Why didn't DD reveal Voldemort's identity?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186902

Magpie:

> But to be honest, even the facts about his parents hardly indicate some deep, dangerous investigation on Dumbledore's part that must mean he knows about the Horcruxes. Tom Riddle's named after his family. They're not hard to find. And terrorizing the country is reason enough for people to look into your biography. In fact, if I were Voldemort I'd find it far more suspicious if Dumbledore was never saying anything about who my parents were. I mean, come on, they're painfully easy to find given they share all of my names, and the wisest Wizard ever hasn't ever been interested? (Granted, that's far more logical than Voldemort usually is.)

Carol:
He might have been suspicious that DD never revealed that he was Tom Riddle or revealed what was generally known about Tom Riddle at the time of his disappearance (though I don't know why he would since he would have thought that the lack of information was to his own advantage), but I don't see how you can assume that he'd regard not revealing something he didn't even know that DD knew was suspicious. And I think LV would have realized that knowing who he was, not just his father's name but that his mother's relatives were the Gaunts, would lead Dumbledore to Little Hangleton and the Gaunts's shack, where he could investigate the Riddles' murder and maybe even find out about the ring he'd stolen from Morfin.

Dumbledore kept quiet about that for two reasons, IMO. First, by the time he got the Ministry to look at Morfin's memory, proving Morfin's innocence, Morfin was dead (the same thing happened later with Hokey). With the sole witness dead, he couldn't prove that Tom was guilty. Apparently, the memory alone wouldn't hold up in a court of Wizarding law. And, second, he didn't want Voldemort to find out too soon that he, DD, was investigating his past and remove all the traces.
> 
> Carol:
> > If Dumbledore revealed even the small fact of Voldemort's identity, the names of his parents and the fact that his father was a rich Muggle from Little Hangleton, Voldemort would not only suspect but *know* that Dumbledore was investigating his past. 
> 
> Magpie:
> Which is not, imo, so huge a deal as to justify Dumbledore helping Voldemort hide everything about himself. But regardless, Dumbledore doesn't have to reveal this small fact. He's got plenty of other small facts that would do the trick--or at least be a start. Ordinary schoolboy underneath the Dark Magic.

Carol:
I think it *is* a huge deal. If DD knows who Tom's parents were, he knows or can find out that Tom murdered his father and grandfather and stole Morfin's ring. He can also discover the hiding place for the ring, even if he doesn't know that it's a Horcrux. And if he's investigating that murder, he may be investigating another unsolved murder, that of Hepzibah Smith, as well. After all, he would know that Tom Riddle resigned and mysteriously disappeared just before that murder was discovered.

> 
> > Magpie: 
> > > 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. 

> Magpie:
> Dumbledore has a history of concealing information even when it would be helpful. I don't get how the WW would have been hurt during the first Voldemort War by Dumbledore letting them know this was Tom Riddle from Hogwarts. (Which I believe at the time was all he knew anyway.) Dumbledore never needs reasons beyond his penchant for secrecy. Or rather, his penchant for secrecy compels him to make up convoluted justifications in his own mind for hiding information that would actually have been pbviously helpful.

Carol responds:
I think I've accidentally deleted a statement you made that we don't know when DD began his investigations (forgive me if I imagined that!). But by the beginning of the first Voldie War, he certainly knew more than that Voldemort was Tom Riddle from Hogwarts (who had, not incidentally, murdered Moaning Myrtle and framed Hagrid). He knew about the murder of Tom Riddle and his parents in Little Hangleton, and he must have known about the Gaunts as well. He obtained memories from Morfin and presumably from Bob Ogden before Morfin died in prison. He would have begun investigating the murder of Hepzibah Smith  and obtained the information from Hokey (who was very old and must not have lasted long in prison) soon after the murder. The memory from Caractacus Burke, which relates to Merope and the locket, would have been obtained at about the same time.

IOW, Dumbledore must have been investigating Voldemort's past for years before Godric's Hollow and probably long before the DADA interview. ("You call what you have been doing 'great', then?"). And the DADA interview would have alerted him to Riddle's changed appearance, a hint that he was making Horcruxes out of those stolen objects. He already knew, through Aberforth, that Riddle was calling himself Voldemort and gathering followers called Death Eaters. I think DD had been gathering memories and information for a long time before Voldemort first started terrorizing the WW (which he didn't even start doing for twelve years or so after the DADA interview).

Carol, for whom the only mystery is what took LV so long to start his reign of terror and what he was up to during those *two* gaps in his history