Chat: Not Born Evil...

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 92104

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at e...> wrote:
> mnich: Was Voldemort born evil? 
> JK Rowling replies -> I don't believe that anybody was born evil. 
> You will find out more about the circumstances of his birth in the 
> next book. 
> 
> Jen: I found this the most compelling answer in the whole chat. So 
> there's more to LV's birth than previously mentioned, maybe 
> something Tom Riddle didn't know about? He had to piece his history 
> together from Muggle records which wouldn't include any unexplained 
> magic events. Very interesting.
> 
> That seems to support the idea that LV could still have a drop of 
> humanity in him from Tom Riddle, before he turned evil! I sense some 
> mercy/redemption coming our way via Harry.

Carol:
The fact that Voldemort chose baby Harry over baby Neville as the one
he identified with and considered the greater threat suggests that at
some level he was still Tom Riddle, as does his apparent compulsion to
"relive family history" near the end of GoF. Whether there's a chance
for redemption or not, the Voldemort who takes a bit of bone from his
Muggle father's grave to restore his own semihuman body is still on
some level the same person as the cold-blooded, hate-filled boy who
murdered his father and grandparents. Despite the many transformations
that have robbed him of his once-handsome features, the denial of his
Muggle ancestry by changing his name, and the near-immortality that
enables him to survive a back-fired AK, LV is still a much-corrupted
Tom Riddle with something human left in him (as DD sensed by
addressing him as Tom in the MoM). That human element (perhaps
mortality?) may have been reinforced by Harry's blood, Wormtail's
flesh, and Tom's dead father's bone.

Harry sensed the similarities between himself and young Tom as early
as CoS. I doubt that he sees them as clearly in the thing Tom Riddle
has become. And yet he sees LV's death at his hands as murder. I
wonder. . . .

Carol, who thinks that Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort entirely
through his own wrong choices without any help from the spirit of
Salazar Slytherin