[HPforGrownups] Re: Forgiveness

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 188704

k12listmomma wrote in 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188699>:
<< Clearly, young Riddle was not a psychopath, was he? I don't see in the 
books where the student Tom Riddle (preHorcrux) was anything but a normal 
child. >>

From: "Catlady (Rita Prince" <catlady at wicca.net>
I truly believe that Rowling intended to show the child Tom Riddle as 
abnormal.

HBP chapter 13, The Secret Riddle. Mrs Cole at the orphanage says "He's a 
funny boy." "He was a funny baby too. He hardly ever cried, you know. And 
then, when he got a little older, he was. . . odd."  "He scares the other 
children." "There have been incidents. . . . Nasty things ..." "Billy 
Stubbs's rabbit. . . well, Tom said he didn't do it and I don't see how he 
could have done, but even so, it didn't hang itself from the rafters, did 
it?" "But I'm jiggered if I know how he got up there to do it. All I know is 
he and Billy had argued the day before. And then" - Mrs. Cole took another 
swig of gin, slopping a little over her chin this time - "on the summer 
outing - we take them out, you know, once a year, to the countryside or to 
the seaside - well, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never quite right 
afterwards, and all we ever got out of them was that they'd gone into a cave 
with Tom Riddle. He swore they'd just gone exploring, but something happened 
in there, I'm sure of it. And, well, there have been a lot of things, funny 
things. . . ."

Shelley again:
But does that show him as abnormal, or just as a wizard? He scares other 
children....he used his wizarding abilities to be a bully. The magic itself 
would be enough to scare the other children. Moving an animal around, moving 
rope around to strangle an animal, that would scare the children, because 
rope and animals can't move by themselves the way they must have when he 
worked magic on them.

I will give you this: the murder of the animal is the most telling of any 
incident- the killing without remorse. His first recorded murder. Still, the 
murder of an animal, the actions of a bully, are still a conscience choice 
one makes. I don't buy the line of a psychopath being unable to feel sorry 
for the things he has done.