CoS -Harry's knowledge of Lord Voldemort- Post 2

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161475

Beatrice wrote:
>
> Post 2 – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – Harry's knowledge
> of Lord Voldemort
<snip>
> D. It is a "large, dimly lit wizard's shop- but nothing in here
> was ever likely to be on a Hogwarts school list." (Harry)

Carol responds:
I don't think Harry actually says or thinks this. It's the
third-person narrator, reflecting Harry's pov. right?
<snip>

> 5. Tom Marvolo Riddle kept a "blank" diary, purchased in
> Vauxhall Road, London, dating back 50 years prior to the year that
> the Chamber was last opened (231)

Carol:
I think you mean fifty years before the present school year (1992-93),
not fifty years before the Chamber was opened (1942-43 or maybe 1943).
<snip>
> 
> 8. Riddle also received a "Medal for Magical Merit" and was
> head boy during his time at Hogwarts (234)

Carol:
I'd forgotten the Medal for Magical Merit, thanks. Odd that no other
character seems to have received one AFAWK. What chapter is this
reference in? (I have the American edition and the page numbering is
different.)
> 
Beatrice:
> 9. Riddle used "magic" to leave his memories in the diary. He is
> able to "speak" to people who write on the pages (240) (We know know 
> that the magic in question here is the horcrux TR encased in the 
> diary - probably after Myrtle's death -HBP).

Carol:
Oops. I've already argued that the memories could have been placed in
the diary and an interactive charm placed on it before Tom turned it
into a Horcrux
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/161328 and
accompanying thread.
What does CoS say about it (without bringing in what we "know" from
HBP)? We do know from CoS that Tom decided to preserve the memory of
himself in the diary after Myrtle's death and the Hagrid incident,
which appear in a specifically dated memory, but what else does CoS
say and who is the source?)

Beatrice: 
> 10. Hagrid was expelled for opening the chamber and Myrtle was
killed on June 13, 1943. (243)

Carol:
Hagrid is framed on June 13. I'm not sure that he was expelled that
same day. (It must have been soon afterwards, however.)
> 
Beatrice:
> 11. The CoS was opened in Riddle's 5th year at Hogwarts.  (241) This 
> was also Hagrid's 3rd year (in SS /PS Hagrid reveals that he  was 
> expelled in his third year).
> 
> 11. The diary has powers similar to the pensieve (242)

Carol:
Which we haven't seen yet, either. Maybe it would be better to say
what it can do from the perspective of a reader who hasn't read the
later books?

Beatrice:
<snip>
> A. We know that TR leaves the orphanage to murder his father in
> the summer of his 6th year (one year later). Does he go back to the
> orphanage? Does he leave it at any other time during those
> summers? Does he visit Grindelwald? <snip>

Carol responds:
Dumbledore says in HBP that they were killed in Tom's sixteenth year,
but he has to mean when Tom was sixteen (which would technically be
his seventeenth year), in July or August 1943, after Myrtle's murder
but before the conversation with Slughorn about Horcruxes. However,
CoS doesn't tell us anything about these events. We only know that Tom
hated his "filthy Muggle father" and had already started to call
himself Lord Voldemort to rid himself of his father's name. There's no
evidence that Diary!Tom knew that he would kill his father or even
that he knew about Grindelwald. (He must have heard about him, but he
doesn't mention him, nor do we *know* even now that Grindelwald had a
Horcrux. I'll bet he did, but only because that's how I piece the
puzzle together.)

Well, so far you've unearthed information that came in handy for GoF
(the Pensieve), OoP (the Pensieve again; LV's attempt to possess
Harry, and Ginny's account of what it was like to be possessed), and
HBP (more Pensieve adventures, Horcruxes, and the items from Borgin
and Burkes).

You didn't mention his learning through the Serpensortia spell
(Snape's idea) that he was a Parseltongue or Snape's teaching him and
the entire duelling club that highly useful defensive spell,
Expelliarmus (Snape's first DADA lesson) though he receives hardly any
credit for it. (Harry does tell Lockhart that he shouldn't have let
Snape teach them that one.)

But what did Harry learn in CoS that hasn't already been used in
solving that mystery or Draco's in HBP or simply added to his
knowledge base like Expelliarmus?

You did raise some questions that we can't really answer yet, like
what Tom did over his summer holidays, but what did Harry learn in CoS
know that he doesn't realize he knows or whose significance he has not
yet realized? The existence of Grindelwald and his defeat by
Dumbledore, for one. And Snape's concern when Ginny was taken into the
Chamber of Secrets might have been a clue to where his loyalties lie
(with Dumbledore, IMO), but of course Snape's hand clutching the chair
didn't register with either Harry or Ron, or rather, the gesture did
momentarily, but its significance didn't.

Carol, who finds the older books so familiar now that it's hard to see
anything new in them