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peshcel · 4 years ago

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Riddle Me This: A Tom Riddle Character Study

[Also posted on Reddit, if you want to comment/share your thoughts!]

Riddle Me This: A Tom Riddle Character Study

*Warnings: some profanity, spoilers, and puns.

‘Twas but a regular Saturday eve when a question of utmost importance grabbed hold of me: ‘Voldemort, why such a You-Know-What?’

You see, while Voldemort appears to be a very classic villain, Tom has proven to be an enigma wrapped in a Riddle (hehe). So, equipped with what I remembered from my BSc in Social Psychology, I also called upon my therapist friend with an MSc in Forensic Psychology to explore what would drive someone like Tom Riddle to become Lord Voldemort.

In this gone-awry Reddit comment, I will drag you along for a deep dive into how our little Dark Lord grew up and discuss concepts like power, control, sense of self, and terror management – all up to the point where Tom Marvolo Riddle introduces his clever anagram ‘Immortal Love Rodd’ ‘I am Lord Voldemort.’

Join me on this character study journey of about 5,500 words (15-30 min) where I try to figure out how Voldemort came to be.

Oh, and be sure to share your thoughts at the end of the ride!

Baby Lord Voldemort: A Pensive Pensieve Trip

“Voldemort is my past, present, and future.”

Long before we found out Snake-face Voldemort had barely a soul left, we thought he was the purest form of evil out there. He had done despicable things before his supposed death and had now resurfaced as a gross face on the back of someone’s head, hell-bent on killing this little kid. As we gradually learned, Voldemort was once Tom Riddle: a charming, brilliant, orphaned Wizard with the potential to go on and do great things. But, we also learned many little tidbits about the circumstances before his birth, about how he grew up and how he portrayed himself at Hogwarts, which has given us just enough to come up with our own theories about his personality and how he was shaped.

So, before we continue, let me quickly arm you with some abnormal psych. terminology. Both Riddle and Voldemort really match the three personality traits of (malignant) narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, aptly known as ‘The Dark Triad’.

Plucked straight from the Wiki, summarized for your convenience:

Narcissism

is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.

Malignant narcissism

is when narcissism is combined with antisocial behaviors; the evil side of narcissism. (I stumbled upon

A Study in Evil: Voldemort, the Malignant Narcissist

after writing all of this, but I highly recommend giving it a read if you want a deep dive.)

Machiavellianism

is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, an absence of morality, unemotional callousness, and a higher level of self-interest.

Psychopathy

is characterized by continuous antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits (CU), and remorselessness. (Better distinguished as ‘primary psychopathy’.)

*Sidenote: the term ‘sociopath’ is quite often used in pop culture, sometimes even interchangeably with ‘psychopath’. The actual diagnostic term is ‘antisocial personality disorder’, as described by the DSM-5. However, there is a difference between sociopathy and psychopathy, a whole slew of them actually. Important to note is that a ‘sociopath’ refers to a person with antisocial tendencies that are ascribed to social or environmental factors, whereas psychopathic traits are thought to be more innate, i.e. genetic causes (x).

We are given facts in the book that suggest psychopathic, antisocial, and (malignant) narcissistic traits are evident in Tom Riddle from early childhood. Using all that information, I want to take you on a ride to see how all these tidbits together shaped Tom Riddle and how that would lead him to become Lord Voldemort (not to be confused with ‘going Full Voldemort’).

The Interplay of Nature and Nurture, and Magic

Psychopathy is believed to be a complex interworking of mostly nature but also nurture, let’s unpack this in regards to Riddle.

Tom Riddle is born to a Pure-blood mother, Merope Gaunt, and a Muggle father, Tom Riddle Sr. When we are first introduced to the Gaunts, Salazar Slytherin’s last descendants, we meet a violent father and son, and a daughter who takes the brunt of it. We are told that the entire Gaunt line has a history of inbreeding and that they are known to produce individuals with violent and unstable personalities. They live in dire conditions but are incredibly proud people and sneer at the mere existence of Muggles. Merope grows up poor and abused, traumatized, ridiculed for her lack of magic that seems to be more the result of the abuse than the cause for it. Not far from their shack in Little Hangleton lives Tom Riddle Sr.: rich, handsome, somewhat of a prat, and the object of Merope’s affections. Being no great beauty and with little to offer, she “hoodwinks” Tom Riddle Sr. and escapes her dreadful life with her family. Merope is soon with child after their marriage and decides to release Tom Riddle Sr. of whatever spell he’s under, but he leaves her immediately.

Let’s consider the circumstances surrounding the conception of Tom Riddle. J.K. Rowling said that Voldemort could not understand love as he was conceived in a ‘loveless union’. However, she also stated that had Merope decided to live and raise Tom, his life would’ve turned out differently by knowing ‘love’. We could understand the tidbits shared by J.K. to mean that a child born into a loveless union would perhaps grow up in a loveless household, would have no good examples of what love is and would not know or be shown love. While Dumbledore hints that he suspects Merope used a Love Potion to “hoodwink” Tom Riddle Sr., we only know that magic was used. I always understood said ‘loveless union’ to be a magical violation – violation in every sense of the word – and that Tom’s incapability to love was due to magic that tried to correct a balance, i.e. the Laws of Magic™ were violated. Now, I’m no Magical Theorist, but this could mean that actual Magic™ is at play in addition to a genetic predisposition to explain Tom’s psychopathic traits.

Apart from these genetic and magical factors, we could also consider the environmental factors that influenced the biological development of Tom. Merope was left destitute and depressed when Riddle Sr. abandoned her while pregnant. In the dead of winter, with a lot of stressors and suppressed magic, she gave birth to Tom at the orphanage and then died. While we don’t know how her pregnancy developed, this being all guesswork, the prenatal stressors and perhaps a complicated birth due to her suppressed magic could have influenced Tom’s brain development. Brain development or deviating brain structures are linked to psychopathy (x). Simply said, the parts of the brain responsible for empathy and guilt or fear and anxiety don’t work the same for psychopaths, e.g. they don’t experience fear or other affects the way others might. In a psychopathic child, for example, this could mean that they would be hard to socialize because they don’t fear punishment even though they might know that it is a consequence of their behavior. It’s also what makes them great liars (psychopaths can ace a lie detector test like no other). It can also mean being more prone to boredom and seeking thrills as a result (low arousal theory). We could even view all of this in light of ‘Magic™ development’ instead of the Muggle term ‘brain development’.

In addition to taking into account these hereditary, biological and prenatal factors, we'd be remiss not to look at the effect of nurture. Now, we don’t actually know that much about Tom’s early childhood except for what we learn during Dumbledore’s visit to Wool’s Orphanage in 1938. We find out that Tom steals from people, has no qualms about hurting animals, scares and bullies other children, and is a consummate liar ‒ all while having/showing no remorse. Mrs. Cole, the matron of the orphanage, refers to Tom as being a funny boy and odd, that he was a “funny baby, too” and “hardly ever cried”. It is conceivable that the caretakers gave him less attention in response to his lack of showing his needs through crying and that he was picked up and held less often. It could also be a chicken-or-egg situation: perhaps he didn’t cry because he learned his cries would not be responded to, etc. Even if we leave magic out of the equation as to why they would find him ‘funny’, it is likely that he showed general ‘abnormal’ responses and behaviors not appropriate for his developmental stage that were unsettling to others. It is easy to assume that this would lead to people distancing themselves from him and alienating him further. Regardless of cause-effect, there are clear signs here that Tom grows up maladjusted and that his attachment style falls somewhere along the dismissive-avoidant. I think we can assume that the lack of developing a relationship with at least one primary caregiver would really put a damper on having any semblance of a ‘normal’ social and emotional development.

There seems to be a clear interplay here of genetic, biological (magical) and environmental factors as the perfect foundation for dysfunctional personality traits to really come to fruition.

Power & Control: A Narcissistic Trip

“There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

Strap in as we first take a little detour for a quick exploration of narcissism. As previously stated, we clearly see signs of malignant narcissism in young Tom, characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy, combined with antisocial behaviors. What is particularly applicable in Tom’s case is Kohut’s theory of narcissism.

The Little Narcissist

In psychoanalytic theory, primary narcissism in children is part of their development.

It is normal for children to develop self-love and object-love, as Kohut puts it. Entertaining notions of greatness, magical thinking, feeling omnipotent and omniscient and believing to have a certain immunity to the consequences of their actions is all part of this development. It is quite innocent, but it can become pathological. According to Kohut, children are normally gently disillusioned of these grand notions, in a nontraumatic manner, by maturing and becoming part of society. Pathological narcissism, however, develops when the child basically has defective narcissistic structures of the self by having this process disrupted.

This defective structure fits Tom Riddle to a T. In addition, Kohut’s theory of object-love really applies here as well. According to Kohut, either a child has a ‘mother’ to confirm their grandiosity, or they seek an adult to create an ‘idealized parent image’. This means they will seek an adult, someone powerful they can look up to, so they can bask in their reflected glory. For Tom, having neither someone to confirm his grandiosity nor someone to look up to means he creates his own powerful parent. We notice this when Tom explicitly asks Dumbledore about his father being a Wizard, since his mother obviously could not have been; she wouldn’t have died if she was. One can imagine his (narcissistic) rage when this image was shattered later on. His five-year search for the Chamber of Secrets to confirm he’s the Heir of Slytherin is a direct result of Tom’s continued search for a sense of self.

The Narcissist’s Plight: Need for Control

One of our main human motivational processes is the desire for control. Actually, it is perceived control that really helps our general sense of well-being. This need exists and is deeply embedded in all of us. However, when people are tried and tested, feel threatened or powerless, a lack of agency can kickstart all kinds of coping mechanisms to maintain the sense of self. So, simply put: the less perceived control you have, the greater the need.

When we speak of power, we speak of control. If there is anyone who is desperate for control it’s the narcissist. The narcissist is believed to have such low self-esteem and fragile ego that it will, subconsciously, protect itself from being injured at all costs. Controlling your circumstances and those around you is a means of guarding and protecting the ego. Anything less just won’t do. A threat to that control, that power, is a perceived threat to the sense of self.

Power is a concept that really tickles Riddle/Voldemort’s Niffler as we pretty much learn from the get-go. Consider again, for a moment, where and how Tom grew up. His ability to control came from his magic. Seeing as how Tom grew up in an orphanage, not a penny to his name and very few resources, I think that Tom learned early on that everything could so easily be taken away from him ‒ by someone bigger, older, someone who had more power. While Tom could ‘control’ his circumstances to some degree with his magic, he was still a child. He seemed to have an innate understanding of his powerlessness, i.e. lack of control. Perhaps less helpless than other children, but still a child dependent on others. Not only that, but he was dependent on people he deemed lesser than him, less intelligent, less special. Something a narcissist like Tom would deeply resent. The thing here is that viewing others as beneath you or believing oneself to be superior to others is an ego defense to deal with insecurity, shame, rejection, etc. Tom develops this ego defense but also gets confirmation of his grandiosity through having magical power that actually does set him apart.

