FW: Tom Riddle - placed in danger as a child?

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 137685

Beth:
> I noticed on a re-read this interesting comment from when DD goes
> to the orphanage to visit the young TR:
>  
> "My mother can't have been magic, or she wouldn't have died" said
> Riddle, more to himself than Dumbledore. (chapter 13 "The Secret
> Riddle, page 257 UK edition)
>  
> At this point, TR has only just been told by DD that he is a
> wizard.  Until then, he did not understand why he was able to do
> the things he did - in fact he was worried that DD had come to
> take him to an asylum.  He knows nothing as yet of the wizarding
> world.  So, how did he know that wizards and witches have longer
> lifespans, and are more resilient, than muggles? 

Jen: I thought that comment was supposed to signal the seed planted 
in Tom that magical powers can defeat even death. That's the core of 
his perverted thinking, isn't it? That with magic comes power, the 
ultimate power being immortality. And nothing he learns at Hogwarts 
disabuses him of that notion, in fact, I suspect the more he learned 
about magical power, coupled with discovering his bizarre and 
unstable family history, the more entrenched he became in the idea 
that he could be the most powerful wizard by never dying. 

But this scene points out something that bothered me a little bit 
when Dumbledore and Harry talk about Merope's death. Dumbledore 
says: "Merope refused to raise her wand even to save her own life" 
and Harry responds: "She wouldn't even stay alive for her own son?" 
(Chap. 13, p. 262, US). 

We know magic can't keep someone from dying, so what did they mean 
exactly? It was very vague why she died, and in fact sounded more 
like a broken heart than a physical problem! But I guess maybe DD is 
saying that if something happened at the delivery, say Merope was 
losing a lot of blood, she could have used magic to intervene and 
instead chose not to? And Harry's comment sounds almost like the boy 
Tom Riddle--"she wouldn't stay alive for her son?" like she could 
have intervened with magic and stopped herself from dying. 
Confusing. 
 
Beth:
> The only explanation for this comment, that I can see, is that he
> himself had been in danger or had his life threatened at some
> point in his young life, and had survived without really
> understanding how.
  
> So this leads to all sorts of interesting speculation.  Maybe one
> of the children he bullied fought back but was unable to harm
> Tom.  Maybe one of the staff at the orphanage was cruel and tried
> to hurt him, but was unable to.  

Jen: I would love to know how Tom discovered his magical power, what 
the circumstances were that led him to conciously using his powers 
to hurt others. But I doubt we're going to get any more backstory on 
him. I think that scene was to prove how very different Harry and TR 
were, even by age 11. Harry never chose to think of himself as 
special or different, he never wondered about those 'accidents' when 
magic helped him get out of a jam, and he never intentionally tried 
to hurt people with his magical ability. It's actually a more 
interesting parallel if TR wasn't ever hurt or bullied like Harry 
was; Harry at least would have a reason to try to control and use 
his powers and never does, while Tom was never bullied or hurt yet 
still had that impulse for controlling others at a young age.

Beth:
>In any event, I bet this conversation with DD was the point at
> which TR started to think about immortality and how it could be
> achieved.

Jen: Oops, didn't see this part until after I wrote my first 
paragraph --I obviously agree with you on this!!

Jen