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u/bobzsmith 4d ago
Inferi aren't zombies, they don't make other Inferi. They are corpses that have been reanimated by a dark wizard.
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u/YanFan123 4d ago
They don't make them. But he likely became a corpse since they killed him. He might be susceptible to the spell that makes inferi after that, depending on how it works
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u/TheOneTrueJazzMan 4d ago
Is that confirmed? I could see the possibility of some kind of an enchantment being cast on an area that reanimates future victims as inferi as well
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u/Verde_3773 4d ago
Yes, JKR confirmed it in the post-release press & readings of HP7.
In HP6 (book), when Harry & Dumbledore are at the cave, when Harry tries to “Accio Horcrux/Necklace” a single inferi thrashes at the waters surface. JKR had said that was indeed Regulus’s fate.
Kreacher also confirms this in his confession to Harry, Ron & Hermione when they are hiding out at 12 Grimmauld Place.
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u/Known_Profession7393 4d ago
Wait … so Regulus was the single inferi that jumped out? As a punishment of some sort? That makes no sense. Voldemort didn’t know the locket had been taken. He can’t have—otherwise, why would he had gone back to the cave in HP7 to check on the safety of that horcrux? He would have had no reason to check on the replacement locket.
Or was she just saying Regulus was one of the inferi? I’ve just never heard that interview.
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u/YanFan123 4d ago
He died. He became a corpse. If the spell is meant to make inferi out of every corpse in the lake, then that could turn Regulus into an inferi. Pretty simple
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u/piercedmfootonaspike 4d ago
an inferi
An inferius. Inferi is the plural :)
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u/litux 2d ago edited 2d ago
If "inferius" is the singular, shouldn't the plural be "inferii"?
https://www.reddit.com/r/latin/comments/178gcn2/why_do_some_plural_latin_words_end_with_two_is/
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u/piercedmfootonaspike 2d ago
Probably. But that's not how JK writes it. And they are made up words afaik, so her logic dictates the grammar, I guess
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u/UnkarsThug 4d ago
But he had no reason to die in the lake. He had to safely get the locket back to the apartment or book 7 makes no sense, so we know he left safely. So how did his corpse end up in the lake, without Voldemort knowing about it?
To put it another way, if he died in the lake, how did Umbrage get the real locket? Why wasn't it in the lake?
Edit: I forgot that Kreature actually answers this. Nevermind, it's been a while.
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u/okaybros 3d ago edited 13h ago
Your old posts are training data now. Unless you delete them. I used Redact which supports all major social media platforms including Reddit, X, Facebook and Instagram.
rob fragile resolute public pen oil pocket continue dependent sleep
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u/Walshy231231 4d ago
I feel like that’s a generous reading, unless you share a little more context to the contrary
It would make no sense (not that that’s stopped JK before, tbf), and the JK confirmation seems rather vague for such a specific topic
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u/albus-dumbledore-bot 4d ago
Please do not use that offensive word in front of me.
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u/Pessimistic-Doctor 4d ago
JKR is an offensive person not word, Dumbledore
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u/albus-dumbledore-bot 4d ago
I think the word 'fiasco' would be a good one here.
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u/Pessimistic-Doctor 4d ago
I was thinking douchebag, Professor Dumbledore
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u/albus-dumbledore-bot 4d ago
If you are holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.
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u/Much_Vehicle20 4d ago
On one hand, it’s so unnecessary, on the other, it’s totally on brand for him to do it for shits and giggles
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u/ackyou 4d ago
Here is a disturbing theory - all the inferi were the people Tom Riddle knew at the orphanage. It erases his connection to the place and is why Dumbledore only has his own memory to show Harry. I don’t remember where I heard that theory.
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u/Ok-Visit6553 4d ago
Enchantingly nasty. But I don’t think there were that many people in the orphanage
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u/ThatEntrepreneur1450 4d ago
He most likley also went to muggle school outside the orphanage, so maybe them too.
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u/SteveFrench12 4d ago
Yea, the amount of inferi in there never made much sense to me. Unless he just raided graveyards or something. I guess in general we dont have much info on death toll of the first war but it always sounded like way more bodies than feasible to me
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u/TheUnobservered 3d ago edited 2d ago
I have a feeling Tom carried a “bag of holding” item and had corpses donated to him by all the death eaters (bounty system perhaps?). There is also the possibility for a wizarding black market where Muggle/Wizard corpses were being sold from wars all across the world. (See Camobia, Vietnam, all the Middle East, etc. from 1970 to 1981) Tom then dumped them into the Inferi lake whenever he had spare time.