Rejection is another big theme in the life of a narcissist; one that Tom was very familiar with. He was unwanted and fully made aware of it: his mother ‘left’ him by dying, his father never came for him, he was not chosen for adoption, and there were many other children vying for attention. Attention that Tom did not receive but perhaps believed he was owed. Originating from a sense of entitlement, someone like Tom would come to view any sort of rejection as a slight (for he is smarter, better, etc.). While Tom might not have even wanted such attention or even had a particular need to belong – considering he didn’t view anyone as a peer/equal – the fact that it was not automatically given to him was probably construed as insulting.

Control Through Controlling Others

Mrs. Cole told Dumbledore that Tom scared the other children and that it was hard to catch him at any bullying or other malicious acts. With the ability to control his magic at such a young age, along with being highly intelligent, he was quick to figure out how to use this to his advantage. He could fly under the radar when needed, manipulate those in power, and use his skills to control others through fear ‒ ultimately to protect himself and what little he had, but also relishing how he could lord his power over others, establishing his superiority and showing them all how special he was. I believe that Tom honed the art of manipulation at a young age as he couldn’t fathom other ways of tying people to him, of forming relationships ‒ unless there was fear or a sense of owing. His magic gave him the additional tools to control those that didn’t have it.

Then, a defining moment: Tom meets Dumbledore. Using the same control tactics he has probably used with everyone around, Tom tries to command Dumble to do/say certain things. If you squint, you could even say that Tom was able to put a magical compulsion in his commands. Dumbledore, being who he is, is unmoved and even gently puts Tom in his place, which in Tom’s eyes would be considered a slight.

When Tom learns there is a word for his abilities, he is very eager to show off and be acknowledged for it by someone he could potentially identify with, someone who can show him the path to more knowledge, more power, someone ‘worthy’. For the first time, he encounters someone he wants to impress; he does this by boasting about his abilities. How telling it is that our Little Lord says that he “can make bad things happen to people who annoy me,” – not “mean to me” as the movie had us believe.

Here, Tom seems to have accidentally truly revealed himself – perhaps for the first time, definitely the last time. Out of childlike excitement and eagerness, he has shown his hand, which he immediately regrets when it is not followed by recognition and/or approval from Dumbledore. Dumbledore, quickly catching on to the power dynamics, asks Tom to address him as ‘sir’ or ‘professor’ and immediately establishes his authority. Tom accepts it begrudgingly, “expression hardened”, as he needs Dumbledore to tell him more. Upon Tom’s demand, Dumbledore’s power is then quickly, and casually, displayed when he uses the Flame-Freezing charm on Tom’s wardrobe. If I’m being honest, I always found Dumbledore’s ‘casual’ display of power to be very loaded and quite problematic, ‘destroying’ something of Tom’s where he had stashed his very few possessions. Yet, Tom quickly goes from outrage to “expression greedy” when he realizes Dumbledore was just showing his power and using it to impress, i.e. instill fear (Tom immediately asks Dumbledore where he can get “one of them [wands]”).

When Dumbledore uses his ‘power’ to then confront Tom with his stealing and bullying, Tom reluctantly concedes that he cannot manipulate Dumbledore and doesn’t deny his actions, knowing that ‘being truthful’ is how he can appease and steer Dumbledore. He even accepts the humiliation of having to return the stolen items and apologize to others.

Honestly, the whole interaction between them is so significant, so amazing and so telling of Tom’s typical interpersonal dynamics and relationships. It’s no wonder he starts to despise and avoid Dumbledore. Tom had made himself the master of his little universe, believing that no other has his special type of power. Not only did Tom lose his cool during the conversation, he showed weakness by being vulnerable. As Tom learns when he joins the Wizarding World, Dumbledore is even more powerful than he thought and holds strong political power to boot. Someone like Dumbledore, for example, is not just threatening because of his power but because he can see behind Tom’s mask.

Control in the Wizarding World

The interaction with Dumbledore seems to set the tone for Tom’s understanding of ‘power’ in the Wizarding World. It is something he further internalizes when he arrives at Hogwarts and gets sorted into Slytherin, a House of mainly Pure-bloods. I wholeheartedly believe that this little Snake immediately understood the blood status dynamics at school and the hierarchy within Slytherin House; things beyond his control. It is not a stretch to believe that the Slytherins, in particular, bullied him, ostracised him—rejected him—for his lack of Wizarding name, lack of status and money, and tried to show and put him in his place, thus fueling his rage. So at the age of 11, Tom had the mental acuity to realize he needed other tactics to become influential, to wield his power.

Seeing power and status being inherently awarded to Pure-bloods, the very ones who reject him, his own search for a claim to power/his superiority starts off with an obsessive in-depth exploration of his heritage. It is natural to assume that, along with this quest, Tom educated himself on social politics and how to improve himself. He was able to show humility and regard for others, be inhibited and not boastful. We learn from Dumbledore that Tom at Hogwarts showed signs of covert narcissism: no outward signs of arrogance or aggression, seemed polite, quiet, and thirsty for knowledge. He had already learned how to control certain impulses, ingratiate himself, how to hide in plain sight. He just continued to perfect it; he became above reproach by being the perfect student in the eyes of the adults, while fooling his fellow students and building his own following (feeding his ego along the way). He played into Slytherin politics and managed to establish himself as something to behold and to be frightened of, especially when he learned of being a descendent of Salazar Slytherin – a legit claim to power. He now had proof of something he had always believed: I am above them.

Loss of Control and Terror Management

Throughout his time at Hogwarts, Tom managed to perfect his control over others. Despite all his received praise and accolades, his ego remained fragile. I think the fact that he could not escape his blood status, his class – made especially salient when he had to return to the orphanage during the summer – really fueled his obsession to confirm he’s the Heir, i.e. to strengthen his sense of self.

Apart from the orphanage, Tom spends the rest of his formative years at Hogwarts, where he is, at most, considered a Half-blood if not a Muggle-born – i.e. lesser than. His fragile ego and sense of self is constantly challenged if not outright attacked. What’s even more confronting is that he also still has to return to the orphanage during summer break in the years 1938-1945 until he is of age. A place where he cannot use his magic; where he cannot sow the merits of his efforts at Hogwarts; a place where he has little to no control. He has to go back to being an orphan, in an orphanage, among Muggles. This having to return to Hogwarts is even more interesting to note when you consider there is both a Muggle war (WW2) and a Wizarding war (Grindelwald) happening.

That’s why we should also place all of this in the context of when this all took place. Tom experiences both WW2 and the Grindelwald days while he’s a teenager and still at Hogwarts. While he was safe at Hogwarts during most of the year and the winter holidays, he still had to return during the summer. Let me quickly add here that Grindelwald never attacked Britain, but Muggle London was dealing with (the threat of) bombings during those years, with heavy losses in terms of homes, businesses, and lives. Tom just about avoided The Blitz (Sep 7, 1940 – May 11, 1941) and the evacuation of children of Sep 1, 1939 (although, how he managed that, don’t ask). It’s safe to say that times were incredibly tough and unsafe in those days.

So on that note, let me introduce you to Terror Management Theory (TMT). It basically means that when faced with ‘terror’, i.e. one’s own mortality, the anxiety that goes with it can make people do some really effed up things. People will start chasing ways to boost their self-esteem, their self-worth, and for ways to confirm that their life has meaning and that they certainly are not insignificant or disposable. That they matter. Mind you, this all takes place without people even realizing that this is driving them. This theory rears its head when we speak of racism as well. In trying to elevate their sense of self, people can attach great importance to the group they identify with. They will then seek out ways to confirm their group is superior to others (well, well, well).

This theory seems to also fit Tom’s strange, half-assed Heir of Slytherin shenanigans. Same as what happened in the interaction with Dumbledore, Tom’s glee at finding out he’s indeed special makes him impulsive and greedy, disregarding the consequences and acting out of his ‘careful’ character. He has new power within his grasp, new thrills to seek and uncover. In his excitement, he is reckless and gets Myrtle Warren killed. While the rest of his attacks seem very planned and controlled, perhaps to impress his new Knights but most likely to see how far he could push boundaries, it also shows that he either doesn't think or doesn’t care about potential consequences. He is arrogant and unfearing. He could never get caught. Tom only starts caring when his actions become disadvantageous to himself; Hogwarts would close if the attacks continued, meaning he would lose all that he had skilfully and carefully cultivated.

In short, the need for control can drive one to go to really terrible lengths. Straight up tomfoolery, if you will. And if anyone went to great lengths, it was Tom Riddle’s becoming of Lord Voldemort.

Becoming Lord Voldemort: The Narcissistic Psychopathic Wizard’s Guide to Ultimate Power

“What I was, even I do not know … I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal – to conquer death.”

Before we found out the little tidbits about Tom Riddle, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s motives seemed straightforward: Pure-bloods must reign supreme. Knowing what we know now, it would be too simplistic to state that Lord Voldemort was purely driven by hatred for an imagined inferior Other. Namely because at the core of hatred lies fear. A need for control and the deep-seated fear of losing said control would be something Tom would and could never admit to. It would mean acknowledging that something (i.e. fear) had control over him, in effect a weakness.

He is a Half-blood orphan with nothing to his name, a nobody. He has a smidgen of hope when he discovers he is a descendent of Salazar through the Gaunts, but any notion of tangible rewards associated with that is shattered when he finds the Gaunts fallen from grace into obscurity. There is fear of forever being a nobody, unremarkable; entering the world with nothing and leaving the world with nothing ‒ all the while knowing that he is obviously destined for greatness (hello narcissist, my old friend).

He derived his new sense of self from being a descendant of the great Salazar Slytherin, who ‘rightfully’ detested those of lesser blood. As is typical for the malignant narcissist, Tom really has a ‘transparent’ defense mechanism to protect his fragile ego: projection. His hatred of his own lack of pure blood leads him to distance himself from it, denying whatever undermines his belief of being something special and extraordinary or not being worthy of the name. Distancing himself from that what makes him common and unworthy, he literally takes on a new name and kills off the Riddles. By going to extreme lengths, he can distance himself and 'eradicate' that what he despises most about himself. He is not like those 'filthy' Muggles: the ones he was forced to be dependent on, those lesser beings that deprived him of what he was owed; the ones that left his mother for dead, etc.

