Page 45 ⊂ Voldemort's Children ⊂ Eli Dupree's website

A comic page; see below for a transcript

VOLDEMORT: I ask myself... What will happen here, in the house of those who have thrice defied me? And I answer myself...

Voldemort's Time-Twister is glowing, and the entire page is dominated by a spiral of light reminiscent of the Time-Twister. The action of the page takes place between the glowing bands. Everywhere Voldemort appears on this page, tendrils of light connect the Time-Twister ze's wearing to the page background.

VOLDEMORT: First, I will punish James. He killed my cat, and this cat Inferius bores me. { An Inferius is a dead body reanimated and controlled by magic. It has no will of its own. }

Voldemort holds up one hand, carrying zir cat, and the cat leaps from that hand. Earlier, the cat had glowing eyes, but now, it is entirely black.

VOLDEMORT: But I will be too careless to make him suffer long.

The cat lands atop James, who is lying on the ground with zir bleeding hand. The cat raises a claw... and the next image is one of James's head, with both eyes ripped out, lying in a pool of zir own blood.

VOLDEMORT: I have little patience for human frailty.

The cat walks away.

VOLDEMORT: As he bleeds out, Lily will transfer his life energy to the child. I will think it is a romantic but useless gesture.

We see this happen. Lily stands between flat, iconic images of James and Harry. Creepy-looking tendrils of light emerge from James's face, and Lily directs them towards Harry.

VOLDEMORT: Lily killed my snake. A dead snake is alright. I will spare her and keep her out of the way.

Voldemort's snake, which is now pale and has black eyes instead of glowing ones, leaps at Lily and grabs zir wand from zir hand, then coils around zir head and arms, trapping zem.

VOLDEMORT: I will pause to muse that I have never exploded a baby before... and then...

Voldemort stands in front of the Time-Twister's bands. Lily, right behind zem, is wrapped three times around by the snake and can't reach zir wand, which is still in the snake's mouth. Voldemort reaches down and points zir wand at Harry's forehead. Lily has a very tense expression on zir face; Voldemort is as impassive as usual.

VOLDEMORT: Confringo. { The incantation of the Blasting Curse. }

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encourage me

Writing and drawing this page took me nine hours...

In the books, when Voldemort tries to kill Harry, Voldemort dies instead, because of the power of Lily's love.¹ Literally, Lily uses an ancient power to single-handedly take down Voldemort when no one else could. In a way, you could say that I have not changed this scene at all.

The difference is that Voldemort's Children believes that love is not sufficient. If you want to protect someone you love, you must take actions that would realistically protect them.

Also, in the books, Voldemort is a fairly generic fantasy villain – a plot device, an easy source of conflict ("How will the heroes defeat the villain this time?! Find out next chapter!") and a caricature. Dumbledore describes zem as “without love”, as if that explains why ze wants to torture people and conquer the world. There isn't actually a reasonable explanation for it.

What other roles can a powerful villain serve in a story? What could cause a person behave the way Voldemort does?

Footnotes:

According to Dumbledore, anyway. Arguably, the story is more consistent if you assume that Dumbledore is simply lying and the real explanation has something to do with Horcruxes instead. However, the reader is clearly supposed to believe Dumbledore's explanation for at least the first five books. ^back

Approximate readability: 7.93 (1057 characters, 222 words, 16 sentences, 4.76 characters per word, 13.88 words per sentence)

Do you like this comic? Consider pledging a few $$$ on Patreon so I can keep putting cool things online for free. Posted May 8, 2012 · Last updated July 24, 2016 · Permalink