Dumbledore and Tom Riddle WAS: Re: CHAPTER DISCUSSION: COS Chapter 18

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189283


> Alla:
> 
> Well, personally I think it would have been done a great job of shrinking mysterious great wizard Lord Voldemort to a human Tom Riddle who as you said supposedly vanished a few years after leaving Hogwarts. See if Dumbledore did not talk about that fear of the name increases fear of the person (or whatever the exact quote is), I would have never put this offense on my long list lol. But he did talk about that and here I am thinking for a long time really, why the heck would he not insist everybody call him Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle? A usual ordinary person and not a an enigma, a mystery Lord Voldemort.

Pippin:
No one who knew Tom Riddle thought he was usual or ordinary. He had  won every award and distinction Hogwarts had to offer including membership in Slughorn's group of highly influential and well-connected wizards. Some of them,  like Avery and Lestrange, became the nucleus of the Death Eaters. Although Dumbledore says that very few people connected Voldemort with Riddle, we see that Riddle on his first return was still recognizable and anyone who knew him from the Slug Club would have known him on sight, just as Dumbledore and Harry did.   

I think Dumbledore oversimplified in CoS. All Harry needed to know then was why he'd never heard the name Tom Riddle before. But it seems plain that the same people who were afraid to say "Voldemort" were equally afraid to say "Tom Riddle", and the authors of all the books Hermione had read obviously did not use that name, even though there were plenty of people besides Dumbledore who could have told them about it.

Voldemort is not a Lockhart, a creep  pretending to have magic powers which surpass those of other wizards.  Voldemort really does have them: legilimency, parseltongue, intentional wandless magic and possession.   So Dumbledore had to walk a fine line: he didn't want people to be so afraid of Voldemort that they wouldn't resist him, but he didn't want them to dismiss the danger either.  

Pippin