His 'great' blood is obviously the reason for his 'greatness', his destiny. Not only was this thought fed by the Pure-bloods around him, but it is the rhetoric that gives him a supply of Pure-bloods fanning at his feet. A thrill in of itself to see the privileged worship him.

Riddle's actions seem to have always been very self-serving. He never preached what Grindelwald did; it was never for the ‘greater good’. It is quite evident in the vagueness of Voldemort’s politics regarding purity. It was simply a means to an end; just a way to see how far he could go in amassing power. The ‘mission & vision’ he proposed was probably one of the few things that Pure-bloods could get behind and would go to great lengths to achieve/protect. For Tom, it was a way of opening doors. Not only financially and socially, but also in terms of access to knowledge hoarded and guarded by Pure-bloods. Becoming and remaining uncontested in every sense of the word would mean being in control. No longer dependent on what others are willing to ‘grant’ him. No one would ever be able to challenge Him, take anything from Him, ever again: the ultimate power.

Control of the Uncontrollable

So let’s turn our attention back to power: what would be ultimate power for a Wizard? Something a Wizard has never done and somewhere a Wizard has never gone before: beyond the veils of Death; surpassing mortal constructs ‒ and defeating something as terribly common as 'death'. I think this seed, this fear, was planted in Tom’s mind from a very young age. We see it when he asks Dumbledore whether his father was a wizard, for his mother couldn’t have been “or she wouldn’t have died”. Aptly enough, this fear of death or anxiety induced by the thought of one's one mortality stems from low self-esteem, which a narcissist has in abundance.

It’s also interesting to go back to a psychopath’s psychophysiology. Psychopaths are believed to have low arousal compared to others and are prone to boredom. They could go to lengths to find a ‘thrill’. Discovering the limits, pushing boundaries and going beyond that would be completely on-brand for a Wizard with psychopathic tendencies. Maybe I’ve read too many fanfictions, but a common thought seems to be that the Dark Arts are highly addictive, so someone like Tom would keep pushing it and pushing it, until he could go where no one has gone before. Thus begins his slow decline a la: ‘A Horcrux, you say? Hold my butterbeer, imma make 7.’

It’s intriguing that he went for dependence on external objects to safeguard his continued survival. Objects that he either entrusted his most loyal followers with or hid in locations that had meaning to only him. He even had a magical living creature be the container. As we saw over the course of the series, it really wasn’t all that foolproof. But that’s the arrogance of Tom Riddle; he believed that while not many Wizards would even go down the path of creating a Horcrux, none would even conceive creating seven. What’s more, how would anyone even have the smarts to figure out his pattern, his way of thinking – preposterous. If only he had known about the Hallows sooner. Alas.

Granted, there were other ways of circumventing mortality. But ‘cheating’ death by becoming a vampire, for example, would mean being a slave to one's own bloodlust and limitations, dependent on others still to sustain you, i.e. no control, still killable. Another obvious avenue would be using the Philosopher’s Stone as Flamel did, but it would not be anything new. Stealing it or copying it would mean nothing to him. He would be ‘immortal’ but weak and feeble, dependent on a stone, also still killable. So it seems that it’s not necessarily immortality in and of itself, but controlling how and when you die.

Conclusion: Spiraling out of Control

To summarize the why, Tom Riddle was a narcissistic psychopath with a high IQ, immense magical ability, a chip on his shoulder and something to prove ‒ and a need to be acknowledged for it. The potent mix of nature, magic, and nurture seemed to have really worked their, ehm, magic (sorry). Tom’s ‘abnormal’ behaviors in his childhood were strong predicting factors for the potential to entertain notions of one day being a Dark Lord. However, the odds seem like they were already in that favor before he was even born when we consider his genetic makeup along with the circumstances surrounding his conception and his birth. The Muggle environment he grew up in and the Magical world he was then introduced appear to be the ‘umami’ flavoring for the mix to inevitably lead him down his self-destructive path.

Tom’s actions and behaviors all seem to boil down to an excessive need for control and the deep-seated fear of losing it. Growing up with Muggles, he used all his talents to exert his control over those weaker, sans Magique. In his peak Riddle days, Tom was quick to figure out he could control people by using his glib charm, his looks, and his extreme intelligence to manipulate everything to his liking. He was able to trick people into ‘wanting’ to give him the things he desires, making people believe that he’s ‘giving’ them something in return. With his psychopathy and narcissism fully taking the wheel, it seems that he no longer cared – or saw the need – to pretend to cater to the wishes of others. Fear became his main tool in the peak Voldemort days; the only thing he deigned to ‘give’ others was allowing them to stay alive, avoid punishment, or allowing them to unleash their darkest fantasies. In chasing evermore control, power, he ends up spiraling. His actions shift from sly, cunning, covert manipulative behaviors to more impulsive, erratic and desperate behaviors, all stemming from a loss of control, of his carefully cultivated power. His mask, literally and figuratively, disappears.

It’s impossible to look past the incredible symbolism and irony of the Horcruxes. In his belief that eliminating and eradicating his weaknesses would make him untouchable, that very pursuit ended up being his undoing. With the killing off of the last vestiges of ‘normality’, he seemed to be completely driven by his impulses (or his Id, as Freud would say). If we add ‘death terror’ to this, it would explain why it went as far as Going Full Voldemort and becoming a mass murderer blindly obsessed with a prophecy that merely hinted at his potential defeat.

Rowling said that Voldemort's boggart would be his own corpse, and I think that makes sense ‒ for Voldemort, that is. His corpse would signify the fact that he could die and thus be defeated, the ultimate loss in the ultimate battle for ultimate power (say ‘ultimate’ one more time!). I think Tom Riddle's boggart would've been a poor man's grave; not only did he die (ugh, lame), but he died with nothing to show for it.

With all that being said, being a psychopath does not evil make. However, Tom Riddle’s dire need for a sense of self, immersion in the Dark Arts, and the mutilation of his soul are what really made him turn into an unmitigated You-Know-What. The destruction of his soul left a shell of a man driven by dark base emotions: Full Voldemort.

The end.

12 notes · View notes

hymnstoalienstars · 4 years ago

Text

building on There Are Rules AU: don’t antagonize voldemort

Don’t antagonize Voldemort was once a rule but it turned out to be an endless fountain of fun and therefore cut from the list.

There was a time, for example, when Riddle thought he was stalked by an entity that could possess bodies. It wasn’t Harry’s fault, really. Was it his fault he kept resurrecting on the battlefield? Was it his fault he didn’t have a minute to adjust his style of dueling? his body language? Was it his fault the bloody Death Eaters kept trying to kill him?

#MAYBE:

#VOLDEMORT'S POV

this is from the prev post

I probably need some actual plot and some info on the First Wizarding War.

i’m just gonna scan the wiki for details (the following is copied from there)

1970 – 31 October, 1981 Cause: Voldemort's return to the United Kingdom in order to begin his first reign of terror Result: Ministry and Order of the Phoenix victory. The disappearance of Voldemort and decline of the Death Eaters. Harry Potter declared the "Boy Who Lived"

1970

29 November: William Arthur Weasley to Arthur and Molly Weasley

Sometime after Molly graduated, both her brothers were murdered by Death Eaters in the First Wizarding War. (Dolohov)

Arthur was not a member of the first Order of the Phoenix.

Molly: "It's all this uncertainty with You-Know-Who coming back, people think they might be dead tomorrow, so they're rushing all sorts of decisions they'd normally take time over. It was the same last time he was powerful, people eloping left, right, and centre —" Ginny Weasley: "Including you and Dad." — Molly reflecting on her marriage in 1996[src]

1971

The Whomping Willow is planted.

1 September: Individuals that started at Hogwarts

Sirius Black (Gryffindor)[3]

Lily Evans (Gryffindor)[3]

Severus Snape (Slytherin)[3]

Remus Lupin (Gryffindor)[3]

James Potter (Gryffindor)[3]

Peter Pettigrew (Gryffindor)[3]

Adrian (unknown house)[4]

Stebbins (unknown house)[5]

1972

Muggles Who Notice by Blenheim Stalk is published.[1]

Published in 1972, it covered incidents where Muggles noticed elements of the Wizarding world, including the Ilfracombe Incident of 1932 and the story of "Dodgy" Dirk.[1] (a rogue Common Welsh Green dragon attacked a group of sunbathers in Ilfracombe in 1932)

Remus Lupin's friends James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew discover that he is a werewolf, and resolve to learn to become animagi.[2]

1 September: Individuals that started Hogwarts Regulus Black (Slytherin)[4] Dirk Cresswell (unknown)[5] (was a Muggle-born wizard. In the mid-1990s he became Head of the Goblin Liaison Office, in the Ministry of Magic.)

Births 12 December: Charlie Weasley to Arthur and Molly Weasley.[8]

1973

Events The Ministry of Magic defeats an appeal against house-elf slavery[2]

Individuals that started Hogwarts Bartemius Crouch Jr

1975

Minister for Magic Eugenia Jenkins is seen as inadequate to the challenge of the first rise of Lord Voldemort, and is replaced by the hard-lined Harold Minchum.[2]

Minister Eugenia Jenkins was Minister for Magic between 1968 and 1975. She dealt competently with the pure-blood riots during the Squib Rights marches in the late sixties. However, when confronted with the first rise of Lord Voldemort, she was ousted from office, being deemed inadequate to the challenge.

The Squib Rights marches were an action by a mass group of Squibs in favour of the betterment of the rights of Squibs[2] that took place in 1968 or 1969, during Eugenia Jenkins's term as Minister for Magic. This demonstration was, presumably, unsuccessful, as a group of extremist Pure-bloods broke out in riot while it was taking place.

Minister Harold Minchum was Minister for Magic between 1975 and 1980. He was seen as a hard-liner, and placed even more Dementors around Azkaban. But he was unable to contain what seemed like Voldemort's unstoppable rise to power.

Regulus Black receives his Dark Mark, thus becoming a Death Eater.[8]

Sirius Black, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew create the Marauder's Map.

1976

22 August: Percy Weasley to Arthur and Molly Weasley[6]

James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Lily Evans and Severus Snape sit their O.W.L. examinations in June. Lily Evans dissolves her friendship with Severus Snape after he calls her a "Mudblood". Sirius Black runs away from home to live with the Potter family[1] Sirius Black sees his cousin Bellatrix Lestrange for the last time before they are both in Azkaban. Sirius Black gets his own place (either in 1976 or 1977) with money he inherited from his uncle Alphard Black.[2]

1977

James Potter and Lily Evans become Head Boy and Girl[1] Sirius Black gets his own place (either in 1976 or 1977) with money he inherited from his uncle Alphard Black.[2] James Potter and Sirius Black are chased by two police men, Fisher and Anderson, as well as three Death Eaters on broomsticks, while riding on Sirius's motorbike. They escape, however, by using magic to lift the police car, causing the three Death Eaters to crash into it.[3] Vernon and Petunia Dursley purchase and move in to 4 Privet Drive.[4] Regulus Black plays for the Slytherin Quidditch team during the 1977 to 1978 school year.

