Why didn't DD reveal Voldemort's identity?

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 186853

Damn Yahoomort ate my first response!!

Carol responds:

I don't think it's silly at all. In fact, I agree completely with No.Limberger.
If Voldemort suspected that Dumbledore was investigating his past, he would
never have hidden the Horcruxes in places important to him as scenes of his
crimes or his happiness (Hogwarts) or his envy (Gringotts). He'd have probably
sealed them all inside that tree in Albania where they could never be found by
anyone but him.

Magpie:
There's no reason Dumbledore sharing information that is known to him, that Voldemort knows is known to him, would mean that Dumbledore is investigating his past. Dumbledore doesn't need to investigate this stuff.

To be fair, there is a canonical explanation for why Dumbledore and Voldemort act the way they do. I just has nothing to do with a logical plan. It's psychology. Dumbledore likes keeping information for himself so he knows more than anyone else (always vaguely telling them that this keeps it safe) and Voldemort is psychologically compelled to create all his plans around Important Moments in his personal history. Both of them often act against the interests of their own goals because they can't not act this way. 

Carol:
But there are other reasons, one of which is that Dumbledore at first had no
reason to reveal Voldemort's identity because Tom Riddle had been out of the
country for years and no one but Dumbledore suspected that he was up to
anything. By the time Dumbledore knew that Tom Riddle was calling himself Lord
Voldemort and was gathering followers calling themselves Death Eaters (when he
reappeared in Britain for the DADA interview after being who knew where for
about ten years), many of them his "friends" from school, his face was already
nearly unrecognizable, he had already killed at least seven people, and he had
already made at least four Horcruxes (the diary, the ring, the cup, and the
diadem). 

Magpie:
This doesn't give him "no reason" to reveal Voldemort's identity when people started freaking out about him. What the ministry could or couldn't investigate or Dumbledore could or couldn't prove about murders (not that the WW has ever been too big on proof anyway) has no bearing on whether Dumbledore should correctly identify this Lord Voldemort guy as Tom Riddle from Hogwarts, who worked at B&B and applied to be DADA teacher.

Carol:
And by the time Voldemort surfaced again, having apparently been gathering
followers in secret for some twelve years, it would have done no good to
publicize his past even if Dumbledore could prove his crimes, which he couldn't
do. 

Magpie:
It would do the good we've pointed out, to de-mystify the guy when everybody thinks he's the devil. And people also just have a right to know, imo. Why's Dumbledore on Voldemort's side on this issue?

Carol:
Voldemort already had followers, and the terror of his actions and those of
the Death Eaters far outweighed any unprovable claims that Dumbledore could make
that he had once been Tom Riddle--who, BTW, was not a laughable creature like
Gregory Goyle but a handsome and intelligent Prefect and Head Boy who had won an
award for services to the school. That information might astonish a few people,
assuming that they believed it, but it wouldn't make them laugh at him or scorn
him.

Magpie:
Just because it wouldn't "out-weigh" the fear doesn't mean there's no reason to publicize it (we don't know that these claims are unprovable, or that people would reject them for that). Being Prefect and Head Boy who won an award for services to the school actually is quite laughable when you're styling yourself the Badass Dark Lord of All Evil. It makes him human and so as scornable and laughable as any human. Fans certainly have plenty of fun with the idea of Tom Riddle coming up with a cool Goth name and trying to get his lame friends to call him that.

Carol:
And worse, publicizing Voldemort's true identity might arouse Voldemort's
suspicions that Dumbledore was investigating his past.

Magpie:
There's no reason those two things should go together. Dumbledore is only saying things he already knows without investigating anything. Also, didn't Dumbledore only start to suspect Horcruxes after CoS? So why did he keep the guy's secret through the first war at all?

Carol:
>From Godric's Hollow until the end of GoF, there was no point in bringing up
Voldemort's name at all. As far as the WW was concerned, the Wicked Witch was
dead, having been destroyed miraculously by a fifteen-month-old baby. And by the
time DD was trying to persuade the WW that Voldemort had returned, the Ministry
was busy suppressing that information and calling DD a deluded old liar.

