Tom Riddle and the RoR (Was: Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and the Deathstick)

[zanooda2]

No: HPFGUIDX 181698

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

> Harry realized that people had been hiding things there
> for centuries.

Sure, but Harry asked for a place to hide the book and he got it, so 
it was quite logical for him to assume that the rest of the stuff in 
the Room was also hidden by someone. We don't know what Tom Riddle 
asked for. If he *didn't* ask for a place to hide something, he might 
not guess that the rest of the things were "hidden" by others. 


> Carol:

> Even Trelawney, with her cooking sherry bottles, found
> the same room that Draco was in (though Draco must have used a
> different request ("I need the room with the Vanishing Cabinet" 
> rather than "I need a place to hide my book" (or "bottles").


zanooda:

But that is exactly my point, you can say different words and still 
get into the same room. You can say "I need the room where the 
stuffed troll is" :-) and you'll get again into the room "where 
everything is hidden". Draco might have said "I need the room with 
the Vanishing Cabinet", and Trelawney might have said "I need a place 
to hide my bottles", but they both ended up in one and the same room, 
at the same time.


> Carol:

> It seems that even Filch could get into the Room of Requirement 
> to hide or store the broken Vanishing Cabinet.


zanooda:

Maybe, but we don't really know who hid the Cabinet. Maybe Filch or 
the teachers ordered the house-elves to take it away, but the 
teachers would only do it if they found out about 
Montague's "adventure", otherwise they wouldn't have the reason to 
get rid of the Cabinet - they didn't do it before, even though it was 
broken in CoS. I know that Montague told other Slytherins that he was 
trapped in the Cabinet, but I'm not sure he told the teachers as 
well. Maybe it was Draco himself who moved the Cabinet to ROR after 
he realized its potential.


> Carol:

> What I'm saying is, when Tom Riddle (and I agree that he was a 
> student at the time) thought, "I need a place to hide my 
> Horcrux"), he would have found the same room where everyone 
> else had hidden things.


zanooda:

But Tom Riddle didn't need to hide any Horcruxes while he was in 
school. He didn't ask for a place to hide something, he asked for 
something else. Unfortunately, having very poor imagination, I can't 
offer you any believable scenario :-). Here is not a very believable 
one :-): Tommy loses some object, he can't find it anywhere, so he 
inquires about the fate of all the things that are dropped, lost, 
misplaced in Hogwarts. Someone tells him that the house-elves take 
these things  away when they clean at night, or that the castle 
itself magically moves them to some special place. So he starts 
looking for this special place - the Room of Lost Things, not the 
Room of Hidden Things, and when he finds it, there is no reason for 
him to think that all the stuff in there is hidden by other people.


> Carol:

> Maybe Harry is just wrong about Voldemort's thinking he was the only
> one who'd ever found that room, but, still, Voldemort seems to think
> that the Horcrux is safe, even after he finds that Harry is at
> Hogwarts (and correctly expects Harry to go to the Ravenclaw common
> room).


zanooda:

Oh, I don't know, it's not something that Harry just assumes, he 
takes it directly from LV's mind: "... the secret room only he had 
ever found, the room, like the Chamber, that you had to be clever and 
cunning and inquisitive to discover ..." (p.641).


> Carol: 

> That thought jumped out at me as ridiculous when I read it, 
> and I still think it's ridiculous. Not even Voldemort is 
> that illogical.


zanooda:

Believe me, I absolutely understand and share yours and the original 
poster's frustration :-). I'm just trying to find at least some 
explanation, however lame it may be :-). Of course, the most 
reasonable explanation would be that LV was just crazy :-). 

There are some things in this book that can't be explained at all, 
for example, why did Harry say DD was sure that LV already knew about 
Horcruxes when he asked Slughorn about them, and that he only wanted 
to find out about multiple Horcruxes. I mean, it's probably true, but 
DD never said that, even if he was sure, so how can Harry know? Did 
he suddenly  learn Legilimency? Try to explain *that* :-)!