[HPforGrownups] Re: Forgiveness

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 188755

> Shelley wrote:
> <snip>(For that matter, was Slytherin mentally ill- he made the
>> chamber for the Basilisk- Riddle merely set free the creature that lay 
>> within!)  <snip>
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Forgive me for reacting only to this one side note. I'm not qualified to 
> diagnose Riddle as a psychopath (though, IIRC, a psychopath may seem quite 
> normal to other people and control his violent tendencies until the time 
> is ripe). I just want to say that the death of Moaning Myrtle was not 
> "merely" the result of setting the basilisk free. Riddle knew quite well 
> that its purpose was to rid Hogwarts of Muggle-borns, and he stopped 
> killing them as a boy only because the school was about to be shut down 
> (so her framed Hagrid to keep the school open and to prevent his being 
> discovered as the murderer just as he later framed Hagrid and Hokey).
>
> That it was a murder is indicated not only by Diary!Tom's words to Harry, 
> "I'm not interested in killing Muggle-borns *anymore*" but also by the 
> fact that the diary was his first Horcrux. Hers was no accidental death 
> resulting from setting the Basilisk free (which in itself would have been 
> reprehensible enough); the basilisk wasn't free. It was under Tom's 
> control ("It only obeys me"). Moaning Myrtle hears a boy speaking "another 
> language" just before she sees the "great big yellow eyes." Tom must have 
> ordered it to kill her (no doubt knowing her habit of going into that 
> bathroom to cry and certainly knowing that Myrtle was a "Mudblood" just as 
> Diary!Tom ordered it to kill Harry in the CoS.
>
> Carol, quoting from memory because she doesn't have time to check page 
> numbers

Carol, my point was- what distinguished one murderer from another? What 
makes one mentally ill when planning to kill off defenseless Mudbloods, and 
other just some sick bastard with warped ideology. My point was, Riddle did 
not think up this original plan- he merely discovered what someone else had 
already thought through and used, and then repeated the action of that 
Master Planner. IMHO, at that point, Slytherin was the sicker human being. 
Anybody can copy-cat a murder.

Shelley