What makes LV so powerful?

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 169135

Tandra:

> This has been gnawing at me since I just finished the 
> 6th book yet again. I know LV hunts down power and 
> finds out stuff that most other wizards don't care 
> to find out, but I don't get why he was so powerful 
> by the time DD met him in the orphanage. It seemed 
> obvious to DD that he wasn't an ordinary wizard, but 
> where did all this power come from? Because he was 
> an heir of Slytherin? Is there anything that leads 
> us to believe that Slytherin was all that powerful? 
> I just don't see why he is all so powerful. Can 
> anyone help me there?

houyhnhnm:

If magical power is inherited, it seems like it would 
have suffered from the same kind of impairment from 
the Gaunts' inbreeding that many of their other traits 
obviously did.  I would be more inclined to credit 
Voldemort's half blood status with his exceptional 
ability, if that is what he had.  We have a lot of 
examples of hybrid vigor in the series.

I think what set the eleven-year-old Tom Riddle apart, 
however, was not exceptional magical ability so much 
as a lack of innocence.  Dumbledore said to Harry, 
"His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly 
well-developed for such a young wizard and--most 
interestingly and ominously of all--he had already 
discovered that he had some measure of control over 
them, and had begun to use them consciously.  And as 
you saw, they were not the random experiments typical 
of young wizards:  He was already using magic against 
other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."

I think what Dumbledore was saying was that it was Tom 
Riddle's sociopathy that was precocious as much as his 
magical ability.  At least that's the way I see Voldemort.  
I don't see him developing into this powerful evil Dark 
Wizard just because he was so fantastically talented above 
any one else of his generation.  He may have been gifted, 
but it was the amorality, absence of any normal ability 
to form connections with other people, absence of normal 
inhibitions and a sense of right and wrong that enabled 
him to become Lord Voldemort. The ability to con people, 
to use them, to hurt them, completely untrammeled by any 
feelings of shame, guilt, or remorse, "talents" exhibited 
by criminals with no magical ability whatsoever.