Phoenix argues he does it because by allowing people to deny his return, he divides the magical community. Yeah, that makes sense except he doesn’t even take advantage of it. He freaking strolls into the freaking Ministy of freaking Magic at the end of the book. If he had the power to bust in, why didn’t he just kill/Imperius Fudge earlier? By delaying the Ministry takeover he also let it become a bit more resistant with Scrimgeour’s election and all. (Not that it really mattered. Apparently a whole team of Aurors can’t stop Death Eaters from taking over the Ministry. Tough Death Eaters! you might say. Except Molly Weasley, an overweight housewife, kills — not wounds, not disarms — kills Voldemort’s top lieutenant, Bellatrix Lestrange (in one stroke, no less). It’s like trying to make sense out of Dragon Ball Z power levels.)

Voldemort’s agenda of the seventh book goes something like this: Throw a tantrum because he didn’t kill Potter. Torture Ollivander for information he could’ve figured out himself. Attempt to kill Potter with new wand. Fail. Throw a tantrum. Look for legendary wand for a few months. Finds it. Realize Potter’s been destroying all horcruxes. Attack Hogwarts to find Potter. Realize wand isn’t powerful enough. Kill Snape. Find Potter. Get killed.

All this took an entire year to do.

Next, notice how there’s a lack of any real kind of thinking this entire time. Voldemort lost his entire body the first time he tried to kill Harry. As it turned out, it’s Lily’s sacrifice that gave Harry that protection. It’s not something dismissible, it’s absolute fact. Voldemort learns this lesson the hard way again, 10 years later, when as Quirrell-Voldemort, he tried to grab Harry and burned to pieces in the process. Voldemort was too stupid to research the reason he got beat the first time. In fact, he already knew about it, he says so in the fourth book, he just didn’t “foresee” it. That isn’t some simple mistake. If there exists a protective charm that’s able to bounce an “unblockable” curse, then you don’t just forget about it.

Well, it takes him three years, but Voldemort finally thinks: hey, I can just use Harry’s blood in a new body and that’ll make me invincible!

I’d like to pause for just a moment here. Since Rowling does not specify how his mother’s protection works and how Voldemort’s new-body potion works, there’s no way to know what kind of effects it’ll really have. In other words, it’s Rowling’s little deus ex machina: the little plot hole filler device we’d talked about earlier. See, Rowling says that because of this great spell, combined with Dumbledore’s charm, Harry’s protected while with his next of kin.

“What? How does that work?” you ask.

“Magic.” replies Rowling.

Also, because of this sacrifice, Harry can’t be touched by Voldemort. Especially when he’s under his aunt’s roof.

“And how does that work, exactly?”

“Magic.”

See, Voldemort can’t even touch Harry without screaming in pain. But if Voldemort uses Harry’s blood in this super dark ritual (which, by the way, is easier to brew than Polyjuice Potion), infusing Harry’s love-tained blood into his own, then Voldemort will no longer be affected by Lily’s protective magic.

“… what —

“Magic.”

Does this affect Harry’s protection with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia? It should, shouldn’t it? But it evidently does not. See, these kind of questions can’t be answered. Rowling just makes up whatever’s convenient, with this resurrection ritual conjured up simply as a convenient means to bring Voldemort back. Plot armor is the best armor.

But let’s not get sidetracked. Voldemort’s next attempt to kill Harry, in the fourth book, ends in failure because he didn’t realize they had the same wand cores. I suppose it’s something you might overlook.

Understandably, Voldemort’s really miffed now. First, all that bollocks about mother’s protection. Now, this bollocks about wands. But what’s important is that once he gets a new wand, he’ll be able to kill Harry. At this point, Rowling says “to hell with reason!” and makes Harry’s wand automatically resist Voldemort (that whole sparkly thing while they were flying around in the sky on a motorcycle and whatnot). Voldemort fails again, and this time not because it’s his or Harry’s doing, but Rowling’s. There really is no strong explanation for why it happens. (The official explanation is something like, “Harry’s wand, ’cause of Priori Incatatem, recognized his foe!”) So why didn’t Voldemort’s wand ‘recognize his foe’ and shoot sprarklies from his wand? Plot armor is the best armor.

