Why Does Voldemort Not Have a Nose? Here’s What We Think

The popularity of the ‘Harry Potter’ books and movies has allowed fans to talk about the different details that are quite obvious in the storyline. One such detail is Lord Voldemort’s appearance, as the one thing that stands out about him is the fact that he has the face of evil and a nose that is nowhere to be found. Of course, while this appearance allows Voldemort to look incredibly menacing, the fact that he doesn’t have a nose can be quite interesting to talk about. So, why does Voldemort not have a nose?

Voldemort’s snake-like face

If there’s one thing that we know about the entire ‘Harry Potter’ book and film franchise, it’s that Lord Voldemort, the mightiest dark wizard, is looking to control the entire magical world. But for him to do so, he has to kill Harry Potter because the prophecy said that Harry was the only one who could vanquish the dark lord. In that regard, the books allowed us to see what Voldemort had to do to return to life years after losing his original body when he tried to kill an infant Harry.

But after Voldemort returned with a new body during the events of ‘Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire,’ the dark lord had a menacing appearance that made him look like a true evil wizard. But the one thing that made him look as menacing as he was supposed to look was that he didn’t have a nose. Of course, there were many things that were menacing about Voldemort, but the lack of a nose was quite noticeable.

Voldemort has a nose in the sense that he has slits for nostrils. He doesn’t have the conventional nose that humans are supposed to have. Nevertheless, what we know is that it was never really explained in the books or in the movies what happened to Voldemort’s nose or why he looks that way. But this didn’t stop fans from making theories about the dark lord’s missing nose.

Of course, fans understand that Voldemort wasn’t born this way. It was only when he obtained a new body that he lost his nose and obtained a more sinister appearance. Back in the flashback scene in ‘Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince,’ we even saw him at Wool’s Orphanage as a cute yet somewhat creepy child. And while he was still studying at Hogwarts as a young teenager, he actually had a handsome appearance.

So, in that sense, something must have happened that led to the fact that he no longer has a nose. Fans, of course, theorized that it had something to do with how he returned with a new body.

We know that Voldemort lost his body when Harry was still just a baby. But because Voldemort had Horcruxes in place, he would never really die a true death unless all of his Horcruxes were to be destroyed. So, when the Killing Curse bounced back on him when Harry was just a child, he lost his body but not his soul. And his minions worked hard to try to bring him back.

During the events of ‘Goblet of Fire,’ we saw that Peter Pettigrew concocted a potion that was meant to give Voldemort a new body. One of the main ingredients of that potion was snake venom. This could be the reason why he has no nose, as he obtained a snake-like face after Pettigrew created a new body for him.

Of course, we know that snakes have nostrils but don’t have noses similar to humans’ noses. In this case, Voldemort ended up having cat-like eyes and slits for a nose, making him look like a snake. And we know that Voldemort, as a Slytherin and a person capable of using Parseltongue, has a close affinity with snakes.

Voldemort’s descent into darkness

As mentioned, Voldemort used to have a normal appearance when he was still just a teenager studying at Hogwarts. In fact, he actually had a very handsome face that would have been able to attract a lot of different people to his side. Then again, the true die-hard Potter fans would tell you that Voldemort wasn’t always handsome.

In ‘Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince’ book, there was a scene wherein Voldemort went to see Dumbledore so that he could apply for the Defense Against the Dark Arts teaching position at Hogwarts. This happened just a few decades before his fall to darkness was complete, meaning he still had his original body.

However, in the book, it was described that his appearance was already changing and that he already had a snake-like look. It was never mentioned that he no longer had a nose at that time, but it was clear that his appearance was now more serpentine than ever.

This would point to the possibility that the serpent venom in the potion never gave Voldemort a snake-like nose in his new body. Instead, it is possible that his complete descent to darkness gave him that appearance. After all, the book said that he was already developing snake-like features as early as his younger adult years, and this means that his appearance was changing because he was diving deeper and deeper into the dark arts.

If that’s the case, this could be very similar to how the Sith Lords of Star Wars tend to develop more menacing appearances as they dive deeper and deeper into the dark side of the Force. Like Sheev Palpatine of Star Wars, Voldemort may have developed a menacing appearance as he was no longer human in terms of his moral alignment but was now a being of true evil. As such, this was probably a cool way for the ‘Harry Potter’ books and movies to show just how corrupt Voldemort had become, as he no longer looked like a normal human being.

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