Deaths Dorea Potter née Black[9] Amarillo Lestoat[10] Alphard Black (possibly)[2]

There was some speculation that Dorea Potter was the mother of James Potter and so the paternal grandmother of Harry Potter. However, the actual names of James's parents were revealed to be Fleamont and Euphemia Potter, via Pottermore.[4] In spite of this, it is still more than likely that Dorea was possibly an aunt or a cousin by marriage of James.

It was once presumed that Charlus Potter and Dorea Black, who appeared on the Black family tree, might have been James's parents (since it was known that Charlus and Dorea also had one son). However, J. K. Rowling revealed via Pottermore that that was not the case. It is still more than likely, however, that Charlus Potter is somehow related to Fleamont.

I personally like the idea of Dorea Black being Harry’s grandmother. There’s next to nothing on Euphemia but Dorea Black being bold enough to “run away” with a Potter makes a good story. And it’s a headcanon active in all of my HP stories, I think.

1978

1 April: Twins Fred and George Weasley are born to Arthur and Molly Weasley[3]

Universal Brooms Ltd goes out of business.[1] James Potter, Lily Evans, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and Severus Snape leave Hogwarts.

1979

Regulus Blacks dies by drinking the Drink of Despair and gets killed by Inferius while trying to destroy a Horcrux of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

The Wedding of James Potter I and Lily Evans took place, with Sirius Black as the Best Man.

Peter Pettigrew begins passing information to Lord Voldemort[3]

Deaths Orion Black[5] Regulus Black[6] Fleamont Potter Euphemia Potter

Births 19 September: Hermione Granger

1980

Professor Sybill Trelawney tells Albus Dumbledore the prophecy concerning Harry Potter and Tom Marvolo Riddle.[1] Death Eater Igor Karkaroff is captured by Auror Alastor Moody and sent to Azkaban.[2] Millicent Bagnold succeeds Harold Minchum becoming Minister for Magic until her retirement in 1990.[3]

(a lot of birthdays)

Deaths c.1980: Evan Rosier and Wilkes, both known Death Eaters, are killed by Aurors.[8] c.1979-1980: Dean Thomas's father[9]

1981

Marlene McKinnon an Order of the Phoenix member is killed by Lord Voldemort who also wipes out her entire family. Harry Potter's first birthday

September: Sirius Black makes Peter Pettigrew the secret keeper

The Order of the Phoenix was founded by Albus Dumbledore during Lord Voldemort's first rise to power in the 1970s. Dumbledore formed the Order to combat Voldemort's increasing threat and power. Aurors from the Ministry of Magic also joined the Order to participate in more secretive, sudden assaults aimed to crush the Dark Rebellion. Dumbledore created a method of communication among Order members by inventing a way to make Patronuses speak. Although the Death Eaters had been attacking mostly Muggles and Muggle-borns to spread terror, they soon turned to attacking "blood traitors" such as Order members as well. The Order had to work hard, as they were outnumbered by a ratio of 20:1 by the Death Eaters. Fabian and Gideon Prewett were murdered by a group of five Death Eaters led by Antonin Dolohov. Caradoc Dearborn disappeared, the Bones family was almost completely destroyed, Benjy Fenwick was brutally murdered, and Marlene McKinnon and her family were murdered by Death Eaters, including Travers. Even as the Order suffered great losses, they continued to fight, and four of their members — James Potter, Lily Potter, Frank Longbottom, and Alice Longbottom — defied Voldemort himself three times.

First WW notes

"Imagine that Voldemort's powerful now. You don't know who his supporters are, you don't know who's working for him and who isn't; you know he can control people so that they do terrible things without being able to stop themselves. You're scared for yourself, and your family, and your friends. Every week, news comes of more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing... The Ministry of Magic's in disarray, they don't know what to do, they're trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but meanwhile, Muggles are dying too. Terror everywhere... panic... confusion... that's how it used to be." —The uncertainty of the first war[src]

Werewolves were a big part of a confict...

Voldemort promised rights to [Dark] Creatures so it was a solid base

Voldemort’s base:

Dark magic - stop the laws that forbid it

that wouldnt be such a thing if all branches were for killing and torturing

like necromancy, for example

or maybe some family magic, blood magic

maybe even random spells or schools of magic... just because people were scared of “the dark”

it probably was the “Light Era”, before the 1970th, Scuib rights, maybe increase in muggleborns and newblood-oldblood marriages

Dark was weaker politically

maybe some bad attitudes towards “dark ws”

Pureblood supremacy

[Dark] creatures’ rights

Now going exclusively by his preferred name "Lord Voldemort", Riddle laid low and travelled around Europe and Asia. Little is known of his activities during this period, though he explored the Dark Arts extensively, studying the most obscure and arcane branches of magic and consorting with an array of dark wizards, who would all turn out to become his followers in the years to come. As a result of unnamed “magical experiments and transformations”, Voldemort underwent several physical and mental changes, which made him more powerful but less human, and was occasionally accompanied by a group of followers he came to call his "Death Eaters". By the time he was a full-fledged adult, around 1968, Riddle donned a hooded cloak (though he physically still did not resemble the montrous creature he would later in his life) which concealed him completely and he began plotting a wizarding coup, claiming that he was greatly dissatisfied with the current state of the Wizarding World and that he would succeed where so many, including Gellert Grindelwald and Salazar Slytherin, had failed. Voldemort convinced his underlings that to truly create a world full of peace and power, the old regime needed to be torn down at any and all costs and only those who shared pure blood, will and idealism would be allowed to live and thrive in it. In truth however, Lord Voldemort had little interest in political idealism himself. He was completely devoted to amassing his own magical power, and in becoming the most powerful and skilled wizard to have ever lived, invincible and eternal.

Though the Death Eaters were generally even less tolerant of them than wizarding society in general, these creatures were receptive of their violent and destructive goals. Dark activity suddenly arose throughout Great Britain, a country that had been totally untouched by dark magic; even during the reign of terror of Gellert Grindelwald; and Voldemort began surreptitiously killing poor and homeless Muggles (whose absences would not be noticed) with his followers so that he could reanimate their corpses with Necromancy until he had created an army of Inferi, a feat no other dark wizard in history had ever done.

In 1962, Minister Of Magic Ignatius Tuft was forced out of office for promising to institute a controversial Dementor breeding programme for Azkaban. He was replaced by Nobby Leach, who became the first Muggle-born ever to hold the Minister position, leading senior members of the Wizengamot to resign in protest. In 1963, Muggle expert Mordicus Egg published The Philosophy of the Mundane: Why the Muggles Prefer Not to Know, which posited actual theories about why Muggles continued to be unaware of magic. This was a different take on the subject, as it did not assume Muggles to be stupid nor ignorant.

Between 1965 and 1971[9], Dumbledore, who was noted as a social progressive believing strongly in the rights of Muggles as well as Muggle-borns and other oppressed minorities, ascended to the post of Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation Of Wizards [ICW] and Chief Warlock of the Wizenagamot. In these positions of great and influential power, Dumbledore passed extreme legislation to prevent any possible dark forces from threatening overall security around Great Britain

In 1968, Nobby Leach left office for mysterious health reasons, leading to a conspiracy theory that he had been poisoned by his Muggle-prejudice advisor Abraxas Malfoy.

[1970] the Death Eaters and their allies (including the particularly destructive Giants) began openly carrying out attacks on Muggles for sport and to sow chaos. Cleaning up these attacks, healing survivors, modifying memories, searching for the perpetrators, and attempting to prevent future attacks occupied more and more of the Ministry's time and attention. As their confidence grew, the Death Eaters began targeting Muggle-born and blood traitor witches and wizards as well, torturing and sometimes killing their victims, which shocked wizarding society. Other "inferior" magical beings such as house-elves (who were treated like vermin) and Goblins (a family of which was slaughtered) also suffered under their reign of terror.

Voldemort himself personally killed hundreds of wizards, though he tended to only fight those he considered worthy of his attention or too powerful for his followers to defeat. In these encounters, he displayed his extraordinary abilities, many of which were thought impossible, and he very quickly earned the reputation of the most powerful and dangerous dark wizard of all time

[1971]Though the Ministry officially viewed the Order as a renegade outfit, a number of powerful Ministry officials (such as Elphias Doge and Dedalus Diggle; and the famous Aurors Alastor Moody and Frank Longbottom and Alice Longbottom) joined instantly to participate in more secretive, sudden assaults to crush the dark rebellion.[12] When Dumbledore helped black market trader Mundungus Fletcher out of trouble, he joined the Order and, due to his extensive knowledge of the criminal underworld, proved very useful.

To protect the organisation, Voldemort ensured that Death Eaters did not know the identities of too many of their fellows, and, to society at large, their identities were completely unknown.[13] Increasing the confusion and paranoia even further, Voldemort placed many dozens of innocent victims under the Imperius Curse simulaniously, and forced them to carry out his orders. Even friends and family members were not above suspicion of one another.

Evan Rosier, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, Sewlyn, Jerome Jugson, Jugson, Regulus Black, Rodolphus Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, Thorfinn Rowle, Gibbon, Augustus Rookwood, Igor Karkaroff, Crabbe, Goyle, Travers, and Antonin Dolohov. Likely at Snape's urging, Voldemort attempted to recruit Lily Evans, whose prodigious talents made up for her status as a Muggle-born

He took only Severus Snape and Bellatrix Lestrange under his personal wing, sharing with them his personal-secret knowledge of the Dark Arts; and inspiring in Bellatrix a delusional-psychotic attraction bordering on loving obsession, which Voldemort never returned

[1980]Shortly afterwards, due to Pettigrew's betrayal, Death Eaters began systematically murdering Order members and the war entered its most desperate phase. Marlene McKinnon was slaughtered alongside her entire family by Travers, Nott, and Mulciber. Edgar Bones, his wife, and their children were murdered by Thorfinn Rowle and Fenrir Greyback. Gideon Prewett and Fabian Prewett both fought bravely but were ultimately killed by Antonin Dolohov, and Dorcas Meadowes was murdered by Voldemort himself. Caradoc Dearborn disappeared and was never found, though he was presumed dead. Benjy Fenwick was killed by Bellatrix Lestrange, Evan Rosier, and Julius Jerome; and so brutally mutilated that only bits of him were recovered.[12]

In response to this brutal onslaught, Barty Crouch Snr, who despised Voldemort, the Death Eaters, and the Dark Arts entirely; issued an edict giving Ministry Aurors full permission to employ the use of the Unforgivable Curses against their enemies. A massive Ministry campaign, spearheaded and led by Alastor Moody, Kingsley Shackelbolt, and Frank Longbottom; ensued, immediately turning the tide of the war against the Death Eaters.

