Tom Riddle (was: Voldemort's name)

[Marci]

No: HPFGUIDX 82024


"Geoff Bannister"  <gbannister10 at a...> wrote:
> > 
> > Re Dumbledore calling him "Tom". I often have contact with old 
> > pupils; some folk I taught are now into their fifties. I still 
tend 
> > to address them by their first names. It's what I was used to 
doing 
> > in years past.
> > 
> > Is Dumbledore more likely to want to make LV feel small or to try 
> to 
> > reach something reachable? I shall duck, don a tin hat, duck 
behind 
> > the battlements and wait for the theories to fly over me.
> 
> 
> Jen:
> 
> I viewed the scene where Dumbledore calls Voldemort 'Tom' as being 
a 
> very tactical, but not vindictive, move on Dumbledore's part.
> 
> We know from the graveyard scene in GOF that Voldemort was "willing 
> to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortality. I set my 
> sights lower....I would settle for my old body back again, and my 
old 
> strength."  (GOF, US, chap. 33, p. 656).
> 
> Dumbledore knows Voldemort is "back in his old body again" as well, 
> when Harry relates the events of the Graveyard scene.
> 
> So in this interaction, I believe Dumbledore is working on two 
> levels: 1) To remind Voldemort he is no longer immortal, and that 
> Dumbledore knows this and 2) to appeal to any tiny *sliver* of 
> humanity that may exist in that "old body" i.e. some echo of a 
memory 
> of Tom Riddle.

My turn:

I have to disagree on the *sliver* of humanity that may exist in the 
old Tom Riddle.  This is the boy who unleashed the Basilisk from the 
Chamber of Secrets, framed Hagrid for it, knows he's responsible for 
killing a girl, and murders his father and grandparents.

I have to say the DD calls Voldemort Tom because he knows who he 
was/is.  And I think there are very few Dark wizards who know this 
information.  In the DE's, this includes Lucius and Peter.  Most of 
them don't have a clue that they follow a halfblood.

Marci