Forgiveness

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 188721


> 
> Steve replies:  Actually, Riddle wasn't even a borderline case.  Until the age of 18, he couldn't even be diagnosed accurately as having a sociopathic or psychopathic condition...the DSM-IV doesn't become valid til age 18 and until there is a pervasive pattern of that serious behavior. 
> >

Pippin:
That's a good point. One of the things JKR does very well is illustrate why it's impossible to diagnose this condition in teenagers. It's  hard to develop any systematic way of distinguishing between the behavior of a normal teen who's acting out and an abnormal one who's become good at concealing his condition. But that doesn't mean that the symptoms aren't there, they're just hard to identify as such. IIRC, the best indicator of troubled behavior in an adult is abnormal behavior in childhood, so the fact that we don't know how to diagnose this kind of abnormality in a teenager who behaved abnormally as a child probably doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. 

I don't think canon implies that Riddle stopped bullying people during his first five years at Hogwarts. He just found ways to do it that wouldn't get him in trouble and wouldn't make him unpopular. He already knew from the orphanage that he could do it without getting caught. 

Both Slughorn and Dippet get a little uneasy about Tom. I'm sure they weren't the only ones. But he was good at manipulating people. He snowed Dippet. He made sure that anyone who might give a negative report about him (like Slughorn or poor Ginny or the "intimate friends" who knew him as 'Lord  Voldemort') would have to compromise themselves to do it. And as James showed, you can get away with a lot of bullying if you are popular and your victims aren't.  Even if Hagrid knew he'd been set up, who'd believe him?

Shelly made the point that for  all Voldemort's many evil deeds, it was only constructing horcruxes that made the damage to his soul irreparable. Since that is beyond the reach of any real person and most of JKR's fantastical ones, JKR isn't really saying anything about whether any human being is truly irredeemable.

But she does want her characters to relate to Voldemort as if he were irredeemably evil, so the revelation that he might not be has to wait till the very last minute, though Dumbledore knew since the gleam of triumph in GoF.  Nothing in Voldemort's actions can point unambiguously to a change in him, just as nothing Quirrell can do up to the final confrontation can call attention to him as a villain. 

Still, it's not like Dumbledore's sexuality, which was created as part of the character but elided from the text, with nothing to hint at it but Rita Skeeter's double entendres. To hear Dumbledore tell it, he fell in love with Grindelwald's ideas. 

But canon is explicit about Dumbledore's hope for Voldemort. 

"His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort's one last hope for himself."

Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him.
"And you knew this? You knew -- all along!"
"I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good," said Dumbledore happily, and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while the creature behind them continued to whimper and tremble. 
-DH ch 35

The reader might overlook this, or ignore it, or find it implausible. But it's definitely there.  

Pippin