So Voldemort thinks, “I must get a super powerful wand.”

I guess there’s no harm in getting a legendary wand, but there’s no evidence to suggest that having a weak wand was the problem to begin with. It was first the mother’s love issue, then similar cores, then just Rowling being annoying.

But let’s do this in a reversed fashion. We’ll examine what Voldemort’s downfall was, then see where Voldemort messed up. It’ll help us see whether or not he was able to foresee the problem and how he chose to prepare for them.

Two main things led to Voldemort’s demise in the end. The first one was Harry’s little stunt with the Horcrux: sacrificing himself to kill off Voldemort’s second-to-last Horcrux — the one attached to Harry’s soul. (There’s also that bollocks about his sacrifice creating a protective charm for everyone else). The second thing was Voldemort owning a wand that had allegiances to someone else.

Let’s tackle the Horcrux issue first. When I’d finished reading Book Four, I was going nerd-crazy with my equally insane brother. We talked for hours about the books, trying to figure out what secrets Rowling had up her sleeves. We eventually came to a conclusion: Voldemort must have put something of himself in Harry the night he tried to murder him (that sounded strangely sexual). This made sense in several ways: Harry had a lot of Voldemort’s powers: Parseltongue, used the same type of wand, and had the Sorting Hat try to put him in Slytherin. So the Harry’s-got-part-of-Voldy-in-him theory has pretty solid evidence. With the fifth book’s prophecy revelation and the sixth book’s horcruxes, we more or less confirmed our theory.

Why do I mention that? Oh, well, because this grand mystery was guessed by two adolescent Muggles. In the books, it took the most powerful wizard in the world, Dumbledore, to have figured this out. In fact, even Voldemort couldn’t figure it out. You’d think someone who spent all his time researching soul splitting and soul preservation would at least suspect that something of the sort had happened.

“Do you think…” said Voldemort, twiddling his long, pale thumbs, “that perhaps I’ve latched a piece of my soul to Harry the night I tried to kill him?”

“Impossible, my Lord,” crooned Kreacher.

But the other thing that screwed Voldemort over royally was the whole Elder Wand thing. As a reminder: the Elder Wand is a super-duper legendary wand, that supposedly is really, really powerful. The wand switches its allegiance to the wizard who’s able to defeat the previous wizard in combat (note: you don’t even have to be holding the wand when you’re defeated. So someone could just kick you in the nadgers while you’re asleep, and still technically win the wand’s allegiance).

The order of the wand’s masters goes something like this: Grindelwald is bested by Dumbledore, who is bested by Draco Malfoy, who is disarmed by Harry. (The very fact that the Elder Wand keeps switching hands should kind of hint that it’s kind of not such a great wand to have. Grindelwald had the damn stick in his hand while he dueled Dumbledore, and he still lost.) At the end of Book Seven, Harry is the owner of the Elder Wand, though Voldemort thinks that he is, because he’s under the impression that Snape killed Dumbledore, and that he himself killed Snape. The Elder Wand refused to work properly against Harry, so Harry defeated Voldemort.

If we back up for a second, and imagine a universe in which Voldemort never messed around with a temperamental wand, he could’ve been using Hagrid’s pink umbrella and still defeated Harry in the final battle.

Understandably, Voldermort was frustrated about his wand’s impotency. But why did he think spending half a year pursuing a largely mythical and highly temperamental wand was going to solve any of his issues? He didn’t even bother testing it. He zapped Snape because the wand didn’t feel right. Did he not realize that the wand still didn’t feel right after killing Snape?

So basically, Voldemort should’ve seen the problem with the extra soul-attached-to-Harry thing, as well as the Elder-wand-is-broken problem. But you know what really tops it all off? Voldemort let Harry do the love-protection-charm thing for every last person in Hogwarts. If you recall, he demands that either Potter gives himself up for the sake of all the Hogwarts defenders, or he kills everyone, laying out the exact groundwork needed to reproduce Lily’s protection, x1000.

