Albus and Gellert/Voldemort's Power

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182580


Catlady wrote:
> <snip> Meanwhile, I want to know what Gellaert did to be expelled
from Durmstrang, and how evil he actually was at the time. I think he
might have been not all that evil at that time, and gradually gotten
more and more evil.
> 
> On the other tentacle, could he have been a deceptive psychopath
just like young Riddle, who also charmed adults and classmates, except
without the excessive fear of death? Young Riddle seems to have
succeeded in concealing that his true desire was to kill rather than
to rule. If Grindelwald was a deceptive psychopath whose desire was to
rule, killing only a means to that end, would that have been just as
evil as Riddle?

Carol responds:
I don't know enough about psychology or psychiatry to trust my use of
labels like psychopath or sociopath, but I see a huge difference in
Tom Riddle and Gellert Grindelwald despite their both being handsome
and capable of charming others.

As you say, we don't know what Gellert did to get himself expelled
from Durmstrang, but if Durmstrang deserves its reputation as a school
that teaches the Dark Arts (presumably using teachers with
considerably more intelligence and subtlety than Amycus Carrow), he
must have done something dark and dreadful or else endangered a large
number of people. I doubt that he killed anyone or he'd have been
imprisoned rather than expelled. (Even Durmstrang and the Wizards who
send their children there must have their limits. Neither Viktor Krum
nor the schoolmate who dribbles food on his robes strike me as budding
Dark Wizards.)

That aside, it does seem that Gellert was interested in power (ruling
over others) rather than killing per se (killing and torture would be
a means to an end, not the end in itself). Tom Riddle, in contrast, is
interested in *himself*--his powers, his difference from other people,
his ability to hurt and control other people. His hatred of Muggles
and, by extension, Muggle-borns, is real enough, IMO, but the
Pure-Blood ideology is only a front, the "carrot" that he holds out to
lure Pure-Blood Death Eaters to serve him. (The "stick" is the Dark
Mark that binds them to "a lifetime of service or death," in Sirius
Black's words).

Grindelwald, in contrast, is primarily interested in ruling the WW
(with Muggles as slaves, as in the Magic Is Might statue). He and
Albus as boys imagine themselves as co-rulers, but only one can wield
the One Ring--erm, the Elder Wand.

Another difference that I perceive is charisma. Gellert Grindelwald,
at least when he's sixteen going on seventeen, is genuinely charming,
merry, always laughing. Even as he perches on the windowsill after
stealing the Elder Wand, he's laughing. He Stuns Gregorvitch and flies
or falls backward out the window with an exuberance of which Tom
Riddle, whose charm is all surface and only a means of manipulating
people, is incapable. Old Bathilda felt genuine affection for him even
after all those years, knowing what he became.

Was he wicked? I don't know. Was he a silent baby who never laughed,
never wanted to be played with? I very much doubt it.

It seems to me, too, that Gellert, like Albus, was an intellectual. He
read and thought and developed a philosophy that he believed would
justify his bid for power. He knew, as Riddle did not, about the
Deathly Hallows. Riddle, in contrast, studied his own roots, his
connection to Slytherin, followed by the pursuit of immortality
because he feared death and considered it a Muggle weakness. It seems
to me that the old, imprisoned Grindelwald, still mentally sharp
despite long years in his own prison, holds Voldemort in contempt for
his ignorance and possibly for other reasons (his self-absorption and
fear of death). And it's clear that he doesn't want Voldemort to
violate Dumbledore's tomb (how he knows that DD is dead, I don't
recall). Dead!Dumbledore believes that Grindelwald repented in the
end, and I agree with him.

Yes, he's a Dark Wizard. Yes, he built a prison for his enemies and
killed a lot of people and who knows what other horrible things. But
he never makes a Horcrux, and, IMO, he retains a seed of goodness and
humanity that makes him very different from Voldemort. 