28 pureblood family names (sacred 28)

Abbott Avery Black Bulstrode Burke Carrow Crouch Fawley Flint Gaunt Greengrass Lestrange Longbottom Macmillan Malfoy Nott Ollivander Parkinson Prewett Rosier Rowle Selwyn Shacklebolt Shafiq Slughorn Travers Weasley Yaxley

Although the Malfoys were noted as respectable members as one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight (a title they are proud of), they did not take the pure-blood supremacy to the point of inbreeding: they were willing to marry half-bloods, many of whom are shown in their family tree.

#outloud worldbuilding #there are rules au

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hufflly-puffs · 5 years ago

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Chapter 13: The Secret Riddle

Something that I noticed during this chapter is that Dumbledore, after he had shown Harry another memory, interprets the scene for him. Therefore Rowling interprets the scene through the character of Dumbledore for her audience. This isn’t the first time. Especially Hermione (but also Dumbledore) functions often as an Exposition character, someone who gives Harry vital information about the Wizarding World, as well as interpreting certain situations for Harry, for example Cho’s emotional state on their horrible first date. In this case Dumbledore (therefore Rowling) wanted to make sure Harry (therefore the audience) pays attention to the right details when it comes to Voldemort. I’m usually not a huge fan of a writer trying to explain their story to me, but in this case it makes sense within the story.

“She appears to have brushed the necklace with the smallest possible amount of skin: there was a tiny hole in her glove. Had she put it on, had she even held it in her ungloved hand, she would have died, perhaps instantly.” – I wonder what kind of curse Katie almost fell victim to. Touching the necklace would have killed her immediately, but in her case even the smallest amount of skin caused severe damage. How exactly would the curse have killed her? What is it that happened to her?

“‘He only gave her ten Galleons?’ said Harry indignantly.” – Well, she could have bought a Hogwarts textbook from it. And maybe like one butterbeer.

“‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore, ‘perhaps she could. But it is my belief – I am guessing again, but I am sure I am right – that when her husband abandoned her, Merope stopped using magic. I do not think that she wanted to be a witch any longer. Of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; […].’” – I think for Merope magic has never been a good thing. Her father and her brother used magic against her, to oppress her, to the point where she was emotionally unstable enough not to perform any magic herself. She then eventually used magic to get Tom Riddle to fall in love with her, but the moment she stopped he left her, perhaps making her believe it was her being a witch that made him go. Being a witch has never been a positive experience for her, so the great irony is that the descendant of Salazar Slytherin, the mother of Lord Voldemort, no longer wanted to be a witch.

“‘Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?’ ‘No,’ said Harry quickly, ‘but she had a choice, didn’t she, not like my mother –’ ‘Your mother had a choice, too,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry.’” – Lily died for her son, died to protect him, chose death to save him. Merope chose death despite her son needing her; it would have been brave for her to choose life instead. Both Harry and Voldemort grew up as orphans, but the reasons why they had no parents taking care for them couldn’t have been more different. The one whose parents died for love became a good man, the one whose parents abandoned him became a monster.

“‘You mean he’s won a scholarship? How can he have done? He’s never been entered for one.’ ‘Well, his name has been down for our school since birth –’ ‘Who registered him? His parents?’ There was no doubt that Mrs Cole was an inconveniently sharp woman.” – Look, Mrs Cole might think that Tom is a bit strange and she is relieved that he will leave her orphanage, but still when a complete stranger appears to take away one of her children she asks the right questions.

“‘Here,’ said Dumbledore, waving his wand once as he passed her the piece of paper, ‘I think this will make everything clear.’ Mrs Cole’s eyes slid out of focus and back again as she gazed intently at the blank paper for a moment. ‘That seems perfectly in order,’ she said placidly, handing it back.” – Obviously this is the same magic paper the Doctor uses. #confirmed

“‘Well, we named him just as she’d said, it seemed so important to the poor girl, but no Tom nor Marvolo nor any kind of Riddle ever came looking for him, nor any family at all, so he stayed in the orphanage and he’s been here ever since.’” – We later find out that little Tom Riddle isn’t very fond of his name, and that is even before he found out that his father was a Muggle. The name ‘Tom’ is too common, not special, not the way Tom sees himself (he doesn’t even like that he shares his names with others). But it is so interesting that this is the name Merope chose for her son – the name of his Muggle dad. Merope, who no longer used magic, who no longer wanted to be a witch, gave her son a name that would leave no trace of his heritage. The only indicator to his Wizard ancestors is his middle name, Marvolo, so despite his abuse it is possible Merope still loved her father. Perhaps she had also given her son a Muggle name so that neither her father or her brother would find her son.

It is clear from what Mrs Cole tells Dumbledore about Tom that he is a psychopath. He doesn’t have any friends, he lies, he manipulates, he scares the other children. And there isn’t a defining incident that changed his personality, he has always been like this. Rowling avoids the stereotype to portray the orphanage as a horrible place – Harry mentions that the children look well-cared. From what we learn about Mrs Cole she has a genuine interest in the well-being of her children (and a little drinking problem). Her interest in getting rid of Riddle is more for the sake of the other children, who are afraid of him. There is no indication that Mrs Cole or anyone else at the orphanage has acted abusive, so in many ways Tom had a better childhood than Harry or Snape. The fact that Tom was a product of rape, that both his parents abandoned him, can be seen as a metaphor, that the loveless circumstances of his birth created a man who was never able to understand love himself. But little Tom Riddle doesn’t know this yet. It is no excuse for the frightening behaviour he already shows. And perhaps that is why he could never redeem himself in the end, because he has always been a monster.

“‘I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.’” – You remember the kind of accidental magic Harry produced as a child? Like making his hair grow back or magically escaping his bullies at school? None of those have the quality of “I can make them hurt if I want to”. Like if a child ever says something like that to you, congratulation, you found yourself in a horror movie. And he shows not a single bit of remorse about it. He is just fascinated by the kind of power he has over other people.

“‘I knew I was different,’ he whispered to his own quivering fingers. ‘I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something.’” – And as Harry later remarks Tom’s reaction is quite different to his. He immediately believed Dumbledore when he learned that he was a wizard, because he already thought of himself to be special. To be different. Extraordinary. And even now, when he doesn’t know about Purebloods and the like, little Tom already has this mind-set that he is better, above all others, Muggles and Wizards alike.

“‘I haven’t got any money.’ ‘That is easily remedied,’ said Dumbledore, drawing a leather money-pouch from his pocket. ‘There is a fund at Hogwarts for those who require assistance to buy books and robes.” – How come the Weasleys never got any money from that fund? At least it is never mentioned. Does this fund only work for special cases like Riddle, who has no money of his own? Does it also apply to families with a low-income? Did the Weasleys simply refuse, too proud to take any money? Or does this fund no longer exist? (Though I doubt that Dumbledore as a headmaster would get rid of it)

“‘Was my father a wizard? He was called Tom Riddle too, they’ve told me.’ ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said Dumbledore, his voice gentle. ‘My mother can’t have been magic, or she wouldn’t have died,’ said Riddle, more to himself than Dumbledore. ‘It must’ve been him.” – Already Tom associates Muggles with weakness and magic with power. He doesn’t believe his mother could have been a witch or else she wouldn’t have died. At some point he found out the truth however – that his father was a Muggle, that his mother was a witch, descendant from Slytherin, who still died after all, refusing to use magic to save her own life. Maybe that is where Voldemort’s fascination with immortality comes from – the belief that magic equals power, that used in the right way you can even avoid death, failing to see, as Dumbledore told him, that there are worse things than death.

“‘Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?’ said Dumbledore. ‘No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his.” – Even then Dumbledore saw that Tom was a psychopath, someone who could appear charming on the surface, but with no empathy for others, who already used magic as a weapon. I think that over the years Riddle perfected his mask of the incredible gifted young charming man, to avoid to draw any attention to his true nature. Dumbledore had seen glimpses of that true nature upon their first meeting, which is why he never trusted Tom completely.

“You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he has ever wanted one.” – This perfectly corresponds with the second chapter, with Bellatrix’s firm belief that she is the closet to the Dark Lord and her anger when she learned that Voldemort confided in Snape as well. It is a part of Voldemort’s manipulative scheme, to let his followers believe they alone are his secret keepers, so therefore none of them will bond too much with the others. They all follow him, but as a group there are not united. Every single one of them is only interested what is best for them, not the collective.

“‘And lastly – I hope you are not too sleepy to pay attention to this, Harry – the young Tom Riddle liked to collect trophies. You saw the box of stolen articles he had hidden in his room. These were taken from victims of his bullying behaviour, souvenirs, if you will, of particularly unpleasant bits of magic. Bear in mind this magpie-like tendency, for this, particularly, will be important later.” – Obviously this will later make sense in reference to the Horcruxes, and the value Voldemort puts in certain artefacts, especially those that contain a certain history. But these little souvenirs he has here remind me of a psychopath who keeps souvenirs from his murders. And that is what his first Horcrux is after all – the diary only has personal value, as it is an evidence for the first murder Voldemort ever committed.

#Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince #The Secret Riddle #chapter notes #hbp

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maeviana · 6 years ago

Text

Why Peter is a Gryffindor and Why Peter is Snape’s parallel

Hey all this is my reasoning for the above theory check it out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypottertheories/comments/9k0ndw/why_peter_was_sorted_into_gryffindor_peter_is/

This is my second Peter theory in a week but bare with.....

Something that has bothered me for ages in Harry Potter is why Peter Pettigrew was put into Gryffindor. He seems like one of the most cowardly characters in the entire series, and I've seen a lot of people who use Peter as an example for the Sorting Hat making mistakes, even though the hat claims to have never made a mistake in it's entire career.

I mean he betrayed Lily and James, he was their FRIEND!

and then I started to think about the description the hat uses for Gryffindor, and a SuperCarlin Brothers video about Gilderoy Lockhart and why he was put in Ravenclaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o49ztTXTrs&index=6&list=PLLHeqkcn5RTcbxi40YpdLla30rsxtizc7

Ben Carlin in the video basically points out that Lockhart is very smart but also very lazy, and this got me into thinking about the description of Gryffindor house.