Remember how Voldemort was all pacing around proudly in the fourth book, talking about how he should have foreseen this whole sacrificial protection old magic? I already pointed out that if there’s such a spell that can make one wizard’s magic completely useless against another due to a sacrifice, then Voldemort should’ve really done his homework. Not only did it cost him his body the first time, he goes ahead and completely orchestrates it the second time, except this time around, he allows Harry to protect a few hundred people. He literally tells Harry to sacrifice himself to protect everyone else. He even puts it on big ol’ Magical P.A. so that everyone can hear the deal he’s putting on the table. Killing Harry, therefore, triggers a protection for every last person in Hogwarts, making them completely immune to Voldemort.

You know what gamers call this kind of mechanic? “Broken”. Broken in the sense that it just breaks the game. Imagine basketball. Now imagine I say that point guards are allowed to use AK-47s. That breaks the game. Who cares about points anymore? The gunners are going just kill everyone in the first five seconds.

“Aw, come on, it’s not that bad,” you say.

Not that bad? Voldemort was a bad person. He killed people. He killed lots of good people. Lots of these good people tried to protect other good people. If the sacrificial protection thing was really working, then that means half of Britain should’ve been untouchable by Voldemort within a year. And Harry proves in the last book that you can protect more than one person (in his case, hundreds if not over a thousand people). The fact that Voldemort was still able to kill anyone at all is a miracle.

And not just Voldemort. How does Grindelwald, or any other Dark Wizard do anything at all? This whole sacrificing thing is really difficult to get around. In fact, all Dumbledore had to do was let Voldemort kill him and say something along the lines of “I’m protecting everyone on the planet.” Voldemort would’ve become useless. JK Rowling created an Eagle, or an AK-47. However you want to see it.

But that’s not all! You can extend the protection! In fact, you can find someone who’s blood-related (it doesn’t specify how close the blood-relation has to be), and then cast a protective charm. Harry was protected now not just from Voldemort, but from any harm whatsoever so long as he stayed with the Dursleys. So what was stopping all the wizards on the good side from just making the most of every single sacrifice and connecting people in this huge network of blood-relatives? Combine that with Secret-Keeping and Unbreakable Vows and you’ve got more protection than… I don’t know. Things aren’t well-protected in the Potter universe.

Secret-Keeping. Woah. Now that’s just a Broken element if I’ve ever seen one. Lily and James Potter went into hiding, then told Peter Pettigrew the secret. A spell was cast. Voldemort could not find them now no matter how hard he tried. The books said that even if he had his face plastered against their living room window, he wouldn’t find them. What’s even more overpowered about this spell is that if the Secret-Keeper dies, the secret dies with them. That’s worse than AK-47s. All the Potters needed to do was tell a homeless bum the secret, cast the Fidelius Charm, then kill the bum. Voila. Secret died. No one will ever find the Potters. Ever.

Hell, Voldie could’ve used it, too. You know, for his Horcruxes, maybe?

What the hell was Voldemort thinking, anyway? He put one of the Horcruxes in Gringotts — you know, a place the Ministry of Magic operates, no big deal. He put one in the Room of Requirement, where he thought no other student would ever find, like ever. He left one in the Gaunt house. He put one in his snake that he sends on missions right into the heart of the Ministry of Magic. He put one in a diary that he decides is a good idea to give Lucius Malfoy’s hands. I thought these were the most precious things in the world to him. Well, you might argue the one in the cave was pretty well protected… except it wasn’t. Regulus Black and his House Elf stole it, and besides the ring (which, you know, Voldie could’ve just worn or something), every other Horcrux was destroyed by 17-year-olds.

Wait, I’m wrong; pretty sure Hermione was 18.

—

Harry had long since left the white expanse that had momentarily been a vision of King’s Cross Station. Under the bench, the last remnant of Voldemort, a whimpering, sad flesh-baby, was breathing its last.

“I can’t figure it out.” said Voldemort, sucking his thumb. “Everything Every plan I’ve laid for the last 18 years has gone awry! What did I miss?”

A voice said, “Maybe… maybe it wasn’t the wand thing… or Snape being a traitor. You know, maybe it was that anti-itch potion you’d been taking. Side effects include slow reflexes, or something like that. You ought to have spent more time doing nothing, I think, and taking out your anger on minions.”

Voldemort nodded. “You’re completely right, Kreacher.”