Question re Chapter 13 - The Secret Riddle

[Jen Reese]

I'm in the middle of re-reading this

chapter and had a couple of thoughts

to add. Seeing as I can't come up with a 

catchy spoiler space at the moment,

I'll just twiddle my thumbs for a

moment before gettting to the good part.

Magda:
> Dumbledore is obviously disturbed at Tom's (probably regretted 
later
> once he'd got over the shock) comments that he can control and/or
> hurt people and animals if he wants to.  
> 
> Given Dumbledore's concern, wasn't it just a bit...off-message,
> shall we say....to respond to Tom's request for a magic 
> demonstration by torching his wardrobe in a display of 
intimidating 
> power?  Not to mention just a little OOC for Dumbledore?
 
> What would a clearly disturbed and ammoral 11-year-old take from 
such 
> a performance?

Jen: You know, first read-through it seemed like a power-play--
'watch out Tom Riddle, you may think you understand magic but you 
don't know the power involved here'.

Now I think it was more of an insurance policy. Tom is intrigued by 
the idea of being a wizard, but he still has the rather large flaw 
of trying to do everything by himself. The WW can't risk the likes 
of Tom out there trying to learn magic by himself, and probably DD 
has hopes they can turn him around at Hogwarts, with proper 
training. So Dumbledore wants to put on an impressive display, to 
ensure TR won't back out in the end.  Turning a teacup into a rat 
might not be the most convincing demonstration!

I really think some of it was just Dumbledore as a younger man, too. 
The velvet suit, the long auburn hair. Trying to be a little bit 
cool <g>. He learned his lesson with TR though, didn't he? And by 
the time Harry came along there was no more fooling around.

Jen