Whom did Voldy possess before Quirrell?

[nkafkafi]

> > Neri wrote:
> > SS/PS, Ch. 17 p. 293 US:
> > " but there have
> > always been those willing to let me into their hearts and 
minds..."
>

> Kneasy: 
> Ah, Neri.
> Do you realise that you've provided another opportunity for Kneasy 
to
> bang on about Possession Theory? Foolish lad. You might regret this.
> 

Neri again:
I've never discounted the Possession Theory completely and I'm 
keeping an eye on it (BTW, does it to have some cool 
name? "Possession Theory" might be confused with theories in which it 
is Tom who does the possession). The thing is, it seems that anything 
Sally can do, there is no real reason why Tom couldn't do himself 
just as well. As you perhaps remember, my own obsession is that I 
prefer theories as simple as they can be made. One of my main 
personal guidelines is: "It's already complicated enough. Don't 
complicate it further unless there is a very good reason to do so". 
For me, adding Sally to the list of all the vapors, essences and 
pieces of mind buzzing around must involve a very good reason, which 
I'm yet to encounter.   

> Kneasy:
> "... willing to let me into their hearts and minds" could be no 
more than the
> acceptance of his political/philosophical stance,  but it could 
also be an
> indication of much more. Let me briefly expand on that.
> 
> "Voldy says.." But what is Voldy?
> Tom - a changed Tom - and to PT fans that change was caused by an
> outside  factor -  the  Salazar spirit, essence, what you will, 
entering
> his mind. Tom was the one before Quirrell.
> 

Neri:
Except that "there have been always those willing" sounds like more 
than one.

> Kneasy:
> Tom accepts Sally willingly, Sally has much more power than Tom 
could
> ever scrape together and Tom craves sufficient power to wreak his 
revenge
> on all those he sees as having slighted him. Sally is the senior 
partner, 
> Tom his means to his ends, the voice that speaks is Sally's. Tom is 
a 
> convenience, little more.
> 

Neri:
As I understood it, one of your main reasons to come up with the PT 
in the first place was Voldy's disappointing performances as the evil 
overlord. But if Sally is the senior partner, then he's the one 
responsible for all the screw-ups. How disappointing.

> Kneasy:
> And there's a possibility that Tom hasn't been the only one down 
the 
> ages to enter into a Faustian pact with Sally. Sally's spirit maybe 
damned 
> near eternal, but his body wasn't. So down the ages he may have 
possessed
> many while he searched for *corporate* immortality, slipping out of 
his lair
> in the Chamber, infecting the susceptible, hoping to crack his body 
problem.
> And if he does succeed, watch out, there'll be no hope for anyone. 
> 

Neri:
This is what I mean by complication. Do we have any good reasons to 
think this was the case, other then to explain this very sentence we 
are discussing? Does it help to solve one of the big mysteries?
 
> Kneasy:
> As I see it, this is Harry's task - to isolate the essence of evil 
that is Sally, 
> (Sally in Vapour!Mort mode is much more constrained than Sally in 
possession
> of a body, Voldy admits this) and if he can't destroy it at least 
lock it up out 
> of harms way. Of course he might have to go with it....
> 
> Assuming that GH was a possession attempt, with Sally up to his old 
tricks,
> then the only real difference between Tom and Harry is that Harry 
did not/
> has not willingly accepted the intrusion, mostly because of the 
emplaced
> protection. He wasn't *offered* a choice. But with the Voldy 
construct
> swanning round his mind in OoP and the possibility that it may get 
worse
> in HBP, that choice may be presented. And yes, it is worrying the 
way his
> attitudes deteriorated once Voldy got in there. The next step could 
be the
> 'Temptation' that I was whittering on about a year or more ago. 
Can't have
> an heroic epic without a temptation you know, t'ain't right, 
against the rules
> or something. And it usually occurs at just about the stage we're 
at now,
> right when everything is coming to the boil.
> 

Neri:
I think Harry was already tempted when he used the Unforgivable (that 
is not to say we won't see the temptation thing again) and here he 
was tempted by Evil in general rather then by Voldy personally. I 
think Tom tempted by impersonal evil powers rather then personally by 
Sally can work just the same.

> Kneasy:
> If you're  a fan of this line of thinking then there could have 
been an earlier
> offer, or the precursor to one - the Sorting Hat. "Slytherin can 
help you on
> the way to greatness, no doubt about that." Slytherin House - or, 
as I think,
> Salazar Slytherin?

Neri:
Again, it is quite possible, but I still don't see the big advantage 
(for the plot, theme, etc.) for using the person Slytherin when the 
House (and the worldview) seems to work just as well.

> Kneasy: 
> Interestingly, I see the Ginny episode as Tom in pre-take-over 
phase; he
> himself has been, or is about to be offered the choice, but the 
pact is not
> yet concluded. Hence he calls on Slytherin "the greatest of the 
Hogwarts four"
> to squelch the Potter pest. If SS had already subsumed him he 
wouldn't need 
> to do that.
> 

Neri:
And yet, Diary!Tom tells us that he had already took the name 
Voldemort and had already had followers. And he was obviously able to 
create the diary and possess Ginny. So Slytherin possessing Tom who 
possessed Ginny, this is becoming too complicated for me.

> Kneasy:
> As an allegory tale with the concept of evil as an actual entity 
and the dangers
> of making a pact with, well, the devil, or a reasonable fascimile 
thereof, seems
> neat and tidy to me.
> 

Neri:
I agree about the main concept, but it seems to me that JKR's 
cosmology is rather more impersonal. Ancient Magic or the Power 
Behind The Locked Door are portrayed as impersonal powers. IMO making 
Evil personal would not be her style.  

No, I prefer a different take on this sentence by Voldy. He used to 
possess his DEs before he was made vapor. Not all the time, of 
course, just occasionally, like he does with Nagini. Or maybe he put 
only a small piece of himself in each of them, you know, not to have 
all the eggs in one basket. This was probably part of his immortality 
project, which is why he said it involved many steps, and why he said 
the DEs know about these steps. And the DEs had to be willing, and 
each DE may have a different reason to let Voldy in. The Dark Mark 
scars are perhaps the openings that Voldy had installed on the DEs, 
to make it easy going in and out, and they may be similar to Harry's 
scar in this sense. Only Snape may have found that this opening is bi-
directional.

Neri