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?
The following excerpt from the half-blood prince seems to indicate that Harry thought
so:
“But though gashes appeared in their sodden rags and their icy skin, they had no blood
to spill: They walked on, unfeeling, their shrunken hands outstretched toward him, and
as he backed away still farther, he felt arms enclose him from behind, thin, fleshless arms
cold as death, and his feet left the ground as they lifted him and began to carry him,
slowly and surely, back to the water, and he knew there would be no release, that he
would be drowned, and become one more dead guardian of a fragment of Voldemort’s shattered
soul....”
Given that Kreacher and Regulus Black were the only people to have ever discovered the
cave’s location, and that THEY were met with an army of inferi, it’s likely that
Voldemort must have placed a large number of inferi there originally. However, what
the above quote indicates is that Harry believed that anyone who died in the cave would also
become an inferi. The cursed waters would turn them in to one.
The vast majority of the inferi were homeless Muggles that no one would ever notice were
missing, with a few witches and wizards sprinkled in. This is supported by this other pottermore
page:
“The Inferi whom Harry and Dumbledore encounter in the depth of the lake in Harry Potter and
the Half-Blood Prince were, when alive, mostly vagrant, homeless Muggles whom Voldemort had
murdered for the purpose during his first rise to power, although some were the earthly
remains of wizards or witches who ‘disappeared’ without explanation.”
While I understand where Harry is coming from with his presumption that the lake would turn
HIM in to an inferi, it’s left a little bit ambiguous as to HOW the inferi are actually
produced at the cave. Whether it’s done automatically by the cursed water, or if it’s
done by Voldemort after he discovers the dead corpses. Harry is still young, and this is
complicated dark magic - so it’s unlikely that he actually knew much about it. Dumbledore,
a much older and more powerful wizard likely knew, but never made any sort of an indication
to Harry that this was the case.
WHile it seems like all of the evidence points to one thing: that the lake automatically
creates inferi, I have one issue with it it. I always assumed that the creation of Inferi
would require more conscious effort. It seems like such a complicated magical feat, and
that it would require more of a dedicated process. Maybe it can be done either way-
and it just depends on how you use the necessary magic.
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.
My first theory is that it was the same guy that created the Dementors- the dark wizard
known as Ekrizdis. Ekrizdis isn’t particularly well-known, but he certainly marked his place
in wizarding history- as he was a practitioner of the worst kinds of dark arts imaginable.
The types of magic that he performed and experimented with made Voldemort’s horcrux creation look
fairly commonplace. Very little is known about Ekrizdis, other than the fact that he was
alive during the 15th century, and that he was evil-pure evil. No one even knows his
nationality, and even if it was known, I’m sure no one would want to claim ownership
of him. He was that bad. Ekrizdis was the original inhabitant of the island fortress
of Azkaban, what we now know as the prison that holds some of the darkest witches and
wizards within its walls. While travelling in the 15th century, Ekrizdis stumbled upon
the island- which at the time had no infrastructure to speak of. When he first arrived, it was
just a regular island, but he soon turned it in to his own little dark arts experiment.
Hoping to keep the location of the island, which was located in the North Sea, a secret,
Ekrizdis kicked things off by placing concealment charms on the island - meaning that no one
would be able to intentionally find it. After placing the concealment charms on the island,
Ekrizdis began his dark arts experiments by luring muggle sailors to the island, then
torturing and eventually murdering them. Before ever stepping foot on the island, Ekrizdis
was mad, but after spending some time there, he became totally insane as he had completely
lost touch with reality. He became so wrapped up and enthralled in his experimentation with
dark magic, that he had lost his mind, and the poor sailors that he lured to the island
witnessed it first hand. In his madness, it has been speculated that Ekrizdis either unwittingly
or perhaps intentionally created what we now know to be Dementors. Given his affinity for
dark magic and twisted experimentation, as well as the time period that he lived in,
I think that he may have been responsible for creating the original magic that created
the Inferi-perhaps even turning muggle sailors in to them.
My second theory is that it was a wizard by the name of Godelot. Godelot was one of the
original Elder Wand owners- in fact, he is the fourth owner on record after Antioch,
Emeric the Evil, and Egbert the Egregious. Godelot used the Elder Wand to push the boundaries
of magic- and considered it to be his ‘teacher’- allowing the wand to help him create all sorts
of new spells and conduct all sorts of experiments. In fact, with the wand, Godelot wrote the
book ‘Magicke Most Evile’ - which we know exists in the Hogwarts library. Magicke Most
Evile is thought to touch on some of the most taboo dark magic around- but if you’ll remember
from Harry Potter- it still didn’t contain any info on Horcruxes. Given that this book
was available in the restricted section of Hogwarts, and contained POWERFUL dark magic,
I’m sure Voldemort studied it well. In fact, I think that Voldemort may have learned how
to conjure the inferi from this book- making Godelot responsible.
What do you guys think? Who do YOU think is responsible for originally creating the Inferi?
Let me know in the comment section below.
Until next time- remember,
There is plenty to be learned even from a bad teacher - what not to do, how not to be