The hat says that their it's the daring nerve and chivalry that sets Gryffindors apart. While Peter may not show a lot of signs of chivalry in fact I think if he was on the Titanic he would have pushed some of those kids off the life boats he does show a lot of nerve ....just not in a positive way. Peter like Lockhart is very lazy and takes the easy way out of situations but does show a lot of nerve and daring. His nerve and his daring are just shown in the way of someone who gives someone a demotion and then complain that they cheaped out on their Secret Santa gift.

For example even though he was basically the one who allowed Voldemort to go to the Potters house and thus led him to his demise in a way, when he gets found out in the Prisonor of Azkaban who does he seek out?.....spoiler it's one Tom Marvolo Riddle. I don't know about you guys but If I thought Voldemort was likely to blame me for his almost death I would be quaking in my boots and I certainly would not be making the trip to Albania to go look for that dark wizard.

He also questions Voldemort and Snape in the book, two wizards who could absolutely DEMOLISH him in a duel with barely any effort at all.

By that time, my faithful servant will have rejoined us -"

"I am a faithful servant," said Wormtail, the merest trace of sullenness in his voice.

"Wormtail, I need somebody with brains, somebody whose loyalty has never wavered, and you, unfortunately, fulfill neither requirement. "

"I found you," said Wormtail, and there was definitely a sulky edge to his voice now. "I was the one who found you. I brought you Bertha Jorkins. " The Riddle House, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling

that's right he back talks he-who-must-not-be-named say what you will about Peter that takes guts...yeah it's more in a petulant child kind of way but still. When he's forced to transform into a man in Prisoner of Azkaban he tries to act as if Sirius and Remus are his old friends.....Sirius Black the man he betrayed and was imprisoned for 12 years in Azkaban for a crime Peter committed

"S -- Sirius... R -- Remus..." Even Pettigrew's voice was squeaky. Again, his eyes darted toward the door. "My friends... my old friends..." - The Servant of Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling

that takes a lot of nerve....

Some might say that Peter's daring shows his willingness to achieve his goals by any means in this case to keep himself safe, and this is more of a Slytherin trait. I agree that Peter would have made a nice fit for Slytherin but I would argue that he doesn't show any real ambition and more often then not lucks his way into situations which he then exploits.

Although Peter is pretty ballsy in a lot of his actions he doesn't show a lot of ambition. He talks back to Voldemort about being the one who found him and implies that this means that Voldemort should consider him more loyal a servant but he doesn't seek out to prove this to Voldemort again. He cuts off his arm for Voldemort to rise again but I think we all get the feeling that he didn't really want to do that and he doesn't expect the upgrade of the arm he gets, he probably thought that Voldemort would maybe help him grow his regular arm back. (also him disarming Harry in that grave yard, Peter you've got some nerve, haven't you ruined this kid's life enough?) Wormtail's not putting himself into the line of fire for Voldemort, in Harry Potter and the Half blood Prince and in The Deathly Hallows he's hiding out in Death Eater houses lying low, he's trying to advance his position in the most lazy way possible by hanging around with other important death eaters, thinking proximity to power will in turn bring power to him....classic Peter

　"How dare you," he growled, sounding suddenly like the bearsized dog he had been. I, a spy for Voldemort? When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself? But you, Peter -- I'll never understand why I didn't see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who'd look after you, didn't you? It used to be us... me and Remus... and James.... - Sirius Black The Servant of Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling

Like say what you will about Slytherin but they are not lazy, they'll put in their hours about something they actually care about. Even Crabbe and Goyle put themselves in the line of fire to be the muscle for Malfoy they don't skulk around in the background, they've got ambition. They've got that thirst to prove themselves.

Peter lucks into situations for Voldemort even points this out to him,

"I found you," said Wormtail, and there was definitely a sulky edge to his voice now. "I was the one who found you. I brought you Bertha Jorkins. "

"That is true," said the second man, sounding amused. "A stroke of brilliance I would not have thought possible from you, Wormtail - though, if truth be told, you were not aware how useful she would be when you caught her, were you?"

"I - I thought she might be useful, My Lord -"

"Liar," said the second voice again, the cruel amusement more pronounced than ever. "However, I do not deny that her information was invaluable. Without it, I could never have formed our plan, and for that, you will have your reward, Wormtail. I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers would give their right hands to perform. . . "The Riddle House, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling

He lucks into being chosen to be the secret keeper for James and Lily. Even him finding Voldemort in Albania, which I'll admit probably took a bit of work might have been because Harry mentioned to Ron while Peter was in the room that Dumbledore said that Voldemort might have gone back to a forest in Albania.

.....

I've seen some people saying that Snape belonged in Gryffindor because he is said to be one of the bravest characters in Harry Potter.....the reasons why I believe Snape is a Slytherin could be a separate and very long post but I'll try to touch on it in this post as I explain why Peter makes a very good mirror for Snape.

So first of all I think we can all acknowledge right here and right now that just because you are in one house doesn't mean you can't have a characteristic from another house, Hermione is smart and she's a Gryffindor not Ravenclaw, Sirius is cunning but he's in Gryffindor not Slytherin and Snape is brave but he's in Slytherin not Gryffindor.

Being in Slytherin does not make you inherently bad and being in Gryffindor does not make you inherently good. Just like Snape's cunning, ambition can be used to benefit the Order of the Phoenix, Peter's nerve and daring in his betrayals of the Order can be used to help the Death Eaters.

Snape and Peter's stories parallel one and other.

Peter and Snape were both double agents. Peter being a double agent working for Voldemort and Snape working for Dumbledore.

Peter and Snape both contribute to James and Lily's death. Snape telling Voldemort about the prophecy and Peter going to Voldemort to reveal their location.

They are both directly reporting to the head of the organisation they are pretending to oppose with Peter reporting directly to Voldemort and Snape reporting to Dumbledore and both characters nurse the men they are reporting to back to health, Peter with Voldemort in Goblet of Fire and Snape with Dumbledore in Half Blood Prince.

Snape is James' enemy working to protect Harry from Voldemort. Peter was James' friend working to deliver Harry to Voldemort.

Harry is the last person both characters see before they die, and both characters die directly because of Voldemort.

Both characters debunk the stereotype of their houses being inherently good or inherently bad.

"There wasn't a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin" - Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone

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mister-tom-a-dildo-lover · 7 years ago

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How do you feel when people call Voldemort dumb, cartoonish villain? Do you think he is?

They only paid attention to Movie!Voldemort. In the films, every character is dumbed down considerably. On my main blog, I am doing a re-read of the HP series and am keeping everyone up to date with my observations. I have observed a lot.

Vernon is 10X worse in the books. Easily talking of beating Harry, hating Harry, and expressing no remorse over the thought of him dying. He’s made to be a joke in the films. He is in fact, very abusive and love to lord that fact over others.

Ron is 10X smarter in the books. All of his quotes were given to other characters in the films or just left out. He was regulated to an attempt at comic relief in the film.

Book!Myrtle talks of trying to kill herself after being chased off from Nick’s Deathday Party. She’s more playful in the films but in the movie she has tantrums all the time.

Voldemort monologues in the books, but it also shows his thought process. Limited time in the films means they cut out a lot of his character and the way he thinks.

In the films, things were changed/cut to conserve time. In the books however, there is more depth.

Tom Marvolo Riddle: I Am Lord VoldemortBlood Status: Half-Blood(in denial)Born: 31 Dec 1926Died: 2 May 1998Birthplace: Wool’s Orphanage, LondonTalents: Parseltongue, Powerful Magic, CharismaMother: Merope Riddle née Gaunt - PurebloodFather: Tom Riddle Sr. - MuggleHogwarts House: Slytherin - Head Boy

Notable Happenings in his Childhood/Teen Years:

The Great Depression.

WWII - leads to him witnessing the aftermath of The Blitz. As well as perpetual bombings of London long after the Blitz ended.

Magical War - Grindelwald lording over the magicals all over the world.

Tom Marvolo Riddle was conceived through use of a Love Potion. His mother, in an effort to permanently escape her abusive father and brother, who were in prison for the time being, decided to dose the Muggle she obsessively fancied. She then forced him to marry her, take her to London, and have sex with her.

Over time she began to feel guilty, but waited until she was far along in her pregnancy before releasing Tom from her influence. She had hoped he would at least stay for the baby. However, he didn’t(nor should he have had to). He fled in a panic and she had nothing to her name but the Slytherin Locket, which she pawned off in Knockturn Alley in hopes of getting something to live off of. That didn’t work much either.

She managed to give birth to Tom Marvolo Riddle in an orphanage and died shortly after naming him after his father and her father. She also made a wish for him to look like Tom Sr.. She ‘died of a broken heart’ that in my personal opinion is a load of bull since she forced herself on someone and has only herself to blame for the situation she was in.

Now TMR grows up in the orphanage where people think his oddly named mother was a circus performer since she was so hideous(thanks to inbreeding) and had no man with her. Tom grows up being able to do things others cannot and believes himself to be special.

Like other magical children who show natural aptitude, he wasn’t liked. Much like Hermione Granger wasn’t. He was smart and studious, and poor children who are fighting to get adopted out of a mediocre hellhole during the Great Depression, aren’t going to like that.

He had altercations with some of the children. The matron, a drunkard, blames him entirely. He is framed to be a delinquent, kind of like how the Dursleys had everyone thinking of Harry. And he is a child who grows to hate people who treat him terribly just because he isn’t their definition of ‘normal’.

When he finds out he has magic, he ends up revealing that he can speak to snakes. A teacher, who is supposed to be impartial but who took the words of a woman who inhaled multiple glasses of gin while complaining about how unnatural Tom was, decided to treat him like a monster on the brink of snapping any day. Because of a language. He never told Tom what it meant either.

Tom is a hard worker. He is sorted into Slytherin which is known for treating those who are not Pureblooded, terribly. And with a non-magical name like Riddle, he was probably disliked for a time. And he worked to gain the favor of his professors, save for the one walking on eggshells around him of course.

He begins to collect prominent Slytherins and makes his little group, the Knights of Walpurgis.

In his 6th Year, he opens the Chamber of Secrets after searching so long for information on his ancestry. Marvolo was a magical name, and he somehow learned of Parseltongue being a Slytherin Family trait. So he researches and studies, and finally finds what he’s looking for, though is unhappy to find that his mother was his magical parent. After all, she was weak and died. Why didn’t she save herself and decide to leave him in such a horrible place?

And during these years, he develops a fear of death. But how and why? People scared of dying, are usually faced with a near-death experience, or are made blatantly aware of something dangerous that can cause it. Take a look back at the ‘Happenings’ during his childhood. Muggle war. Blown up buildings. Thousands of people dead. Him being forced to go back to that every summer thereby putting his existence on the line.

