Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and the Deathstick

[zanooda2]

No: HPFGUIDX 181685

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "rlevatter" <rlevatter at ...> 
wrote:

> Yet Voldemort, who sincerely seemed to believe Snape was 
> a true follower and very helpful to him, who claims to 
> regret the necessity of the deed, kills Snape when he 
> knew he really had only to "beat" him, not kill him, to 
> acquire the wand's power (assuming he had been correct 
> that Snape was the true owner of the Elder Wand). Is that 
> reasonable?


zanooda:

Don't you think that to expect Voldemort to be reasonable is a little 
bit, erm ... unreasonable :-)? I mean, when he ever was reasonable? 
Did he really have to kill Gregorovitch? No, he didn't. Was there any 
need to kill Grindelwald? No, there wasn't. 

It's like when he killed Lily - he promised and he could let her 
live, but "it seemed more prudent to finish them all ...". Same thing 
here - it was more prudent to finish them all, just in case.

Besides, LV was so obsessed with the Elder Wand, he wouldn't want any 
of its former owners to stick around, don't you think? It wouldn't 
be "prudent".


> rlevatter wrote:  
 
> And yet Harry believes, and we are supposed to believe with
> him, that on entering--and this is as an adult, having
> traveled the world and become very powerful--the Room of
> Requirement to hide the diadem, that Voldemort believes
> he's the only one in the many centuries history of Hogwarts
> who has figured out how to enter the Room.


zanooda:

I believe that LV discovered ROR when he was at school, not as an 
adult. He hid the diadem there later, yes, but he found it when he 
was still a student, IMO.


> rlevatter:

> That is to say, on viewing a huge room filled with odds 
> and ends, nicknacks, voluminous materials, Voldemort is 
> supposed to have thought, "This stuff was always here; no 
> one else put any of this stuff here. I am the only one 
> who figured out how to get in here over the last thousand 
> years." Is that really reasonable?


zanooda:

Again, don't expect LV to be reasonable :-). But there is another 
thing - we don't know how LV got into the Room and what was his need. 
You see, the Room's functions can sometimes overlap, IMO. For example 
(and *only* for example :-)), if someone went looking for the Room of 
Broken Things, LOL, he would find the same room that Harry found to 
hide things, because the broken things are also hidden in there.

Anyway, maybe student/Riddle didn't think all the stuff in ROR was 
hidden by other students, because he didn't ask the Room for a place 
to hide something. Maybe he wanted to find something, LOL. Maybe he 
thought it was just a magic Room where the house-elves or even the 
castle itself kept all broken, lost or other unwanted things - no 
students involved. It's stupid anyway, of course :-).

I think that LV didn't know that one of the Room's purposes was to 
help students (or teachers - Trelawney :-)) to hide stuff, maybe he 
didn't even know that the Room had multiple purposes. Draco Malfoy 
calls ROR "The Room of Hidden Things". If LV knew it by the same 
name, he would have guessed, when Draco told him about his plan, that 
it was the same room, and he wouldn't want Draco to hang around in it 
in HBP.

In short - LV didn't think the things in ROR were *hidden* things, he 
thought they were something else :-). This theory is not very 
convincing, but at least it's something ... :-).

As for your question about GG-DD duel and the Elder Wand, the most 
recent discussion about it begins from 181399 - there are a few ideas 
there :-).