Voldemort's Idiocy (Couldn't call it: Voldemort's Intellect ('twas))

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 177918


> > Pippin:
> > It's simple, IMO.  He  thought all the stuff in there was *lost*. 
> 
> Goddlefrood:
> 
> One way of spinning it, not consistent with canon, but possible.

Pippin:
Perfectly consistent with canon, IMO. It's emphasized that not
everyone who finds the room or uses it "gets" it. Dumbledore,
Fred and George, and Filch all mistook the nature of the room,
so it's perfectly well-established that Riddle might.  And the
Room *can* bring things by magic, like the broken sneak-o-
scopes  that Harry last saw in Fake!Moody's office. 

(It can't bring food from the kitchens, but that makes
sense since the House Elves would be using their own magic
to keep students from stealing it.)

So it seems perfectly plausible to me that Riddle, knowing the
room can bring things to itself, thought it was collecting
lost things and offered him the room of lost things as a 
place to hide his treasure. He does think he's different and
special. 

It's a problem with the whole child hero genre that the
villains have to be strong enough to be a credible threat
but also capable of making huge mistakes so that a child can
beat them.

I agree that Voldemort's grandstanding and egotism are
his weakness. They make him interpret events in ways that
flatter him and then, IMO,  he uses his  brilliance to invent 
logical underpinnings for whatever he wants to believe

Goddlefrood:
> In PS he had the superb idea of obtaining the Philosopher's 
> Stone so that he could come back. When he actually *did* come 
> back he needed a loyal servant, the bones of his father and 
> the blood of an enemy. Perhaps he also needed the sustenance 
> provided by Nagini's milk. However, all those things were 
> available to him in PS. 

Pippin:
Voldemort  explained in GoF that he had not wanted to
resume a mortal body until he could guarantee its immortality
with the Stone. But when the Stone was destroyed he set his
sights lower. Quirrell was not as easily dominated as Peter
Pettigrew, whom Voldemort never needed to possess. I
can believe that Voldemort wouldn't want to risk taking such
a helpless form as the ugly baby and expose himself to the
mercies of the ambitious and imaginative Quirrell. 

As we hear in PS/SS and GoF and actually see in DH, in his 
disembodied form he is terribly afraid. It's not clear what he thinks 
can still happen to him, but I'd guess dementors are part of it. 
But after all he's paranoid. He doesn't need *reasons* to
be afraid. 

The elaborate plans he makes to bring Harry to him in GoF
are very typical of the  schemes devised by RL psychotic
killers.  Just offing Harry in a dark alley wouldn't be any kind
of a thrill. Making him jump through a years worth of hoops
and then killing him in a mock duel in front of his followers,
now that's worthwhile. 

The thing about Voldemort is he has only his own pleasure
to consider. If taking a year to kill Harry is going to gratify
him as much as ruling the wizarding world, why should making
himself ruler of the WW take precedence?

What makes Voldemort such a scary opponent to me is that 
while he makes no secret of what he wants, it's very difficult
for a normal person to divine his priorities or anticipate his
schemes. How could Dumbledore possibily expect 
that Voldemort, with his agent in place, would wait a whole 
year to attack Harry, and then would  do it not by ambush 
but by abduction?

Who in their right mind would invent a plan that requires
someone to take polyjuice every waking hour for something like
ten months? But theoretically it could work, and it did. 

Turning to the Hall of Prophecy, of course Voldemort 
could have gotten in by himself. But unless Harry could be
made to come there, it would have been perfectly clear that
only Voldemort could have taken the orb. He might have
found a means to disguise the theft of course, but he 
doesn't only want to get the prophecy, he wants to stick
it to Dumbledore and make Harry dance to his tune. It's
all about his own gratification. If manipulating Harry and
Dumbledore will give him as much or more pleasure than
conquering the WW, why should conquering the WW take
precedence?


As for the horcruxes, remember, Voldemort had no way of
knowing what really happened in the chamber of secrets. He 
didn't know there was a supply of basilisk fangs down there--
actually Ron didn't know himself, it was just a guess. 

Voldie  didn't know that Gryffindor's sword had imbibed the 
ability to destroy horcruxes, either. But he did know that
Dumbledore had been working to suppress the knowledge
of horcruxes for most of his life. Again,  he's  egotistical
enough to believe that he's the only one who penetrated
Dumbledore's precautions and brilliant enough to invent
logical reasons why this should be so. 

He's not stupid, he just cares about nothing except his
own gratification. King's Cross had it right -- emotionally he's 
an infant. But that has nothing to do with his intelligence. 


Pippin