New!TOM - Fight or Rebuild? You be the Judge.

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 117576


Steve (bboyminn) wrote:
> 
> You make is sound as if the very first thing New!Tom would have done
> was go looking for a fight; go looking for Dumbledore, or one of the
> teachers. Personally, that sounds extremely unlikely.
> 
> The first thing he would have done is left that castle as soon as
> possible. The second thing would have been to re-unite with his old
self. The combination of Old!Voldemort and New!Tom would have been a
> substantial adversary. You would be combining the exprience of a 70
> year old, well versed in the Dark Arts, with the youthful body and
> idealistic mind of 16 year old Tom. 
> 
> Assuming they could actually merge themselves into one corporeal
> person, I think the new combined Voldie!Tom would have been more
> powerful and dangerous than either of them separately, and I think
> that is what JKR was referring to when she made the comment about
this eventuality hypothetically occuring. <snip>

Carol responds:
Although I think this scenario must be what JKR had in mind in the
passage you're referring to on your site, but I have a few problems
with it.

First, Voldemort, the terrifying wizard who wanted to take over the
world, would be stuck in the body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Not even
his own followers would recognize him. I suppose that he could prove
his identity by causing their Dark Marks to burn and casting a few
Crucios, but it would still be difficult to consider him as their
near-omnipotent master. He'd have to spend a few years transforming
himself into a more awe-inspiring form.

There is also no guarantee that the two identities would see it as in
their best interest to merge. We might even have rival Voldemorts,
Vapormort searching for a body and Voldie!Tom trying to build a
powerbase and persuade the DEs that he was the "real" Voldemort. How
much would he know about his future self? Would he even know about the
Dark Marks?

And suppose that he *did* want to merge with his future self. How
would he know how to find him? And how would Vapormort know that
Voldie!Tom existed? Last he knew, he'd left his diary at Hogwarts or
in the care of a friend, but how would he know that Lucius Malfoy had
given it to a student, who in turn had loosed the basilisk and given
her soul to Diary!Tom? There's no indication that the restored
Voldemort in GoF even knew about the diary incident. Granted, the
experiment failed, but how would he have known if it succeeded?

It's all hypothetical, I realize, but IMO, a victory over Diary!Tom
wasn't really a victory over Voldemort, only over the clone of a
murderous boy who knew Parseltongue and was capable of casting
Unforgiveable Curses without batting an eye, not much different from
Barty Jr. except in his devotion to his own cause rather than that of
a leader.

Carol