Why Wasn't Hagrid Cleared?

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 42193

Phyllis wrote:
> why does everyone (except Dumbledore) still believe Hagrid 
> opened the Chamber of Secrets 50 years ago when it subsequently 
> became clear that Tom Riddle was Voldemort and the true Heir of 
> Slytherin?  As Professor Binns points out, only the Heir of Slytherin 
> can open the chamber.  So once Riddle revealed himself as Voldemort 
> and the Heir of Slytherin, why didn't everyone put these pieces 
> together and realize that Hagrid was framed?

No-one, or at least very few people, know that Voldemort is the Heir of 
Slytherin, and even less people know that he was once Riddle. To quote: 
(Sp. Ed. CoS, ch.18, liberal translation) "Very few know that Lord 
Voldemort was called before Tom Riddle. [...] Almost no-one related 
Lord Voldemort with the intelligent and charming boy that won the 
Annual Price". As you can see, there is not a single reference to the 
Heir here, so I'd imagine that's even less known. For most people, 
there could be any number of Heirs going around (just check the list. 
The listees have worked up lots of theories to have even more heirs 
running around).

What is almost sure is that no-one in the MoM (Ministry of Magic) knows 
that Voldemort attended school when the chamber was open, at least 
prior to CoS, and thus there is no way Hagrid could have been cleared. 
Voldemort did not "reveal" himself as Riddle or the Heir of Slytherin: 
he did not make any public declarations, nor did he leave very many 
people alive to tell stories, so Hagrid, at the beggining of GoF, is 
still the culprit to the eyes of MoM justice.

Strangely enough, one of the few people that might now who Voldemort is 
is Ollivander, since he knows the wand that he sold him. Before you 
ask, though, there are two ways out of this. Voldemort may have bought 
the wand just before iniciating the Reign of Terror, when he was not 
yet persecuted by justice (in which case Ollivander doesn't know), or 
Dumbledore told Ollivander when he was looking for information about 
Voldemort, in this case the sort of wand he uses. The conversation 
could have gone like this:

Dumbledore: Hello, Ollivcander, have you sold lately a wand to one by
            the name Voldemort?
Ollivander: No , I haven't. Who's he?
D: I have reason to believe that he is responsible for the -insert V's
   first victim-'s death. Anyway, can you tell me what wand you sold to
   Riddle? Before you ask, yes, it could be him.
O: Yes, I remember, it was one of the two wands I created with Fawkes's
   feather.
D: Thanks. Please keep it a secret. It's going to be difficult to stop
   him as it is. Oh, and if you ever sell the other one, tell me.
O: Don't worry, I will -on both counts.

> The only way I can make this make sense is if Dumbledore is the only 
> one who knows that Riddle is Voldemort.  But if Dumbledore's the only 
> one who knows, how did he find out something that no one else knows, 
> and why did he keep it a secret?  

I firmly believe that Dumbledore and Voldemort have been playing a very 
dangerous sort of war: a secret war, in which information is the prime 
weapon. Dumbledore knew, during the Reign of Terror, that he could 
trust no-one, especially the people in charge of the MoM, which was 
probably the first place visited by the Imperius-armed deatheaters, and 
where everyone was subjugated, incopetent, or both. Thus, when he 
discovered the transformation of his prime student (which he already 
suspected was somewhat evil) into Lord Voldemort, he did not tell 
anyone but his closest allies. 

How did he discover it? The Reign of Terror is a terrorist campaign, as 
we all know. To face a terrorist group, there are two opposed paths 
that can be taken. One is naked force -path taken by the MoM- and the 
other is knowing your enemy, and destroying it from within -path taken 
by Dumbledore. I'd imagine that one of the first things Dumbledore set 
his spies to work on was the identity of this new dark wizard who 
called himself Lord Voldemort.

Another posibility is that Dumbledore, who always seems to know what's 
going on at Hogwarts, overheard Riddle's friends talking to him using 
that title, and he just put two and two toghether. I don't really like 
this explanation.

> Also, on p. 314 (Scholastic ed.), 
> Riddle tells Harry that Voldemort "was a name I was already using at 
> Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course."  Are we to 
> assume that this was a secret these "intimate friends" kept for 50 
> years?  Especially since some of them renounced Voldemort when he 
> fell from power?

What happened to his school friends, then? Why didn't they tell anyone? 
We don't know for sure that they joined Voldemort's ranks. They knew 
too much, and Voldemort does not normally people who know too much to 
live (nor do any other Evil overlords, normally). Evidently, they could 
relate him to the old Riddle. If they did join, they could've been hit 
by memory-blocking courses. Or they died painful deaths while they 
where looking for dark powers, and only the most powerful, Riddle, 
survived the search. 

Finally, maybe there were people in the Deatheaters who knew the Riddle 
story, but when Voldemort fell, they simulated having been imperioed, 
and got of lighter than by trying to explain the blood-hungry officials 
of the MoM stories about Voldemort. After all, if he's dead, no-one 
cares who he had been before becoming Voldemort, and if he's somehow 
survived -as all of them suspected he might have- and he ever made a 
return, he would not be happy about any of his Deatheaters telling the 
MoM his secrets. And an unhappy Voldemort is not something any of the 
DE wanted to experience personally. Don't forget that not a single DE 
abandoned Voldemort. They fear him too much to double-cross him (except 
Snape), even if he looks dead.

Finally, you suggest that some of his friends might have spilled the 
beans before the Reign of Terror. This makes even less sense. I don't 
think anyone would go around telling people the secret names his 
friends had in school, and even if he did, no-one would listen to him.

> Also, why would Hagrid be sent to Azkaban during the second wave of 
> attacks when he wasn't sent there the first time (when there was 
> presumably more compelling evidence against him)?  Are we to presume 
> that one has to be a certain age in order to be sent to Azkaban, and 
> Hagrid was too young the first time?
>
> Phyllis

What is absolutely sure is that 50 years ago, the laws were much 
lighter than in the post-Reign of Terror WW. You couldn't be AKed on 
suspicion of being a DE, there were no Dementors at Azkaban, etc. Apart 
from the fact that you don't normally send a 15-year-old to jail, 
Hagrid might have been left out of it on the promise that he would 
never open it again -but was nonetheless prevented from ever becoming a 
wizard. When the attacks started in CoS, those brick-brained at the MoM 
decided to injail Hagrid, just in case. And of course, the laws allowed 
it without any sort of trial.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf