The Deaths of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

[Kelly Grosskreutz]

No: HPFGUIDX 70322

This continues on from my list on PS/SS.  I'd recommend you read that one
first, but you don't have to.  It explains what I'm trying to do here.  The
list in its entirety will also be archived on
http://www.idcnet.com/~ivanova/writings.htm.  Anyway, continuing on...

THE DEATHS OF HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

MOANING MYRTLE- No, this entry isn't here so I can try to claim she is
alive. She is here mainly for completeness, since this book goes on at great
length about her being dead and the last vicitm of the basilisk. I believe
we can safely say that all of the ghosts are truly dead. Myrtle is the first
one we can be 100% sure has died because not only was there a body (that we
even get to see to some extent in the movie), but her ghost still haunts the
girl's bathroom.

          MR. HAGRID - Hagrid's human father. No reason to disbelieve Hagrid
when he says his father died during his second year at Hogwarts.


MRS. RIDDLE - All we know about her is that she is a descendant of Salazar
Slytherin, and that she died after giving birth to her son after her husband
abandoned her upon finding out she was a witch. She presumably lived long
enough to name her son, then died. Although we only hear of this story
through Riddle, who most likely heard of it from the orphanage that raised
him, I don't see any reason to think he is lying about her death or that she
is anything other than dead. What I do wonder, though, is how Riddle found
out about the rest of his heritage. I have problems thinking that Mum Riddle
told the Muggle orphanage that her bloodline could be traced all the way
back to Salazar Slytherin. Maybe she lived long enough to write her son a
letter that explained his heritage and told the orphanage to give it to him
when he reached a certain age.


TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE - In this entry, I mean the one that lived in the diary.
Harry stabbed a poisoned fang through Riddle's diary, which destroyed the
book and presumably the memory. But what does this mean? We know that when
Tom was sixteen, he found a way to magically transfer, as he puts it, a
memory of his sixteen year-old self to a diary. Did he sort of leave an
imprint of himself, cloning himself as he was at that very moment so that it
would stay forever unchanging in the diary? Or is it somewhat reminiscent of
a Pensieve, where he would take lots of strands of silvery stuff and
transfer it to the diary? For the purposes of the rest of this section, I'm
going to say it was closer to the former. In either case, does the Riddle
that grew up to be Lord Voldemort now have a hole in his memory where his
sixteen year-old self was because he put it in the diary? Does he still
retain the knowledge of what transpired when he was sixteen, like the
expulsion of Hagrid and how to open the Chamber of Secrets, but just not the
feelings and everything else that would help one to relive that moment in
one's mind? Did Voldemort still retain any connection at all to the diary
persona, meaning is he aware of what his diary persona may be up to? How
dead is this memory of Tom Riddle?

I ask mainly because of events that transpired at the end of Harry Potter
and the Chamber of Secrets. Riddle seems to know that his non-diary self
went on to become Lord Voldemort and a bunch of other things. Most likely,
this is because Ginny told him, but was Ginny his only source? Did Lucius
ever do any writing in the diary? Or does Riddle have some sort of a
connection to Voldemort and knows some of the things that's been going on in
his life? Also, Riddle asks Harry how he survived Voldemort. Harry tells him
what Dumbledore has told him, and Riddle goes on about how he understood
that Lily's death could be a powerful countercharm. Dumbledore has said
somewhere during the course of this series that her love is what saved
Harry, and that Voldemort never gave that any consideration because he
didn't understand love. In a sense, he underestimated it. Riddle, however,
seems to at least intellectually understand what happened. In Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort makes a comment about wanting the
protection that Harry carries in his blood. Did Voldemort come to this
understanding himself, or did he pick this up through a link with the diary
Riddle?

Now that the diary (and the Riddle that lived inside it) has been destroyed,
what exactly happens to this memory? Does Voldemort still have any memory of
what happened when he was sixteen? Does Voldemort know anything about what
happened with Ginny or with Harry and the Chamber of Secrets? Is this memory
truly gone?

Kelly Grosskreutz
http://www.idcnet.com/~ivanova