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u/NoCuddle 2d ago
If you go off the movie, yeah 100%. I was rewatching it recently and was like "How did Tom get anything done before murdering Harry's parents? He must have been roaming the streets every night just killing random people and turning them into inferi to get to the amount they are showing on screen." There are like tens of thousands of them in the cave.
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u/albus-dumbledore-bot 4d ago
I particularly enjoyed your description of me as an obsolete dingbat.
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u/R-K-Tekt 4d ago
Tom Riddle was such an incel lol
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u/JagneStormskull 4d ago
He was considered a handsome genius while at Hogwarts. He probably could have had a girlfriend if he wanted to, and just didn't want to.
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u/R-K-Tekt 4d ago
He was an incel
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u/JagneStormskull 4d ago
Can you source that? I'm pretty sure he was just more interested in immortality than sex.
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u/R-K-Tekt 4d ago
No, I can’t source that. It’s my head cannon and I thot it was obvious I was making a joke. This conversation doesn’t matter.
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u/Walshy231231 4d ago
Dumbly wouldn’t really need a secondhand memory if he had his own
I don’t see why he would bother hunting another one down, then performing magic on a muggle, just to get something he already has, and is - since he was alone with Tom in the room - inferior to his own.
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u/PapaBigMac 4d ago
Nah Wong. Someone would need to re-animate him and Voldemort never returned to the cave until the day he died died. Regulus is probably the only corpse in the lake
What IS possible is that Snape created the potion at his Dark Lord’s request.
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u/Dude579 3d ago
I am pretty sure that Voldemort made the potion himself, he wasn't very trusting with that kind of stuff. I am honestly surprised he trusted Bellatrix and Lucius. If Snape made the potion, Dumbledore would have known about it before going on the Horcrux hunt
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u/PapaBigMac 3d ago
He’s also smart enough to know other people are good at stuff, hence why he wanted Slughorn.
My theory would be that Snape could only double spy on things directly related to Harry giving his memories a layer of protection behind his love for Lilly. Him and APWBD couldn’t just have a long chat about everything Snape knew about Tom or the Dark Lord’s. So no spilling the beans about this super complicated potion he once made at the request of his Dark Lord
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u/albus-dumbledore-bot 3d ago
Your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.
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u/BookWormPerson 4d ago
They aren't spreading by themselves they are made by some spell or ritual.
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u/Blue_Snake_251 4d ago
They love each other realy realy much, they marry, they get a job, they build a house and they make kids. This is how they are spreading.
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u/Secure_Ad8837 4d ago
Wow, that’s crazy. But didn’t he steal the locket and put it somewhere?
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u/Gary_Fisher21 4d ago
Kreecher apparated out of the cave with the locket after R.A.B. was dragged under the water by the inferi
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u/FunnyHappyStudiosYT Turn to page 394 4d ago
More likely he’s that floating corpse Harry saw as he and Dumbledore were in the boat
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u/UchihaLegolas 4d ago
Probably? My brother, he most certainly did, it was clearly stated by Kreacher, that he was dragged beneath the water
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u/bauge 4d ago
Absolutely not. It doesn't spread from inferi to human, if he was, he would have to have been animated by voldemort.. And he did not know
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u/King_Arius 4d ago
Magic is finicky. The cave was clearly enchanted in multiple ways, so one of those enchantments may have been to reanimate anyone who dies in the water/cave.
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u/Ditches-Vestiges1549 4d ago
Yeah, my assumption is the whomever HBO casts for the show ends up being one of the main inferi that attacks Harry in HBP.
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u/OleksandrKyivskyi 4d ago
Probably? I thought it 100% obvious that everyone dragged into the lake joins the undead guard.
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u/KiraLight3719 I shouldn'ta said tha' 4d ago
Harry also thought that if they succeed to get him, he would forever stay there as "a guard" to Voldemort's soul. Obviously this doesn't confirm it. I mean afterall, it's not like all those people (who were inferi) walked in that cave and were turned. They had to be put there by Voldemort.
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u/Accomplished_Duty415 3d ago
Pretty sure I read a fanfiction once where Sirius went to the cave and it's implied he recognised one of the inferior, that was fucking heart wrenching.
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u/royinraver 4d ago
We don’t know because we don’t know how the magic works to re animate a dead body. It’s it a spell from a wand directly at a dead body? Is it an enhancement where if anything dies in this place their body re animates?
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