I think it was partially that the “Unforgivable Curses” were considered evil, partially that they were illegal, and partially that they were just plain difficult to cast. The DA instructor in the fourth book says that the whole class could point their wands at him and say “Avadra Kedavra” and it probably wouldn’t have any effect. I can’t remember if Harry ever even attempts a Killing Curse, but he does try to cast the Cruciatus Curse a couple of times without much success.
In addition to being willing to use the Killing Curse, Voldemort has the power and experience to actually do so.
IIRC, this actually comes up towards the end of the sixth book, when Harry tries to attack Snape. Snape is able to block or dodge Harry’s curses and says something to him about how Harry still hasn’t learned to guard his mind. Voldemort doesn’t seem to have any ability to predict the future, but he is said to be skilled at mind-reading. So he may be able to tell what an opponent has decided to do as soon as they’ve had the thought.
It occurs to me that the two times we know of when Voldemort was actually hit with a Killing Curse, it was a spell he’d cast at Harry but that had rebounded onto himself. He presumably had no ability to foresee this happening as it wasn’t planned by his opponent.
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Well, aside from that limitation, he also a) disdained the magical power of love, which protected Harry the first time (Dumbledore knew Voldemort didn’t think much of it), and b) believed (despite Harry’s speech) he was the master of the unbeatable Elder Wand the second time.
We see what happens when a wand meets its brother. Harry’s wand caused Voldemort’s to regurgitate prior spells when they battled at the end of Goblet of Fire (priori incantatem).
There were millions or maybe billions of prophecy records in the Department of Mysteries (a good deal of which were destroyed in Order of the Phoenix). Divination is one of the facets of the wizarding world I wish had gotten more time/credibility in the series.
True, they did have a lot of those. I certainly remember the image from the movie of rows upon rows of shelves, but don’t remember whether that may have been exaggerated from the books…
Looking at it from a different angle, though, I don’t remember any new prophecies being recorded during the 7 years covered by the books - at least not to the extent of events narrated in the books. That’s where I’m getting the assumption that such prophecies are rare.
I agree that Voldemort was less of a threat than he seemed, but then, there don’t seem to be that many wizards around to stop him. I highly doubt he could have come back to life a second time, and Voldemort-the-wraith is scary but not actually dangerous.
In the third book Professor Trelawney correctly predicted that Voldemort’s servant would escape and return to him that very night. But IIRC she’s the only character in the books who demonstrates any real ability to predict the future, and even she only manages two legitimate prophecies that we know about.
I think it’s said somewhere in the books that not only are true seers rare, but most of them only ever make one or two genuine prophecies. There are quite a lot of them in the Ministry, but we don’t know how long they’ve been accumulating.
Jk Rowling once said that there were about 1000 students at Hogwarts, doing the math I figure each of the seven classes should be about 143 students 25% of which (36) are apparently muggleborn. So if we assume a similar fertility rate to the UK population as a whole (12.22 births/1,000 population) we find that (107/0.01222) the female population of the UK wizarding world is 8,756 double that to include the males and it comes to 17,512. Assuming everyone who goes to school at Hogwarts is from the UK (which is arguable) we can get a percentage of the wizarding world to muggles of (17,512 / 64,510,000) = 0.027%. Thus we get a global population of about (.00027 * 7.3 billion) = 1,981,671.
Someone check my math but it seems like there should be plenty of wizards and witches around to take out Voldemort.
Yes, but even that wasn’t sealed up in a little magical device and put on a shelf in the Ministry in case someone wanted to retrieve it later. Whatever is being stored in the Ministry, we don’t see it happen in the books.
Maybe the Ministry has a way to magically detect and automatically record any prophecy made anywhere… but that seems a bit fantastical even for a world full of wizards and dragons.
Actually, she’s also admitted to being barely functional at math, so even if your math checks out, your conclusions won’t necessarily have much btearing on the conditions
Actually, she’s also admitted to being barely functional at math, so even if your math checks out, your conclusions won’t necessarily have much relationship to the conditions of the Wizarding world she created.
JKR made it clear early on that muggles will find it very difficult to kill wizards. You hold them too long you’ll get burned or electrocuted. Drop them from a high place they’ll just bounce or float down. You can’t even give them a haircut. If you shoot them they’ll probably shrug off the bullets. But wizards still avoid falling (very first quidditch match, and the assault on Gringotts.) Well, if it’s wizard to wizard, things get very “even” so that even muggle methods might work (like in the death of Dobby.)
Could it be that the reason that the Ministry is so fascist in outlook is that it sees its job as ensuring that prophecies are fulfilled, and so any chance of deviation from the path is heavily discouraged.
Sort of reminds me of Star Trek TNG & Voyager and DS9 and the temporal police.
This would be especially fascist if there was a belief that prophecy was the one true path, it would not take much to use this as a mechanism to rule through the use of false or faulty prophecy, whoever controls prophecy controls the ministry.
You could imagine a book which has two equally valid prophecies that must eventually come to a fork in the road, where only one can be true. Now wouldn’t that be something…
Not really. Voldemort was a unique problem, a supremacist sociopath who cared for no one and nothing other than his own personal immortality. Whatever the problems with the wizarding world’s society, Voldemort was an aberration from it, not a product of it.
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