Magpie:
The WW was still talking about him as if he was the boogeyman, which was why even though he was defeated they never completely believed he couldn't come back. Why not publicize who the guy really was, a wizard? It's true, and why shouldn't history be accurate? Even if you don't think there's a specific point in telling people who he was (and I would think people would want to write books analyzing the guy) there was certainly no reason to hide or deliberately not say who he was, which DD seemed to do.

Carol:
Then Harry's story came out in "The Quibbler," and Harry would certainly have
mentioned that Voldemort was really Tom Riddle since "bone of the father" played
as large a role in the restorative potion as Harry's blood and Wormtail's hand,
but that knowledge made no difference whatever in terms of either his follower's
loyalty (Bellatrix, who either hasn't read the article or wouldn't believe it,
anyway, screams at Harry for calling Voldemort a Half-Blood; the other DEs
either know it already, having been present in the graveyard, or are unfazed by
the information), and the rest of the WW quickly returns to "You Know Who" mode
when Voldemort returns.

Magpie:
The DEs don't have to know that Tom's a Half-blood just because of that ritual. Where his father's buried doesn't have to out him as a Muggle. I'm not sure what we're supposed to think about Wormtail, who I believe is there but Voldemort's talking to Harry so maybe he's not supposed to be part of the conversation. But Wormtail would already have reasons for not sharing that fact if LV doesn't want him to.

If we were supposed to think Harry outed him in his Quibbler article I would call that a plot hole, not proof that the information shouldn't logically be important to everyone. We never see any DEs who would obviously have *some* reaction to this bit of information reacting to it—in fact, we see Bellatrix angry at Harry for suggesting such a thing after the article's already gone to press. That to me is more evidence to assume it's not widely known—sure Bellatrix wouldn't have believed it if she read it any more than she'd believe it when Harry said it, but other DEs would have their own reactions. More importantly, we never see the WW at large reacting to new information about Voldemort. Why wouldn't they? They seem to have the same curiosity about that sort of thing as Muggles. When people get famous, even for evil things, biographies usually follow.

I think the evidence more implies that Harry just didn't get into Voldemort's background any more than Dumbledore ever did.

Carol:
It seems inconceivable that DD has not told at least the Wizengamot and the high
Ministry officials (e.g., Fudge) who Voldemort really is, but Fudge still calls
him You Know Who. 

Magpie:
It's never inconceivable that DD would keep any secret. He keeps secrets just for the sake of having secrets and justifies it any way he feels like.

Carol:
Surely DD has told McGonagall and the other Order members that
Voldemort was once Tom Riddle, but they also say You Know Who (with the
exception of Snape, who for reasons of his own says the Dark Lord). In other
words, knowing who Tom Riddle was (without knowing about his early murders,
which DD can't prove and also can't speak of without risking that LV will find
out about his investigations) has no effect whatever on the WW at large, which
is concerned with what LV was in VW1 and what he will become if he returns to
power.

Magpie:
I don't see how the information that we never hear of Dumbledore telling the Order who Tom Riddle is, and that the Order all call him some form of Voldemort proves that Dumbledore told them all who he really was and it made no difference to them. It makes a difference to the people we know he told. In fact, the whole winning plan depends on knowing who he is. 

Even if we assumed that Dumbledore had told the Order who he really was, the Order is also the group of people fighting Voldemort the most—they're the least scared of him. We do see Dumbledore occasionally encouraging people to call him Voldemort instead of You-Know-Who. We don't see him encouraging anyone to think of him as Tom Riddle. (And there he's fighting against a cultural pressure to not use the name, which is all part of making Voldemort the boogeyman.)

But the "let me tell you about Tom Riddle stuff" is quite often cloaked in the whole "this is a special lesson just for you, Harry, because you must know this" vibe. Plus we know Dumbledore policy for information is whatever's even stingier than a need-to-know basis.

