My shocking idea - the case for Tom Riddle

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 73104

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sofdog_2000" 
<sofdog_2000 at y...> wrote:
> 
> Sofdog:
> 
> 1) His memory, in CoS, states that he was already planning to 
be 'Lord Voldemort' a wizard so feared that no one would utter his 
name and that he had already set the basilisk on other students 
(killing Myrtle); 

Me (Wanda):  Yes, but I think that everything we see him doing in CoS came 
after he had already killed his father.  I don't think the two 
memories of the past (in Cos and Gof) happened in the order in which 
we learned about them.  I think they were the other way around, and 
Tom Riddle followed up his killing at Little Hangleton by activating 
the basilisk when he returned to school in the fall.  That's why I 
think Dumbledore looked at him so oddly when he spoke to him in the 
memory; I think Dumbledore could sense that something had happened 
to Tom, and that he'd changed. 
> 
> 
>Sof:  3) He must have been 17 or the Ministry of Magic would have 
tracked his use of a curse (likely the AK) in the presence of 
Muggles, and he was only seen by one person so he likely Apparated; 

Me (Wanda): Yes, that's true.  But would they have known that it was him 
there, doing the AK?  The Ministry would have known that SOMEONE was 
doing magic at the Riddle house, but no one would have known he was 
there.  At the beginning of CoS, the use of magic is detected on 
Privet drive, even though it's Dobby doing it.  Harry gets the blame 
because the Ministry knows that he's the only wizard in the 
neighbourhood, and he's underage.  And actually, I never thought Tom 
apparated; I always assumed he took the train or the bus to get to 
the village!  I mean, he lives among Muggles, like Harry, he'd have 
known how to do it.  But then, I'm assuming that he wasn't going 
there to commit murder, so he wouldn't be trying to cover his 
tracks.  In my theory, he's just going to meet his father for the 
first time.
> 
>Sof:  4) The CoS memory states that it took him 5 years to learn 
all he could about the Chamber of Secrets, therefore he started 
researching at 11, which implies he must have known that he was 
Slytherin's heir - otherwise why bother?

Me (Wanda): These timeline questions always get me very confused!  And when 
you think about it, it's interesting that JKR is so careful to keep 
it hard to date events.  Makes me think that the fact that she so 
clearly states that Dumbledore defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald 
*in 1945* can't be accidental. Anyway, from the few clues I can 
glean from the books, it looks like Tom was 16 when Harry saw his re-
enactment of the framing of Hagrid for the basilisk attacks.  We 
could get all tricky about it, and debate whether he was 15 when it 
HAPPENED, and 16 when he created the memory in the diary, but I'm 
going to take him at his word, and believe that he was 16, at least 
on June 13, when it happened.  Well now, all wizarding students 
receive their letter on their eleventh birthday.  Harry is lucky, 
because his birthday is at the end of July, and school starts about 
a month later.  But what happens to kids born after the school year 
starts?  If Tom's birthday was on September 5 or something, he'd 
have to wait almost an entire year until the following school year 
started.  So he could have had his 12th birthday almost immediately 
after first arriving at Hogwarts.  This would make him about a year 
older than Harry in every school year, so he could have turned 16 
right at the start of his 5th year.  I think that he started 
researching his family history as soon as he got to Hogwarts; I 
don't know if he could have done anything before he left the 
orphanage, but I guess it's possible.  Anyway, we're told that Tom 
was an exceptionally brilliant student, and I have no doubt that he 
was able to trace his lineage back on his mother's side to Salazar 
Slytherin.  (Who knows?  Maybe the Sorting Hat gave him a hint when 
he first arrived.)  The fact that he spent his first 5 years at 
Hogwarts researching the basilisk legend doesn't necessarily mean 
that he was looking for a weapon at that very early stage.  He might 
have just been fascinated by everything having to do with his famous 
ancestor, and set himself to solve this particular mystery, which 
had stumped everyone else.
> 
>Sof:  Which raises the idea that perhaps his heritage, like 
Harry's, was explained to him when he arrived at Hogwarts. At least 
enough to set him on the path to tracing his mother's heritage. His 
father's can't have been very hard to identify given the man was 
from the most prominent family in Little Hangleton, and he had the 
man's name.

Well, it might have taken some time to figure out his father's 
name.  After all, Tom didn't know who he was named after, or even 
where his mother had come from.  He might have thought he was like 
Oliver Twist, and just given a random name at the orphanage.  But if 
he knew his mother's name and researched her geneology he'd have 
eventually found that name "Marvolo", and probably guessed that the 
other names meant something too.  He would have finally found the 
name Tom Riddle, and put it all together. 
> 
This is just a theory, but I like it because it seems to be able to 
contain a lot of details that have always seemed to be just sitting 
there, unconnected to each other.

Wanda