Villains in potterverse

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 116613


Kim wrote:
> I agreed with most of the rest of your post, but left out most here
to focus on your sign-off which was intriguing.  Did you mean that
you're hoping that Voldemort will be able to find his lost humanity by
finding his inner Tom Riddle, that is, the Tom Riddle who may have
been born with the potential for goodness like any other child?  If
so, that's what I keep hoping too. It's far-fetched, I realize.  Else
why was Tom Riddle's wand the alternate of Harry's?  If anybody's a
real "good guy" IMO, Fawkes is.  So why would the only other feather
that Fawkes donated to a wand be in the wand of Tom Riddle/Lord
Voldemort?  I mean, in the hands of a real baddie like LV, Fawkes's
feather ought to explode or something.   Teenage TR was definitely on
the road to evilhood (or already there) but maybe the child TR wasn't
so bad.  And the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and redemption after all.

Carol responds:
I don't know if an eleven-year-old could already be on his way to
becoming evil, but I think the wands have a kind of foresight or
intuition rather like the "brains" in the Sorting Hat and can tell who
they're suited to. James's wand senses his skill at Transfiguration,
Lily's senses her skill at Charms, Harry's apparently knows that he's
The One with the Power to defeat Voldemort.

I'm not saying that Voldemort's wand was evil, but it was a powerful
wand made of yew with a Phoenix feather core, both the wood and the
core being associated with immortality. (Note that yew trees are often
planted in graveyards as symbols of eternal life.) I think the wand
sensed Tom's potential as a great wizard and the latent longing for
immortality (and greatness) that he himself would have been unaware of
at the time. The wand chose him and is not likely to explode in his
hands regardless of how he uses it. Perhaps the wand becomes evil
along with the wizard if it's frequently misused: Note Amos Diggory's
reference to "the guilty wand" in GoF.

There's more to it, I'm sure, but I seriously doubt that Tom Riddle,
now transformed into Voldemort, will be or can be redeemed.

I also believe that by searching for eternal life in *this* world (or
rather the WW), he's somehow missed out on the opportunity to find
eternal peace or redemption or whatever is offered in the "next great
adventure." He'll be like someone whose soul has been sucked by a
Dementor, condemned forever to darkness and nothingness--the Abyss or
the Void, but not the world beyond the Veil. But how JKR could convey
that fate, if I'm right, I have no idea.

Carol