Skip to main content

harry potter - What Happened to Rodolphus Lestrange (Bellatrix's Husband)?


In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix there is the mass breakout from Azkaban, Rodolphus and Bellatrix being two of the escapers. Rodolphus is very briefly mentioned (once) in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.



We’ll split into pairs and search, and don’t forget, be gentle with Potter until we’ve got the prophecy, you can kill the others if necessary — Bellatrix, Rodolphus, you take the left, Crabbe, Rabastan, go right. . .



The last time Rodolphus is mentioned is in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, after everyone has made it back to the Burrow:



“Bellatrix,” said Tonks. “She wants me quite as much as she wants Harry, Remus, she tried very hard to kill me. I just wish I’d got her, I owe Bellatrix. But we definitely injured Rodolphus. . .



After this instance, he is never mentioned again. Whether or not he and Bellatrix had a "loving" marriage, shouldn't he have appeared again? Did Tonks kill him? Did he abandon his wife and escape Voldemort like Karkaroff? Why wasn't he in the Battle of Hogwarts? Did J.K. Rowling forget about him?




Answer




Did Tonks kill him?



Tonks is a trained Auror, and her estimate (that she only injured Rodolphus) should be relatively good: in any case, it indicates she was not using a fatal curse. Unless Rodolphus was knocked unconscious or lost his wand, even a fall should not have been fatal to him. And the Death Eaters seem to have been trying to keep their injured from falling to their deaths, as well.



Did he abandon his wife and escape Voldemort like Karkaroff?



What Rodolphus thinks of his wife is anyone's guess--certainly she was in love with Voldemort, not Rodolphus. But it was their mutual loyalty to Voldemort that brought them together in the first place. Rodolphus was an old school friend of Voldemort's, as Slughorn's memory in Half-Blood Prince indicates, so his loyalty was probably personal as well as political. Rodolphus's actions after the end of the First Wizarding War are the best indication of his feelings in that regard. Voldemort had disappeared, but instead of breathing a sigh of relief and going on with his life (as Karkaroff did), Rodolphus joined his wife in attacking the Longbottoms. Yes, Bellatrix was probably the instigator, but other people seem to have perceived them as a team, and they went to prison together. Most people in the wizarding world consider Rodolphus a particularly hardcore Voldemort supporter. For him to attempt an escape at a time when Voldemort's power was greater than ever before would not make sense, and it would be inconsistent with his previous behavior.




Why wasn't he in the Battle of Hogwarts? Did J.K. Rowling forget about him?



Out-of-universe answer: Yes, I think there's a good probability that J.K. Rowling simply forgot about him. Many of the Death Eaters are essentially interchangeable (e.g., who cares what happens to Avery?). Rowling never gave Rodolphus much of a personality (unlike his wife and in-laws), so it is at least understandable that he disappears.


In-universe answer: There are a few possibilities.



  1. He was at the Battle of Hogwarts, but he wasn't put into the same parts of the battle as Bellatrix was. Maybe his fighting skills aren't quite as good. Maybe he was needed to direct some other part of the battle. Maybe he was injured or killed early in the battle (Neville's Mandrakes come to mind), and so he isn't around for the fighting inside Hogwarts, which is when most of the other important Death Eaters are mentioned by name.

  2. At the time of the battle, he is in some other part of Britain--or even in another part of the world--completing an assignment for Voldemort. When Voldemort calls the Death Eaters to Hogwarts, he can't come quickly enough to join in.

  3. Rodolphus's injury was of a long-term or even permanent nature, rendering him unable to fight.


Hopefully, JKR will develop an in-universe explanation in the future.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...