What is Tom Riddle? Was (a tunnel, a diary and a memory.....)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 113687

I commented in a recent post that investigating the Chamber of 
Secrets seem to produce more questions than it answers but one 
question which is beginning to occupy my thinking in the context of 
the Chamber of Secrets is not "Who is Tom Riddle?" but "WHAT is Tom 
Riddle?"

By his own admission, he is a "memory":

"Are you a ghost?" Harry said uncertainly.
"A memory," said Riddle quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty 
years."
(COS "The Heir of Slytherin" p.227 UK edition)

But does this make him unique? He is not a ghost, because he now 
possesses the ability to handle real objects, as shown when he picks 
up Harry's wand.

Mac wrote:
"We must all recall that Ginny spends months with the diary and 
almost certainly, as Harry did, was taken in, quite literally. 
Malfoy, on the other hand knew its darkly magical nature and so would 
handle it with kid (or dragon hide) gloves and, if he wrote in it, 
would do so as his ONLY means of communication, not allow himself to 
be taken into its pages as both Harry and Ginny did." (post 113632)

I don't subscribe to the view that Harry allowed himself to be taken 
into the diary – he chose to go.

`What did Riddle mean? How could he be taken inside somebody else's 
memory? He glanced nervously at the door to the dormitory, which was 
growing dark.  When he looked back at the diary, he saw fresh words 
forming.
"Let me show you."
Harry paused for a fraction of a second and then wrote two letters.
"OK."'
(COS "The Very Secret Diary" p.180 UK edition)

Valky wrote:
"The point of my theory is that Tom Riddle had a chance to do 
something by using Ginny in the winter of COS. I lean towards that he 
created himself a personal entrance to Hogwarts but that's pure 
speculation. Speculation that surely doesn't need to hold any real 
water on its own, as long as the fact remains that Tom Riddle was 
making Ginny do evil things in the Winter of COS. Which he was 
because she threw the book away after Christmas break even though 
there weren't any attacks then !"  (post 113630)

Canon implies very clearly that Tom may have been persuading Ginny to 
do things on his behalf but he was not directly and physically 
involved at that time....

``"Haven't you guessed yet, Harry Potter?" said Riddle softly. "Ginny 
Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school 
roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the 
serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods and the Squib's cat."'
(COS "The Heir of Slytherin" p.229 UK edition)

`"So I made Ginny write her own farewell message on the wall and come 
down to wait. She struggled and cried  and became very boring. But 
there isn't much life left in her; she put too much into the diary, 
into me. Enough to leave its pages at last."'
(ibid. p.231)

Tom was not able to leave the diary until he was draining the life 
from Ginny....  So it is unlikely that he was creating blocked 
passageways in the castle in the previous winter.

What would have happened if Ginny had died and Riddle had become 
fully corporeal again? It has already been suggested that we would 
have a Voldemort Mk.I and a Voldermort Mk.II. How would they 
interact? Tom is not a time-turned Voldemort; he is an entity which 
has pursued a separate existence for 50 years – or for what part of 
that time he has been "awake". I wonder if the existence pursued by 
a "memory" might be akin to that of a portrait; it has been suggested 
in the past that a portrait knows the memories of its subject up to 
the point of painting and can have a sentient existence of its own. 
Tom Riddle certainly has that ability plus the skill of absorbing and 
analysing information about his future self. So the idea of two 
Voldemorts is thought-provoking indeed!

There is also the strange fate of Tom Riddle; taken out of existence 
because the medium in which he had remained for 50 years was 
destroyed. Was he unique? Was he, like Tom Bombadil in LOTR, a one-
off?

Which brings me back to my opening question: "What is Tom Riddle?"