OOP!!! what now?/characters

[Charles Phipps]

No: HPFGUIDX 61904

> How long after James and Lily left school did Voldemort come to 
> power?  If it was a very short time, Dumbledore could have already 
> been predicting it, and knew that James would be a powerful ally 
> against LV and in the school?  Maybe he was taking advice from the 
> Sorting Hat :)  

Lets remember that Tom Marvolo Riddle isn't a contemporary of James 
and Lily.  He is actually about seventy years old taking into 
account Rowling's words that the HP books aren't completely parallel 
to our own time (Harry graduates in 2000 so the current book is 
actually about 98) 

By the time that James and Lily are graduating, perhaps in 80 
Voldemort has already been a graduated wizard of Hogwarts for about 
thirty years.  Even in his senior year he was controlling Basilisks.

While certainly he must have studied a long time; Voldemort's tactics 
are violent and I can imagine even his studies were brutal.  Killing 
wizards for libraries and experimentation and all that...and he was 
probably building a network in Slytherin even when he was a school 
prefect.

Hence by James and Lily's time the name Voldemort might have invoked 
fear, terror, and hatred already in their parent's generation as much 
as it did in Harry's generation and no doubt theirs.

> I can't believe Dumbledore made MALFOY a prefect.  That shocks me.

Well Idle hands are the Devil's workshop.  Malfoy is a bratty little 
git but while he's got a heart of charcoal he's only a bully and 
hasn't graduated to the evil his father practices, he merely approves 
of it.  As a prefect docking points and making peoples lives 
miserable he's not spying on Dumbledore (abet he's spying for 
Umbridge) or recruiting Slytherin to serve Tom.

-Charlemagne