Vanquish the Dark Lord

An original editorial by Mark Dinsmore.

At the end of book four we realized that the force to vanquish Voldemort cannot come from Harry's own wand. This is because Harry's and Voldemort's wand's magical features are both feathers and both come from the same phoenix (Fawkes) and they're kind of like brothers so they can't fight each other. When they are forced to do battle something extraordinary will happen, priori incantatem, the two wands will then connect and all the recently done spells will emit from it. I have been thinking about this very hard and have managed to come up with three different ways of destroying him.

#1- A Different Wand -

We know (as I said above) that Harry cannot kill Voldemort with his own wand, so the power to do so must come from another source. If Harry uses a different wand (say he broke his old wand or lost it) against Voldemort, one that doesn't have Fawkes's feather encased in it, they will be able to fight against each other at will. I think that the spell used to banish Voldemort also must be taken into consideration. One quickly comes to mind: the Avada Kedavra curse, but Voldemort has already survived this curse once (when he tried to kill Harry and the curse rebounded on him) and I'm afraid he could survive it again and we'd be back to square one. In other words we'll need a curse that will totally eliminate him from existence not just make him barely alive so he could possibly turn yet again. Now I must take a part in OotP to show you exactly what curse I mean (key points are underlined):

Dumbledore flicked his own wand: the force of the spell that emanated from it was such that Harry, though shielded by his golden guard, felt his hair stand on end as it passed and this time Voldemort was forced to conjure a shining silver shield out of thin air to deflect it. The spell, whatever it was, caused no visible damage to the shield, though a deep, gong-like note reverberated from it- an oddly chilling sound.

'You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?' called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes over the top of the shield. 'Above such brutality, are you?'

'We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man Tom,' said Dumbledore calmly.

So this spell is one way of destroying a person or persons that is, most likely, much worse than death. I think that this should be the spell that is used against Voldemort, to give him what he deserves.

#2- An Artifact Or Other Object -

I think that Jo wouldn't pick this particular way of getting rid of Voldemort for one simple reason: it's too easy. Just using an object to eliminate Voldemort takes all the excitement away from the main climax of the series. I mean, using an object to just zap all the power away is; let's face it, kind of cheesy. But none-the-less it still should be considered.

#3- The Power Of Love -

By dying to protect Harry, Lily left a powerful, defensive, protection on Harry. I think that this type of power is the power that Dumbledore said is in the room in the Department of Mysteries that is always locked. Harry will have to harness this power and use it against Voldemort. I don't think that this power of love will be able to kill Voldemort because love is a great thing, the total opposite of evil, it could not kill, no matter how evil the person is. But Voldemort despises this power so if Harry could harness this power and force it into Voldemort, Voldemort would then be unable to reside in his own body and be no more. Just like it was when he tried to possess Harry, Dumbledore had told afterwards, "Voldemort could not bear to reside in a body so full of the power he detests".

Although we have no clue how Harry will kill Voldemort until Jo releases books 6&7, this is something for you to think about and try to piece together clues until that time comes.

6/29/04