Voldemort and Grindelwald (WAS: What year was Voldemort born?)

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 50827

Tom comments;

<< In other words, did Dumbledore encounter Riddle/Voldemort somehow in 
connection with his battle with Grindelwald? I mean, where exactly does 
someone learn the Dark Arts, anyways? One would presume that someone should 
be taught. So, who does the teaching? Dumbledore did say that Riddle 
"consorted with the very worst of our kind."  Perhaps he means that 
Grindelwald was among that number. >>

I have always suspected that the "1945" clue, if it is indeed a clue, has a 
lot more to do with Tom Riddle/Voldemort than it does with WWII and Hitler. 
For one thing, so far as we've been *told*, Riddle knew nothing of the WW 
when he entered the WW. And yet by the end of his first year he was searching 
for the Chamber. Five years later he knew how to create a Dark artefact like 
the diary. Now, young Tom may have been a ticking time bomb, up to his ears 
in "issues" when he reached Hogwarts, but he was a human child, and one with 
no previous knowlege of magic. Somebody "got to" him.

He was clearly gotten to by someone who knew he was the last of Slytherin's 
known decendents, and may very well have been waiting for him to show up. And 
he was clearly coached in the Dark Arts while he was at Hogwarts. WHat is 
more, if he "disapeared" immediately upon leaving school, [apart from a guest 
appearance in Little Hangleton] then he was almost certainly in contact with 
someone who was able to help him make this possible. Voldemorts are made, not 
born. He was 'groomed" for that position, much as Harry is being groomed now. 
His "handlers" no doubt harped on his early mistreatment at the hands of 
Muggles to point him at Muggles and Muggle-borns and have tacitly told him to 
"kill". Quite forgetting that Riddle probably has no inborn reason to love 
wizards either. And I suspect that their creation has made himself more 
personally powerful than they ever expected or intended.

There are some important points, however, which we do not have any 
information on, and which have a great deal to do with one's reading of the 
situation. 

1. The Dark Arts are not currently taught at Hogwarts (only Defense). But we 
don't know how long this has been the case. It is quite possible that this is 
a comparitively recent policy established when Dumbledore became Headmaster. 
It might not have been the case in Dippett's day. Tom could have learned 
something of the Dark Arts quite openly. But we have no indication of this in 
canon. To the best of our knowlege, the Dark Arts may have always been 
prohibited at Hogwarts.

A rather more interesting possibility is in the chronology, as you pointed 
out;

If the Lupin statement quoted in another discussion; that "It wasn't thought 
that I would be able to attend Hogwarts. But then Dumbledore became 
Headmaster..." is an indication of just *when* Dumbledore became Headmaster 
(just before Lupin and the rest of his friends  started Hogwarts) the timing 
of all things related to Voldemort becomes even more suggestive. 

Lupin and his friends were 22-23 when Voldemort was first defeated, on the 
night of 10/31/81. (sources; Rowling interview about the time of GoF; "Snape 
is 35-36 years old" [presumably at the end of the book] Lupin's comment in 
PoA regarding Snape; "We were in the same year..." Harry is just short of 15 
at the end of GoF.) Consequently if they were 20-21 when Harry was born, they 
would have started Hogwarts around 1969. 

If Dumbledore had only just become Headmaster, what had he been doing since 
1945? Either defeating Grindlewald was no big deal, and no one made a great 
hero of him for it -- although the Daily Prophet would have assured that he 
would have been "famous" for it -- and he had been blamelessly teaching at 
Hogwarts during the intervening period, under either Dippett or a sucession 
of Headmasters/Headmistresses, or, defeating Grindlewald was a big enough 
deal that he was offered and had accepted some other job somewhere else, 
possibly in the Ministry, only returning to Hogwarts as Headmaster. For the 
academic year beginning 1969.

What is particularly suggestive about this second possibility, is the 
statement, hidden in the summary which Harry is given of the events leading 
up to the first defeat of Voldemort, that Voldemort had *first* surfaced and 
begun attracting followers *11 years before Harry was born* [in 1980]. Or, in 
other words, the year that Harry's parents started Hogwarts and Dumbledore is 
clearly stated as being Headmaster of Hogwarts and firmly entrenched at the 
school, rather than anywhere else in the Ministry of Magic or any other 
position of power within the wizarding government. Such as being in a 
position to have monitored Riddle's subsequent activities.

Therefore, the question is; was it purely by chance that Voldemort only went 
public the year that Harry's parents started Hogwarts? Or did the fact that 
Albus Dumbledore was now Headmaster (rather than in any other official 
capacity elsewhere) have something to do with it? Was Voldemort waiting until 
Dumbledore was out of the way before resurfacing? Was the fact that he was 
almost unrecognizable a side effect of his search for immortality, a 
deliberate weapon of terror, or for some other reason? Just how long has the 
Riddle/Dumbledore duel been in progress. And did Riddle inherit it from his 
teachers?

I would suggest that Grindlewald was regarded as a nuisance rather than a 
threat (by anyone who had heard of him. I propose that the name is about as 
genuine as the name "Voldemort" is) until after his defeat, and that 
something in the investigation following that defeat suggested (to 
Dumbledore, although possibly not to others) that there was an organization 
behind him and that there was more going on beneath the surface than one Dark 
wizard carrying on in a manner that might pose a potential a problem to the 
WW's security.

What is more, I suspect that Dumbledore didn't need to go seek him out. He 
was already there, within Hogwarts, itself. (Possibly the reason that the 
Dark Arts are no longer taught at Hogwarts? Hm?)

I'd like to know more about Grindlewald myself. But this whole setup has the 
sort of elaborate trappings which suggest that it could turn out to be a 
particularly gaudy and distracting red herring. We'll have a better 
indication of the matter if Grindlewald (who to date has been merely a name 
on a chocolate frog card) is mentioned at *any* point in the 5th book. If he 
is significant, it is about time he was reintroduced to the story line.

-JOdel