Harry Potter: Why Did Voldemort Drink Unicorn Blood?

Reduced to “mere shadow and vapor”, Voldemort drinks unicorn’s blood — an act that is widely thought to be nasty — in his quest for immortality.

In an interview in 2005, Harry Potter creator J.Sufficient. Rowling explained that a personality as fearsome and depraved as Voldemort is guided by a extremely human fear on the core: “Voldemort’s fear is loss of life, ignominious loss of life. He thinks that it’s a unsuitable human weak spot, as you realize.” Right here is demonstrated for the duration of the sequence, when he goes to gigantic lengths to expand his existence and even change into immortal. From splitting his soul into seven objects to acquiring the Elder Wand, Voldemort “went previous customary depraved” to label energy and, which capacity that of this truth, triumph over loss of life.

Despite the truth that loss of life is a essential theme in the Harry Potter sequence, it most attention-grabbing makes a transient (but unexpected and traumatic) appearance in the first installment. After Lily Potter sacrifices her existence to set up her son, Voldemort’s Killing Curse rebounds and seemingly obliterates his physique. He spends the following decade in a label that is “lower than spirit, lower than the meanest ghost”, till he at last meets Quirinus Quirrell in Albania, who can abet him restore his physique. Right here is the first time Voldemort is considered dishonest loss of life, and the truth that he relies on unicorn blood to raise his existence devices up the memoir’s theme of how reaching immortality comes with undesirable penalties.

What Does Unicorn Blood Carry out?

Primarily primarily based on Amazing Beasts and Where to Gather Them, unicorns are one of the crucial worst-saved secrets and programs of the wizarding world as they’re regularly associated to magic in the Muggle world. Much like how they’re on the total depicted in stylish memoir, unicorns in the Harry Potter lore are described as pure and tough creatures. They have potent magical properties: the hair from their tail has been named as one of the crucial ‘Supreme Cores’ of wands by the nicely-known wand-maker, Garrick Ollivander, and their horn is on the total used as an ingredient in determined potions (such because the Antidote to Favorite Poisons). The blood of a unicorn, nonetheless, is some distance extra precious — which is why slaying a unicorn is even handed as a “frightening” act. Thick and silver-blue in color, a unicorn’s blood can grant one immortality, even in the event that they are “an inch from loss of life”. Nonetheless, because the drinker has killed a defenseless creature that’s the reason, they’ll be forced to live “a half of-existence, a cursed existence”, from the second the unicorn’s blood touches their lips. While it’s unclear what this includes, the severity of the repercussions is repeatedly highlighted in the sequence: “The blood of a unicorn will sustain you alive […] but at a ugly label.”

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fireplace, the Loss of life Eater Peter Pettigrew also uses unicorn blood (alongside with venom from Nagini, Voldemort’s snake) to concoct a potion that could maybe maybe presumably waste a rudimentary physique for his grasp’s dismembered soul, enabling him to trip and create magic to a diploma till he fully regains his powers. Voldemort’s “almost human label” has the form of a “crouched human child”, but with a snake-love face, crimson eyes, and scaly, reddish-gloomy pores and skin. As that is an indirect use of unicorn blood, it’s unclear whether it has the identical repercussions as ingesting it straight (even supposing that is susceptible to be the case).

Why Does Voldemort Drink Unicorn Blood?

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Nicolas Flamel asks his objective appropriate friend Albus Dumbledore to veil the ruby-crimson Sorcerer’s Stone at Hogwarts Faculty of Witchcraft and Wizardry for safety. A extinct Voldemort, whose fragmented soul has latched onto Professor Quirrell’s physique, spends your total faculty yr attempting to blueprint close the stone so he could maybe maybe presumably waste the Elixir of Existence and, thus, attain immortality. For the time being, nonetheless, he orders Quirrell to waste unicorns and drink their blood so he could maybe maybe presumably label energy and energy.

When Harry, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom and Draco Malfoy are despatched to the Forbidden Forest one night (as detention), they accompany Rubeus Hagrid in his ogle for an injured unicorn as traces of its spilled blood have been spotted. Hagrid also shares with the students that he found a lifeless unicorn loyal every week earlier, which contrivance “there’s something corrupt loose in this wooded space”. The neighborhood splits into two, and Harry and Draco at last stumble upon a hooded identify (Quirrell/Voldemort) ingesting blood from a unicorn’s corpse. Gorgeous because the identify advances against Harry, a centaur named Firenze arrives, inflicting him to soar. When Firenze explains to Harry later on that “most attention-grabbing one who has nothing to lose, and all the pieces to label, would commit this kind of crime”, Harry questions who can be that desperate: “In case you’re going to be cursed without extinguish, loss of life’s better, isn’t it?” Nonetheless, as Firenze reminds him, most attention-grabbing Voldemort, who has repeatedly “clung to existence”, can also have the chance to such an act. Having created extra than one Horcruxes, his soul is unable to sustain itself — plus taking on his physique enormously weakens Quirrell too. Hence, they resort to preying on creatures as sacred as unicorns for survival.

MORE: Harry Potter: Why Didn’t Voldemort Use Felix Felicis?