LV's mudblood ancestry

[Tom Wall]

No: HPFGUIDX 57183

Odile wrote:
Hi Everyone, I'm new to the Group {{waves}} and
really glad to have joined.

I (Tom) reply:
Hi there, nice to have you!


Odile wrote:
The motivation of Tom Riddle/Voldemort is something
that intrigues me as well. But I am having a really
hard time with that of Lucius Malfoy and the other
Death Eaters: if Mudbloods (and all those they
consider inferior to them) are so repulsive to them,
then why are they devoted to someone with this
background?

I was thinking that maybe they are just not aware that
LV is/was really Tom Riddle, son of a Muggle,<snip>
END QUOTE.

I (Tom) reply:
I love a really realistic villain, especially one who's deeply 
scarred, yet still as compromised morally as Voldemort is.

IMHO, it's not clear that the Death Eaters are aware that Voldemort 
is half-blooded. First, Dumbledore tells us in CoS Ch.18 that "Very 
few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle." So, 
it's possible (however unlikely) that none of the Death Eaters 
really know about this. 

Second, after checking GoF Ch.33 (the graveyard scene) again, I 
realized that Voldemort never tells the Death Eater circle that he's 
a half-blood. He told Harry in the last chapter, and Wormtail was 
around, so I guess we could say that Wormtail probably knows (if he 
was paying attention while he was moaning and writhing in pain on 
the ground,) but it's unclear that the circle as a whole knows. 
Voldemort, after all, doesn't actually tell them his father's *name* 
in this scene - all he says is that his father is buried in te 
graveyard.

So, although the "purebloods" seem to be the ones following 
Voldemort, we don't really have *too* much to suggest that his 
ultimate driving force (or theirs) is the elimination of muggleborns.


Patricia wrote:
All of which, I think, demonstrates that the Voldemort Wars are not 
really a conflict of ideas, however much LV would like us to believe 
that's the case. It's fundamentally about personal advancement and 
weilding power over others. Any idealistic component is and will 
always be secondary to that goal.

I agree that the acquisition of power is a major theme on 
Voldemort's agenda. In PS/SS, Quirrell tells Harry that Voldemort 
taught him that "There is no good and evil, there is only power, and 
those too weak to seek it..."

Although, to contract a little with Patricia, I do think that ideas 
are involved in this war to some degree, but, I think it applies 
more to Dumbledore than Voldemort: IMHO, Dumbledore is working 
within the constraints of ideologies at all turns: Dumbledore 
endorses muggle-protection and international magical cooperation; 
Dumbledore won't use Dark Magic, although he can; Dumbledore 
generally prefers the truth to lies; and, well, on top of all this, 
Dumbledore is just a more moral guy anyways, and one who probably 
wouldn't accept other moral compromises like killing and, say, using 
the Unforgivable on victims.

Anyways, another possible goal of the Death Eaters - in GoF, 
Voldemort says "You know my goal – to conquer death."

And in CoS, it's interesting that Diary!Riddle tells Harry "that 
killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore? For many months now, 
my new target has been - *you.*"

So, Voldemort seems to have many goals, and any of these Death 
Eaters could be in it primarily for the "prestige," the power, the 
influence, or even the quest for immortality itself. I personally 
think that many of `em are there because they're too afraid that 
he'll win and in the end they'll be on the wrong side.

As for the muggle killings before, which indicate that Voldemort 
still has animosity towards non-magic users, it seems to me that 
these killings were occurring during a similar death campaign on 
magical families that were threats to Voldemort's rise to power. I 
see the Weasleys like this – even though they're pure-blood, they're 
still dangerous to the Dark cause. So, in that sense, I think that 
the muggle killings are coordinated to create an atmosphere of 
insecurity and chaos, not necessarily a preconceived plan for 
genocide, ala the Nazis.

On security, McGonagall does say, in PS/SS Ch.1, that "A fine thing 
it would be if, on the very day You-Know-Who seems to have 
disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all."

So, as far as entities like the MoM are concerned, I'd bet that 
Voldemort's rise to power was considered to be not only an internal 
disaster, but also a serious security compromise. 

We see from GoF, during the chapters before and after the Quidditch 
World Cup, that the MoM takes anti-Muggle security very seriously, 
and that's why there's a whole division like the "Accidental Magic 
Reversal Squad," of which a part are the "Obliviators," whose job it 
is to perform memory charms which maintain the privacy of the WW. 

They must've been really busy during the last Voldemort war.


Odile wrote:
<snip> but surely Lucius knew because he had Tom's diary in his
possession in CoS.

I (Tom) reply:
I'd be inclined to agree with you, except that recently, I realized 
something about the memory of Tom Riddle that we see in the diary. 

Riddle never mentions Malfoy. 

All he talks about is Ginny, and later how he wanted to meet Harry. 
So I guess, technically, we don't know that Malfoy and Diary!Riddle 
were ever in contact with each other.

To be fair, Dumbledore seems to think so, because he says: "Oh, no 
one will be able to do that... Not now that Riddle has vanished from 
the book." (CoS, Ch.18) But as far as I know, we haven't seen any 
indication that they were, say, planning together or anything.

So, in other words, it's possible that Lucius never communicated 
with Diary!Riddle, and so the reason I brought all that up at all is 
that because of this, Lucius might not know about Riddle's past from 
that book, as Harry does.


Odile wrote:
And I wish I could find the reference in the canon
(sorry) but I recall reading that some of Tom Riddle's
friends started calling him "Lord Voldemort" while he
was still a student at Hogwarts - surely his fellow
students would have known his background, that when
not in school he had to stay at a Muggle orphanage?

Tom replies:
Well, Diary!Riddle says to Harry in CoS Ch. 18:

"[Lord Voldemort] was a name that I was already using at Hogwarts, 
to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going 
tyo use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins 
runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's 
side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me 
even before I was born, just because he found out my mother was a 
witch? No, Harry – I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew 
wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become 
the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

Boy, that guy has issues. 

Anyways, I guess that he probably really did keep the name quiet, as 
he says: with his "most intimate friends." As for everyone else 
knowing he was a half-blood, well, I guess they would know that he 
was a half-blood, but not that he became Lord Voldemort. Diary!
Riddle suggests that, at least, Headmaster Dippet knew he was half-
blood. And again, Dumbledore apparently knows, since he talks about 
how few people actually know that Voldemort and Tom Riddle are one 
and the same.

So, if the name itself was kept a closely-guarded secret, and very 
few people can connect the name with Tom Riddle, then, in a sense, 
the reasoning must be this: Although many people would know that Tom 
Riddle was a half-blood, many people wouldn't know that Riddle was 
Voldemort, and so it's possible that only a very few, select people 
know that Voldemort is himself a half-blood.

I guess that sort of does parallel the Hitler stuff that's being 
discussed alongside all this. After all, whatever secrets Hitler 
kept (and I've heard both that he was Jewish, and also that he had a 
sustained fling with a male officer,) these items were certainly not 
common knowledge during his rise to and hold on power. 

And so it seems, neither are Voldemort's.

-Tom