These are what created Lord Voldemort. This is his history. A magical orphan growing up in WWII in the thick of the danger, while the world is going through a Great Depression. These experiences shape him.

Orphans cling to anything they own, which helped make him possessive of his belongings. And keeping things from kids who bothered him, isn’t a bad thing in my opinion since I did the same when people tried bullying me. If you didn’t want your hat to get ruined/taken, you shouldn’t have punched me in the face, simple. Keep your hands to yourself.

Tom Riddle as a character has nuance. But he lost his mind with the Horcruxes. He made so many that we see a vast difference in the Tom from the Diary - who has the largest soul piece - and Voldemort from GoF and onward. Looks aside, he starts getting repetitive, and a little frantic in action. He doesn’t plan things out. Why?

Horcruxes eff you up. He made 7. He’s operating on the smallest sliver of his soul and he looked like a scaley cosplayer gone wrong. The whole point of DH was to show how bad Horcruxes are and when you compare Diary!Tom to DH!Voldemort, they are massively different. Both possessive and obsessive, but still vastly different.

Voldemort ends up as a shriveled up baby-look-alike at the end of DH, never to leave Limbo. Horcruxes did that to him. Mutilated him terribly. He went mad because of his own foolishness.

Now do I think that Rowling could have done more with his character? Yes. But book Voldemort has a very interesting background, and the beauty of it, is that Rowling alludes to much in her books. She doesn’t spell everything out for the readers, and expects you to read between the lines.

So for those of us who have been in situations like Severus, Harry, or Tom’s, we see what is wrong with their childhoods and understand better. We pick up little things.

Take Harry for example. There are people claiming he wasn’t abused by the Dursleys, but then the books show him being locked in his room, bars put on his window, a cat flap placed on the door, and Petunia conveniently only feeding him and Hedwig one can of soup a day for 3 days in a row. Or how Harry learned a lesson all abused kids learn early on. [Don’t ask questions!] For those of us who’ve been through things like that, it sticks out for us.

Voldemort is an example of what went wrong in the worst way. He, Severus, and Harry are examples of the same thing going in three different directions. Voldemort got into Dark Magic and became obsessed, losing himself as he happily drowned in it. Severus got into Dark Magic and realized he was in too deep but it was too late to save him. Harry got into Dark Magic, realized it wasn’t good, and chose to stop thanks to the examples of the two before him, warning him away.

We are supposed to juxtapose Harry and Voldemort. Harry being on the one end of the spectrum and Voldemort being on the opposite end. ‘It’s our choices’ and all that rubbish.

[LIGHT]—-|—-[DARK]

Voldemort, while not as detailed as I think he should have been toward the end, did what his character was supposed to. And that is to prove that absolute power demoralizes.

He is not cartoonish, though he is a drama queen and an attention seeker. But in the words of Sherlock Holmes, ‘the frailty of genius, [John], it needs an audience’.

#Lord Voldemort #HP #Harry Potter

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hogwartswelcomesyou · 7 years ago

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The Mods Fix HP!: Scripting (by Tory)

Hi guys! This is the first in hopefully a series of posts where the Mods attempt to fix what they saw as major problems with the Harry Potter film adaptations. Of course, to be clear, we all love the movies, but I think all HP fans have those little (or not-so-little) bones to pick with the finished result, so that’s what these editorials will discuss. Hope you enjoy them!

~The Mods

Harry Potter was a series of books magically transformed into a series of movies. Adaptation is always a tricky tight rope to walk, but coming from someone who has actively studied film and television, adaptation cannot and should not just be literally copying everything on the page and slapping it up on screen without any thought. Some things have to change, both due to practical reasons like cost as well as for more story-driven reasons like making the plot follow a three-act structure. Although yes, all things considered, the Harry Potter films are rather good adaptations compared to many other book-turned-movies (*eyes Percy Jackson beadily*), I would still argue that there are quite a few things I would personally fix in regards to the screenwriting of these adaptations.

Let’s first knock out what I believe are the Harry Potter film series’ top four biggest problems, just in the script alone –

1) The lack of continuity from film to film.

2) The scissoring-out of important details needed to understand the scene(s) in question.

3) The “trope-ification” of each character.

4) The lack of moral grayness.

To tackle the first one, there are a LOT of changes made to locations, casting, and such made from film to film thanks to the many directors and extraneous factors on set (for example, the actor playing Crabbe ended up in prison and was unable to perform his role in the last film, hence why Goyle ended up being the one to die in the Room of Requirement instead). But again, just focusing on the script-writing perspective, the changes made writing-wise were made for a different reason. The main rationale for most of these scripting changes is that the filmmakers didn’t know what little details would be important later, as they were making the films as the books were still being written, and so therefore they had to play catch-up (with varying degrees of success) with all the information we should’ve already known from the previous films, but don’t because it wasn’t written in.

For example, let’s take a look at Harry seeing the thestrals in fifth year. Now, of course, in the books, the reason Harry can see the thestrals this year, and no other, is because he saw Cedric die in the Little Hangleton graveyard the previous school year. But in the movies, the filmmakers made the artistic decision to give Quirrel a marvelous death scene at the end of Philosopher’s Stone – which somehow didn’t count, I guess, since Harry saw Quirrel die and yet didn’t see thestrals until three years later? This sort of change follows the books’ continuity, but not the films’, and so film-only fans will be lost and confused.

Another good example is the portrayal of the Patronus Charm. Whereas in Azkaban it’s established that only a corporeal Patronus can drive away a dementor, in both Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Harry’s Patronus is nothing but a flare of indistinguishable light. It’s made even worse in Order when Harry uses a stunning charm on a dementor (which shouldn’t work) and Luna references Harry’s ability to perform the Patronus Charm, even though in the films we’ve only seen it take the form of a stag once. In Order we even see almost all the other students (except Neville) producing corporeal Patronuses with apparent ease and in the second Deathly Hallows film we see Snape’s Patronus is in the form of a doe -- the spell is supposed to be “advanced stuff,” but if Harry can only make bright white light a lot of the time anyway, why is it a big deal that he can perform it? He was already able to do that much in his very first lesson with Lupin, so it is clearly established not to be that hard to conjure up some light -- what is supposed to be hard is making that light have a form, but the films don’t really take the time to show the magic itself or even to re-establish how difficult and unique it is to do.

There are errors that are worse, though. What about the opening of Prisoner of Azkaban that infuriates me like few other things in this world, where Harry consistently uses underage magic to light up his wand (more than once, may I add, when in no other film does the charm need casting that many times!)? And then, no joke, just two scenes later, Harry’s running away scared because he used underage magic on his Aunt Marge! Wait – so – underage magic is illegal, but if you just use it to light up your wand, it’s totally okay?! It not only defeats the emotional punch to the stomach that Harry using magic on his aunt would’ve given the audience, but it also trivializes the entire scene and makes it nonsensical and confusing.

This also leads into the second problem – the cutting out of important details. How were the filmmakers to have known that a character only mentioned in a few throwaway lines like Mrs. Figg was going to have a role in Order of the Phoenix? How were the filmmakers to have known that the two-way mirror Sirius gave Harry and that Harry broke upon it not working would be important in Deathly Hallows? They couldn’t, honestly. But there are a few things they did know were important, but chose to leave out or just glossed over, and most if not all of those details boil down to one thing –

Backstory.

The Harry Potter films really, really do not like putting in characters’ backstories if they can help it – from simple things like Fred once turning Ron’s teddy bear into a spider and in the process causing his severe arachnophobia to really important stuff like Barty Crouch, Sr. being an ambitious man on the cusp of becoming Minister until his own son was discovered amongst the Death Eaters and Crouch was disgraced and then saving his son from Azkaban as a favor to his ill wife and keeping him prisoner in his own home, only to have his son get rescued by Voldemort and kill him when he got too close to telling Dumbledore what was going on.

Yeah – this isn’t just something you can blame on people making these movies as the books were coming out. Knowing a character’s history is not only a very good way to understand where they are now, but also a very good indicator of future behavior. Knowing Severus Snape was the one who leaked the contents of Trelawney’s prophecy about Harry to Voldemort sets up why Harry distrusts Snape, as well as gives the audience a good reason to agree with Harry. Knowing Dumbledore’s sister died because of an argument that broke out between Aberforth, Dumbledore, and Grindelwald explains why Aberforth and Dumbledore aren’t on speaking terms and why Dumbledore has never talked about his family to Harry, or likely to anyone. Knowing that Remus didn’t stand up to his friends at school when they were bullying Snape not only gives Snape good reason to hate Remus, but it also foreshadows his adversity to conflict shown in his relationship with Tonks and in his confrontation with Harry during the Second Wizarding War.

Now of course backstory can be difficult to weave in smoothly. Sometimes it can come across as stilted or as a detour, if done poorly. But the nice thing about filmmaking is that you only need images, and not a lot of words or time, to translate this information to your audience. By depicting a little more of Snape’s Worst Memory, we would’ve seen Remus not standing up to his friends. By having Harry listen in on a conversation between Snape and Dumbledore in the Headmaster’s office a little longer, it could’ve been slipped out that Snape had been the one who told Voldemort the prophecy. Even Riddle’s backstory with Merope, Morfin, Marvolo, and Tom Riddle, Sr. could’ve been done with a lot of images and not that many words – the Pensieve scenes in Half-Blood Prince were already very stylized, so you could’ve gotten across a lot with very little.

The best way to fix both the first and second problems, honestly, was to have waited for all of the books to come out before adapting them, so that it would be easier to weigh what details would be important and which ones wouldn’t.

But now we get onto the problem of characterization, in the script-writing sense. Almost every character in the Harry Potter movies is a shallow representation of their book incarnations…not just because of the stuff the filmmakers left out, but because of deliberate additions and visual choices.

The most notable example that everyone brings up is Ron. Ron, in the books, is quite honestly the best friend most anyone could think up – he’s loyal, he’s funny, he’s laid-back, he’s incredibly generous despite his lack of wealth, he’s noble, he’s sensitive, he’s insightful, and he’s always ready to jump in and help when his friends need him. But in the films, he’s honestly more remembered for trailer-worthy one-liners and being a tag-along sidekick. In Prisoner of Azkaban especially, Ron is just dead weight, when the Golden Trio was always supposed to be just that – a trio, balancing out the flaws of the others.

Hermione has the exact opposite problem. Because she is the main female character, the filmmakers made a lot of choices that put her more in the spotlight at the expense of the rest of the cast. Because Hermione was the most important female character in the narrative, she suddenly had to represent all women, like most main women from films have to do – even if, yeah, the only reason many film women are put in that position is because they’re the ONLY developed female character in the story, and there are many strong and different female characters in the Harry Potter books, like Luna, Ginny, McGonagall, Molly Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Narcissa Malfoy, Tonks…even villains like Bellatrix Lestrange! But to follow film convention, Hermione was made into a “role model” more than a character, having all the flaws that made her relatable scrubbed away so as to make her more of an “Action Girl.”

