Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter theory. In this video, we’re going to be discussing Lord Voldemort, Inferi, and the practice of Necromancy. The word Inferi is the plural of ‘Inferius’ which comes from the Latin for "underneath; below”.
The ‘inferi’ are described on Pottermore as follows:
“An Inferius (plural: Inferi) is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard’s curse. It becomes a grisly puppet, and may be used as an expendable servant by the Dark wizard in question. The most obvious sign that one is facing an Inferius rather than a living human are the white and cloudy eyes.”
Snape in the Half-Blood Prince backs up this definition:
“The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard’s spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like a puppet to do the wizard’s bidding.”
Pottermore continues “The spells used to reanimate a human body are much more complex than those used, for instance, to make inanimate objects fly. The Inferius may be cursed to respond lethally if disturbed, to kill indiscriminately, and to undertake perilous jobs for its master.“
But, with all of that aside- I want to discuss a couple of things. First, I want to discuss how exactly the inferi are created. What’s involved with reanimating the dead? Then- I want to discuss who the original creator of the Inferi is. We commonly associate the Inferi with Voldemort, and we know that he creates some- but is he the original creator? Is he responsible for their existence? Did he invent that magic?
We know that there were masses of inferi in ‘the cave’ - a cave near the seaside that Tom Riddle would visit with his orphanage as a child. It was at this same cave that Tom Riddle would terrorize other orphans, and later hide Salazar Slytherin’s Locket- one of his Horcruxes.
The cave was the perfect place for Inferi to exist, and the Half-blood prince describes Harry and Dumbledore’s run-in with ‘the cave’ perfectly:
"An eerie sight met their eyes: they were standing on the edge of a great black lake, so vast that Harry could not make out the distant banks, in a cavern so high that the ceiling, too, was out of sight. A misty greenish light shone far away in what looked like the middle of the lake; it was reflected in the completely still water below. The greenish glow and the light from the two wands were the only things that broke the otherwise velvety blackness, though their rays did not penetrate as far as Harry would have expected. The darkness was somehow denser than normal darkness"
So, Dumbledore and Harry had found the cave. But what still stood between them and the Horcrux was a lake.
“An Inferi-infested lake separated the entrance of the cave from the Horcrux. Any attempt to use a Summoning Charm to get the Horcrux would cause one or more Inferi to leap out of the water to block the spell's effect. If the water is disturbed, the Inferi would emerge and attempt to drag the intruder into the water to drown.”
We know that Voldemort filled the lake with Inferi when he put the Horcrux there originally. He never expected that anyone would ever discover the lake, as it was inaccessible by boat, but placed additional defences there just in case. We know that Regulus Black was dragged into the lake, as well as Kreacher. But, was the lake cursed so that anyone who entered its waters would turn IN to an Inferius, or did Voldemort turn them in to an inferi when he later found their drowned body?
Next, let’s briefly look at WHO the original creator of the inferi actually is. While Voldemort and the Inferi are commonly bundled together - there is evidence to support that he isn’t actually the one who created them. We know that he didn’t create them because their existence was known before his time. In fact, Gellert Grindelwald, the terrorizer of the wizarding world that preceded Voldemort, is said to have wanted to create an army of inferi himself. This was in 1899, many years before Voldemort was born- so- does that mean that Grindelwald created them? The short answer to that is no- Grindelwald never actually created Inferi because he didn’t know how- he thought that with the resurrection stone he would be able to do it- but he never finds out. So, if it wasn’t Voldemort and it wasn’t Grindelwald- who was it? I have a couple of ideas.
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10 дек 2020