Catlady:
> If he [Tom Riddle] had been raised with his mother adoring him and
telling him how wonderful his father was, he might felt less hatred of
people in general and Muggles in particular, but I fear not, that he
wouldn't have cared that his mother adored him, because she was such a
pathetic, ugly, impoverished loser despised by the other adults. <snip>

Carol:
I agree. But I wonder what would have happened if his father hadn't
deserted him, if he'd heard that his motherless child was in an
orphanage and had come to rescue him. It wouldn't have happened, of
course, because Tom Sr. hated Merope and wanted nothing to do with
their child, but if he'd been a better man, putting his child's needs
above his own injuries and humiliation . . . . Would Tom Riddle, loved
despite being a Wizard and the child of Merope Gaunt, have become
Voldemort? Or would he have been the image of his father, a haughty
lord of the manor, who used his powers in some other way? (He'd have
received a Hogwarts letter, of course.)

Tandra wrote in
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/182527>:
> 
> << What exactly makes Voldermort so powerful? His father was a
Muggle and his mother we never see that she was overly powerful. So I
don't see that it could have been in his genes.
> 
> The same with Harry really, though it seems we see his parents were
talented in their own ways, nothing suggests the combo of their
abilities would make a "great" wizard. >>

Catlady replied: 
> Maybe it's hybrid vigor. That's a real phrase that I learned in my
freshman Biology Class at university long ago. It means that the
offspring from crossing purebreds of two different breeds of the same
species are often healthier than either parent, and may be larger,
more intelligent, more fertile, or other advantages. <snip>

Carol responds:

Could be though I doubt that JKR is an expert in genetics (see her
attempt at explaining magic as a dominant gene).

It's noteworthy, however, that the four most important Wizards in the
series--Voldemort, Dumbledore, Harry, and Snape--are all Half-bloods.

I can't explain Tom Riddle, who seems to be a throwback to Salazar
Slytherin, but his handsome Muggle father helped him in the looks
department. <g>

As for Harry, despite a Pure-Blood father who was good at Quidditch
(the sole talent that Harry seems to have inherited) and talented at
Transfiguration (the Marauder's Map; becoming an illegal Animagus in
his teens) and a mother who was gifted at Potions according to
Slughorn (and perhaps at Charms, if her first wand is any indication),
Harry is not a gifted student, and his skill at DADA is mostly a
matter of necessity. He learns Expelliarmus, which becomes his
signature spell, from Snape in the ill-fated Duelling Club; he learns
to cast a powerful Patronus at an early age because Dementors are
preventing him from playing Quidditch (he has the advantage of special
instruction from Lupin and the luck of having a Dementor Boggart to
practice on); he learns Stunning Spells and Impedimenta and Reducto
and Protego (all of which Hermione looked up for him, IIRC, and helped
him practice) because Crouch!Moody put his name in the Goblet of Fire.
When he faces Voldemort in GoF, it's back to the old stand-by,
Expelliarmus, because he's no match for Voldemort. (Lucky that the
wands shared a core.) He uses the same spells again in OoP against the
Death Eaters (who would have defeated and probably killed him and his
friends had the Order not shown up just as he was about to hand the
Prophecy orb to Lucius Malfoy); he escapes possession by Voldemort not
through skill or power but through his ability to love; he learns a
few new spell courtesy of the HBP, one of which nearly results in
disaster, but when he tries to curse Snape repeatedly after Snape
"murders" DD, using a combination of familiar spells and Snape's
inventions, Snape parries them effortlessly. He would not have escaped
the Inferi (much less gotten into the cave in the first place) were it
not for DD's far superior skill and power. In DH, it's Harry's wand,
not Harry's own power (as he tries to tell Hermione) that causes his
wand to send some dark spell at Voldemort; he's nearly killed (if
Horcrux!Harry can be killed) by Nagini; and he defeats Voldemort
through a combination of luck and self-sacrifice, using Expelliarmus
yet again in the end.

Any extraordinary powers that Harry has (Parseltongue, the scar link)
are the result of the AK that failed and his mother's sacrifice, not
to mention the state of Voldemort's mangled soul, which enabled a
piece to fly off and lodge itself, unknown to LV, in the open cut on
baby!Harry's forehead. Without those special circumstances, both the
soul bit and the special training, Harry would (IMO) have been just
another Wizard kid, very good at flying and Quidditch but no better
than Ron at his studies, including DADA. (He'd have had the advantage
of a better wand, though, probably!) And the Muggle-born Hermione
would, not doubt, have outperformed him in every subject instead of
every subject except DADA.

Carol, waxing theoretical since nobody seems to be posting today!