Even Harry is given the short end of the stick. In his case, he becomes the wide-eyed, innocent, stock “Everyman Hero” that every audience member is supposed to jump into the shoes of for most of the film series, when Harry in the books had a very definitive personality. He was a hot-blooded, emotional, introverted, academically lazy, courageous, selfless young man who loathed the spotlight of fame and was well known for having a “saving people thing.” In the movies, however, a lot of his snark and temper is toned down and his disdain for fame is downplayed except when it is convenient (i.e. when his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire and he claims he doesn’t want eternal glory – even though in the books, he’d actually off-handedly fantasized about being Champion a few times).

This isn’t even touching a lot of the other “trope-ification” we see – Fred and George as the comic relief (even if they had angry and dramatic moments too in the books), Cho Chang as the (wrong) bland love interest, Ginny as the (right) bland love interest, Fleur as the pretty blond airhead (seriously, what does she do in the movies?!), Lavender Brown as the jealous girlfriend, and Neville as the klutz (in every movie except for the very last one, honestly!). Even Seamus is mostly just known for being the subject of one recurring joke throughout the entire series. As much as we can’t expect that every side character will get a lot of focus, as they shouldn’t, there are ways to hint to deeper character development in these people in the background, rather than just making them stock set pieces. Even in the Harry Potter films themselves, there are examples of how to do it right! Although we never learn everything about Sirius in the films, we do get a lot of who he is simply through a few well-written scenes seasoned with some backstory and some good acting on Gary Oldman’s part. We see this again in the character of Slughorn, who only really appears in one movie – again we feel we know this character better than ones like Ginny or Seamus, even if he’s a side character, because of some well-written scenes and some good acting. It’s just when those scenes become one-note or don’t add or expound upon the established character that it creates a problem.

This particular bullet point also has links to the final problem, and that is the stark black-and-white morality of the film series, which is a huge departure from the moral grayness depicted in the books. As Sirius says,

“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.”

But unfortunately in the films, we do not see that theme expressed very well. Whereas in the books we have Severus Snape viciously bullying his students and taking every opportunity he can to put Harry down, in the films we have him occasionally growling at his students for their cheek and indulging in slapstick routines where he smacks Harry and Ron over the head for talking during an exam. Whereas in the books we show Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy running to try to find their beloved son during the Battle of Hogwarts, in the films we see Lucius whacking Draco with his cane. Whereas in the books we have Marietta choosing to defend her mother’s job over keeping a secret about an illegal student organization that she hadn’t want to join in the first place, in the films we have Cho Chang being drugged by truth potion by mean old Umbridge, so it wasn’t her fault that she told…and yet she’s still shunned for telling anyway, for some reason – seriously, what’s up with that?

In the films, the good guys are pretty solidly that – the good guys – and the bad guys are pretty much the exact same way. One of the ways this damages the entire series for me is how the film version of Half-Blood Prince depicts Tom Marvolo Riddle. Now in the second film, Riddle is actually handled pretty well – his resemblance to Harry is played up and the performance radiates charm as well as coldness. But then when we got to Half-Blood Prince, it seemed that the filmmakers suddenly thought they were making a movie geared for toddlers and so had to make the past version of Voldemort as friggin’ obvious as they humanly could, sucking out any potential charm or charisma that anyone could’ve seen in Riddle and blinded them to his darker side. The creative decision not only makes Dumbledore and Slughorn and everyone else who didn’t see Riddle as a threat look like idiots – it not only cheapens this menacing villain that you’ve spent the last five films building up – it not only ruins any real-world allegory you could make about real-world monsters that lure followers to their demented causes – but it also defeats one of the central themes of the story, that of choice. Harry at several points in the story is reminded of how similar he is to Riddle, but what makes him in truth nothing like Riddle are his choices. Harry has chosen to save lives, rather than take them. Harry has chosen to love, rather than hate. Harry and Riddle may have gone through very similar traumas and so both have light and darkness in them, but Harry chose to act on the light part of himself, whereas Riddle chose to act on the dark part. This, in the end, is what dooms Riddle and saves Harry.

Honestly, if I had my way, I would wait a few more years (2021, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the events starting?) and then remake Harry Potter as an HBO miniseries with a huge budget and a more diverse all-star cast. I think we’re ready to tell this story again now…hopefully with more of the detail and themes that we loved in the original books.

#the mods fix hp!#tory speaks #editorial #opinion #analysis #the houses queue

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hogwartswelcomesyou · 8 years ago

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Zodiac Signs and Hogwarts, by Mods Olga and Tory

((Note by Tory: The intent for this analysis was to examine how our astrological signs’ traits are manifested in characters sorted into our houses -- alas, our mods Jinxy and Abigail, noble representatives of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, have considerably less representation to work with, and so were not able to contribute this time around. Don’t worry, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw -- we love you too!!))

Gryffindor - Aquarius [by Olga]

- Arthur Weasley (February 6th 1950)

Like many who share this sign Arthur Weasley is an original and inventive person. He’ s fascinated with the world of muggles and is keen to get to know their innovations and inventions. His creative and observant nature allow him to come up with his own ideas to use muggle tools in the wizarding world.

Arthur and Molly Weasley, who are both friendly and optimistic people, sure do know how to keep up a good mood and how to care for their many children. Arthur himself is a caring and sociable man. The way he immediately includes and accepts Harry into his family and how he supports his children is also very typical of an Aquarius. They’re often liberal parents and like to be their children’s friends more than authorities who tell them what to do and what not.

Just like themselves they want others to be independent and objective when it comes to debates and views. They are willing to accept someone’s opinion as long as it’s based on facts. Nevertheless they sure have morals that they follow. Arthur Weasley, for example, who is working in the Ministry of Magic in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts, is performing a rather humanitarian work. He is rather concerned about doing what he thinks is right and important than something that pays well. Working overtime and really loving his job, Arthur really is a great example of an enthusiastic Aquarius.

- Lily Potter nee Evans (January 30th 1960)

She is another great example of an Aquarius in Gryffindor. Lily has always been described as a clever and quick-witted student and person in general. Her ambitious and interested mind is a typical trait of an Aquarius. Doing well at school is usually based on their actual interest in the subjects and being involved in what is being taught rather than just studying to be good at something just for the sake of it.

Another aspect is Lily’s non-judgemental personality. She accepts everyone the way he is and sees good in everyone. People are people to her. No matter what they do and who they are. Being accepting and charismatic she’s always had quite a big circle of friends and cared about those who needed help even if they didn’t admit it.

Her love for James Potter and his close friends also shows that she was able to befriend those who she might not have considered liking in the first place. Especially James really had to win her over before she fell for him. Again the Aquarius’ objective side of hers was showing. She managed to accept and love a boy so arrogant and so straight-forward despite his flaws.

He was the person she married and she had a son with for whom she died. The highest of the sacrifices one can make for another human being. Lily died to make someone else live and her selfless and brave nature (and of course her motherly love) allowed her to do so.

Slytherin - Capricorn [by Tory]

- Tom Marvolo Riddle “Lord Voldemort” (December 31st, 1926)

Well, now, I’ve really stepped in it, haven’t I? Yep -- I share both my house and my astrological sign with the worst villain in the Harry Potter universe. Old Moldyshorts is prooooobably not the best example of how to show off the values of your house that one can find in your horoscope, but even I must admit, of all the signs, Tom does definitely fit Capricorn’s traits the best.

The most “Slytherin” trait that Capricorns express is ambition. It is the one word that you notice right away in both category’s descriptions, and it’s something Tom has in spades. He doesn’t just want to be a talented wizard -- he wants to be the best, the most powerful, and he won’t stop until he gets it. This also touches on another Slytherin-like trait of Capricorn’s, determination.

Capricorns can also be known for being conservative, which in the hands of a Slytherin can hint to a love of history. Tom in particular embraces this aspect of Slytherin in the pieces he chooses to turn into Horcruxes. Rather than choosing one lone rock on an abandoned beach or a grain of sand in the desert, Tom chooses objects of historical significance and personal significance to him -- Hufflepuff’s cup, Ravenclaw’s diadem, Slytherin’s locket and ring, his diary, Nagini...all of these things mean something to him personally, and reflect his past.

Finally, both Slytherins and Capricorns are known for their leadership skills, and once again, Tom shows off the exact wrong way to use them. He is so talented at schmoozing and charming that he is able to bring together a band of deplorables and use them to terrorize and subjugate the Wizarding World. Truly, if you need more evidence of how dangerous of a combination this can be in the wrong person, you need look no further than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

- Severus Snape (January 9th, 1960)

The grayest and most controversial Harry Potter character of them all, without a doubt, is the Hogwarts Potions Professor and Head of Slytherin house, Severus Snape. Whether you love him or hate him, however, I think few can deny that he shows off both the good and the bad of Slytherin house, and therefore of the sign he was born under. Since we have already touched on the worst of Slytherin Capricorns through talking about Tommy, though, let’s see if we can delve into the best aspects of a Slytherin Capricorn through wittle Sev.

To start, Capricorns tend to have a very thick outer shell that hides a lot of their innermost feelings, to the extent that many see them as detached and unemotional. Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s pretty much Snape to a tee, and very much Slytherin as well. Slytherins in general tend to put forward a very confident face that hides a lot of their insecurities. As much as Slytherins care about the impression they make, however, they frankly don’t care who dislikes it -- and neither does Snape.

One Capricorn trait that is sometimes put at odds with Slytherin sensibilities is the sign’s fixed down-to-earthness. Slytherins are usually the sorts to adapt and contort to whatever situation they find themselves in, but Capricorns are resilient and never budge from what they are committed to. Snape shows off this apparent paradox perfectly in his commitment to Lily, Dumbledore, and the Order. Snape is flexible enough to work as an effective spy, but his inner code of morality never shifts. Once he decides he’s with you, he’s with you for the long haul and will use his inherent flexibility to fight for you.

Last but not least, let’s touch on Capricorn’s relationship with risk. Capricorns, like Slytherins, are not reckless sorts, but they are still willing to flirt with risk once they have thought it through and rehearsed all possible outcomes. They may be calculating, but they are brave -- and is that not what set Snape apart from Karkaroff, upon Voldemort’s return? Snape saw the danger ahead, weighed all possible outcomes, and decided to fight with the Order anyway. This shows how Slytherin house, despite valuing self-preservation, can still choose fight over flight...as long as it is done consciously and thoughtfully.

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