Motivations for Joining DEs - Pure blood and Propaganda

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 140968


> Elyse: So how come Voldemort was able to masquerade around as a 
> pureblood? Okay, even if he wasnt faking it, how can he go around 
> telling DE's that he is pureblood? 

zgirnius:
I don't insist on it, it is just something that has struck me as odd. 
And your discussion provided me with a nice place to trot this idea 
out, thanks! (That someone using a Muggle father's last name could 
claim to be a pureblood.) About Voldemort, I could see this working 
out in a couple of ways. One way is that it could have been known 
that Tom Riddle was a half-blood. Early DEs would not have a problem 
with this because, while he is only half wizard, what a half!! (The 
Heir of Slytherin...) And once the Lord Voldemort mystique got going, 
who would ask? Can you see Bella asking the Dark Lord "Pardon me, 
your glorious Darkness, but what is your *real* name?"

Another would be that he could simply claim that he does not know his 
parentage. (In fact, this would be *true* at the start of his school 
days.) His dying mother left the last name "Riddle" at the Muggle 
orphanage. There are no Wizarding Riddles? She must have been 
protecting his pureblood father from scandal...or maybe the Muggles 
at the orphanage just got it wrong. Even by Muggle standards his 
parentage is not documented. TR Sr. would be considered the father if 
Merope has provided the Orphanage with documentation of the marriage, 
but she did not. If she had, the Muggle authorities would probably 
have tracked him down...such paperwork tends to include things like 
addresses, places of birth, etc...for both parties. (I live in the 
US, but I can't imagine this is so different over in England!) So he 
asserts he *must be* a pureblood, and his claim sticks. (To 
paraphrase Sluggie, a youth showing such powerful magical abilities 
must come of good, solid wizarding stock...)

> Elyse: I snipped a little, but they were excellent points, and I 
> cant really refute them. I just imagined that Slytherin was a 
> predominantly pureblood house since the Sorting hat keeps harping on
> about how Slytherin wanted to teach those whose ancestry is purest 
> and from what weve seen of the Chamber of Secrets, Salazar 
Slytherin 
> was a lunatic when it came to "purging the school of those who were 
> unworthy  of learning magic".
> He hid a Basilisk in the castle for future use! And as Ron says, he 
> was the one who started the pureblood stuff. I doubt anybody with 
> that kind of fanatical zeal for killing Mudbloods would allow too 
> many of them into his own house. Not unless they had the necessary 
> qualities anyway.
>
zgirnius:
I tend to cut Salazar Slytherin some slack. The man lived 1000 years 
ago and most of what we hear about him seems to be oral tradition, 
which in that time period can get pretty garbled. Can we see GG, HH, 
and RR being good friends with a man who wanted to kill all 
Muggleborns?  (As the Hat claims he was). If SS lost it at some 
point, can we even see the other Founders as letting him go his way 
and do his thing, if his insanity has taken the form of a desire to 
exterminate all Muggle-borns? I can see some other possible uses for  
a Basilisk. (To protect the school from Muggle or other attack, for 
example...) The person who activated the Basilisk and let it loose on 
the school to go after Muggleborns was Tom Riddle, and this seems to 
have been the first time in 1000 years that the Basilisk was seen.

I could see Slytherin House not getting Muggle-borns, but taking half-
bloods and purebloods whose belief systems in some way 
match "conservative", "pro-pureblood" views. Riddle, for example, 
cares nothing for his Muggle parent (who he believes at this point is 
his *mother*). Once he learns of its existence, the Wizarding World 
is all he wants to be a part of. I could see Snape (if his parents, 
as we suspect, have an unhappy marriage) to believe that liaisons 
between Muggles and Wizards/Witches are a *bad idea*, which would 
also fit. Finally, I could see the Dark Arts as somehow being all 
tied in with this. (I think Basilisk-taming (creation?) would fall 
under DA...I would guess SS was a Dark wizard.) Dumbledore does not 
like them, but it appears that they are to some degree acceptable. 
Aurors are law enforcement personnel who hunt Dark Wizards, but we 
never hear them going after the Black family wholesale, do we? Just 
Bella, who is a known criminal. (In other words, they do go after 
Dark Wizards, but only when they actually commit overt acts which are 
considered criminal, like torturing the Longbottoms into insanity...) 
So a half-blood with an interest in DA might also Sort into Slytherin.