Leading into Temptation/the Light that Failed

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 47551

Melody points out;

>>Do you not find it the least bit curious that Quirrell just *happened* to 
wander to Albania of all places and just *happened* to find Voldemort.
<snip>
But my views aside, you are saying that Dumbledore knew Voldemort was

in Albania, and Quirrell did not. <<

Not really. Quirrel had been at Hogwarts, either as student or already as 
teacher during Voldy's absence. (his casual reference to the mutual loathing 
between Snape and James Potter suggests that he was at school for at least a 
few years during the same period as Snape and the marauders.) It is quite 
possible that Dumbledore, who openly states that he does not believe that 
Voldemort has been totally destroyed, keeps his staff apprised of the reports 
from Albania.

One snag in all the Quirrell theories is that we do not know a lot of facts 
about the man and Hagrid is an unreliable witness. So is Voldemort, who 
states that Quirrell was already a teacher at Dumbledore's school when he 
caught him, but I think this was probably the truth. Hagrid confirms that 
Quirrell had taught on the basis of theoretical knowlege before taking time 
off to get field experience. Voldemort also refers to Quirrell (in GoF) as 
young, foolish and gullible. 

I suspect that we might be getting a [possible] parallel case/bit of 
foreshadowing here. I see Quirrell as being Percy Weasley's "shadow twin" 
much in the way that the marauders shadow current Hogwarts students, and 
Riddle's circumstances shadow Harry's. (And very possibly Quirrell was yet 
another ex Head Boy -- that would bring us up to four, so far.) Very bright, 
very upstanding, very brave, quite ambitious and much too easliy sold a bill 
of goods once he gets beyond the walls of Hogwarts and out in the real world. 

I don't believe Hagrid's tale of the vampires and the hag. I think Quirrell 
was aquitting himself very nicely in his field testing, and got 
overconfident. He decided to check out the area that Voldemort was allegedly 
holed up in, in the name of "research". And met more than he had bargained f
or. Voldemort hadn't risked possessing humans in his ten-year exile, for fear 
of Aurors, so Quirrell wasn't aware that that was on the menu. He found 
himself up against something too big for him to handle and lost. Voldemort 
got him, body and soul. And he gave up. Completely. He lost every bit of 
fight in him, right there and then.

Melody says;
>>Voldie did not "impose" himself onto Quirrell in the forest and possess 
him.  Quirrell had his choices to make, and he chose to be in the league of 
Voldemort.  That, in my opinion, makes him ever-so-evil.

I also think Dumbledore knows that Voldie cannot possess people without this 
consent.<<

There we will have to agree to disagree. I think he can take possession as 
soon as he gets his victim is too confused or distracted to put up an 
effective fight. I agree that it wasn't quite the *same* form of possession 
as Diary!Riddle's possession of Ginny Weasley. Quirrell was completely 
consious of his actions throughout. But given that it was the same underlying 
wizard who possessed both of them I suspect that the two cases were probably 
more similar than not.

Mind you, I agree that the methods and actions which he took while possessed 
were his own. Voldemort ordered this and that with a "make it so" compulsion 
and it was up to Quirrell to figure it out. But the direction and the 
compulsions which drove him were Voldemort's.  He might just as well have 
been kissed by a dementor. He had no will of his own left. (Note: I see 
another parallel in action here. Looking back, doesn't Quirrell's passive 
acceptandce of enslavement belong somewhere in the same continum as Dobby's 
most unwilling bondage and Peter's [grudging] obedience under [continual] 
protest?)

>>Um, JOdel.  They did let him know.  It was *his* troll before the Snape's 
logic puzzle.  So, he knew the series of obstacles.  He knew where the stone 
was.  He just could not get past Fluffy.<<

Exactly. And just WHO had the key to getting past Fluffy, hm? Can't make the 
problem look *too* easy, after all. He got that information out of Hagrid by 
Easter. Just as anyone might expect. But he didn't *use* the information. He 
sat on it until Dumbledore flushed him out by conspicuously being "called 
away to London".

>>After the cheating and rough housing of Quidditch and the attempt of Malfoy 
to get The Three in trouble over the dragon egg, can you really say Slytherin 
won those points honestly?<<

Well, no. But it was still tactless, and the previous house points lost had 
been accepted as valid by all the staff.