How Did Voldemort Drink the Regenerative Potion Without a Body?

Question

From a link from the question What Does the Rudimentary Body Potion Do to You to the HP Wikia, I started mulling over something I read about Voldemort and the "regeneration" potion (not a canon potion, but I'll use it for lack of a better way of describing it. . .) and would really like to know:

How did Voldemort drink the regeneration potion to turn his body into the grotesque childlike form we see in Goblet of Fire while he was still in a "mangled spectral state"?

Spectres (i.e. spirits or ghosts) are non-corporeal; they obviously can't consume food or drink liquids. So, how did Voldemort overcome this difficulty and manage to drink the regeneration potion?

Answer 1

Here's what Voldemort himself says about his intermediate body:

"Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth... a spell or two of my own invention... a little help from my dear Nagini," Voldemort's red eyes fell upon the continually circling snake, "a potion concocted from unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided... I was soon returned to an almost human form, and strong enough to travel."

I interpret that to mean that Wormtail performed "a spell or two" to restore Voldemort to some physical form able to imbibe potions, and either the potion was just to make him stronger or to bring him up from the body Wormtail's spell created to the baby-like body he spent that year in.

Answer 2

The 'regenerative potion' I think you're talking about, the one that Wormtail feeds Voldemort when he has a body, the one we hear discussed through the ears of Frank Bryce in the Riddle House, is not, as Kevin explains, what gave him the body in the first place. It is not this which liberated him from his hateful spectral existence.

We don't know what did that, JKR's not saying:

There are two things that I think are too horrible, actually, to go into detail about. One of them is how Pettigrew brought Voldemort back into a rudimentary body. 'Cause I told my editor what I thought happened there, and she looked as though she was gonna vomit. And then - and the other thing is, how you make a Horcrux. And I don't even like - I don't know. Will it be in the Encyclopedia? I don't know if I can bring myself to, ummm ... I don't know.

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2007/1217-pottercast-anelli.html

Answer 3

Also do not forget that ghosts are able to benefit from potions that are poured through them, and voldemort while being less then a ghost, could also have shared this characteristic.

Nearly Headless Nicks ghost body somehow had a potion poured into/through him to un-petrify him. How was Nearly Headless Nick unpetrified?

Answer 4

Voldemort could possess small animals. Maybe he possess a snake to drink the potion. Or while in a snake body he was put into the cauldron with the potion just like how he got his human body back. Or another possibility is that Peter transfigured a snake(s) to resemble a human form and possess that to drink the potion.