Carol:
His followers, both before Godric's Hollow and after LV's restoration to his
body, are impressed by his cruelty and power, including his power over *them*,
and by whichever of his deeds they know about, those unspecified "great and
terrible" deeds that Ollivander mentions in SS/PS. 

Magpie:
The fact that people are rightfully scared of things that Voldemort actually does is no reason that calling him by his true name and seeing him for what he really is is useless. Tom Riddle, wizard, may be no less dangerous than Voldemort the superhuman, but he can be less scary. Jack the Ripper got far more fear associated with him than Jeffrey Dahmer, despite JD killing more people. Jack's a mystery. Horror depends on the unknown.

Carol:
Once he returns, the mere
fact that he (apparently) can't be killed is sufficient to bring in new
admirers, those who want to rise to power on his coattails or want to learn more
sophisticated forms of torture. 


Magpie:
Sure, there's always people who'll be drawn to sadistic people. But again, that's no reason to encourage the myth. Voldemort's a man who didn't die due to purely technical reasons having nothing to do with his being invincible. Even if DD didn't want to publicize the Horcrux angle, nobody saw him die to begin with so it didn't have to be even that amazing.


Carol:
I forgot to mention that his earliest followers, his former schoolmates, may
have known or suspected that he wasn't a Pure-Blood, but it made no difference
to them because he was the Heir of Slytherin--and both more intelligent and more
powerful than they were, quite capable of keeping them under his control. His
being Tom Riddle, far from a reason for laughing at him, was a reason to follow
him.

Magpie:
Yes, Dumbledore points out that he's followed around by mean-spirited cowards and sycophants from early on. There's plenty of people who don't care about following a Half-Blood or not. That's no reason not to share the truth with all the people who aren't following Voldemort no matter what his blood status. (And if you make a couple of people who are in it for the blood status think, all the better, I guess.)

Carol:
OW, knowing that Voldemort was once Tom Riddle, assuming that DD could prove
that allegation to the satisfaction of the fickle WW public, makes no difference
to anyone. 

Magpie:
I think it does make sense. It certainly makes sense to Voldemort who's gone out of his way to craft a different name and more mysterious background. 

The books themselves even champion this whole idea of cutting someone down to size and not letting your fear give something more power and mystery than it really has. It just never manages to apply this to Voldemort. Well, the twins do once with You-Know-Poo and the book applauds them for it. It just never connects that impulse to Tom Riddle.

I think the main reason it's done the way it's done is for the plot. DH sets up a situation where the entire country can only show resistance to Voldemort by defiantly hoping and believing Harry will save them. They can only show so much courage—we can't have them acting like the real UK with Hitler, for instance, getting bombed and thumbing their noses at him, or worse yet, setting off to take the guy on by themselves. The whole thing has to be this precious secret that only Harry can handle. 

So it's Harry Dumbledore shares the information with, and Harry who takes that information in like a normal person and thinks of Voldemort as not as grand as he wants to be. But there's also psychological things stuck in to explain why Dumbledore would do this. The guy goes to his grave with all sorts of info that should logically have been shared with people trying to fight Voldemort if he could only let it go. And Voldemort is just as trapped in his inability to think logically rather than symbolically. He could no more hide a Horcrux tree in Albania than he could just let Vincent Crabbe kill Harry. His priorities are rarely efficiency or logic.

Carol:
People who learned that Hitler was part-Jewish didn't laugh, nor did they stop fearing him.

Magpie:
I'm not sure it's true Hitler was part-Jewish (it certainly could be), and I don't know if that was a rumor while he was still alive or not.

But you're mixing up two different things. LV being a Half-blood is not the thing that's supposed to be funny, since there's nothing particular funny about it. It's Voldemort himself that needs to be made into a figure of ridicule, just like Hitler. Hitler was laughed at loudly and often while he was trying to take over the world. Especially by the people defying him. It was part of resistance. You can fear something and still laugh at the person causing it. 

-m