(The Lack of) Horcrux-Hunting
Aug. 24th, 2011 05:36 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockBack in my essay “The Keeper of the Keys,” I argued that Dumbledore didn’t start hunting Riddle’s Horcruxes until about 1995 because it took him until after Harry’s report of Tom’s boasts in the graveyard to realize that Tom had more Horcruxes than just Harry.
But there’s an even more fundamental problem. Why wasn’t Dumbledore hunting for Tom’s (presumably singular) Horcrux in, say, 1948? Or at least, after Tom’s return from the continent as “Lord Voldemort,” master of the Death Eaters?
I mean, you have a monster who likes to kill and who covets personal immortality—why wouldn’t he make a Horcrux? Or rather, why would Dumbledore assume that he had not?
What follows is, of course, pure speculation.
Tom Riddle made up a name for himself that indicated his interest in immortality (or more precisely, his fear of death) back when he was in his teens. At the same age, he showed a taste for grandiosity and an interest in wizarding legends. (He billed himself, after all, as the Heir of Slytherin when he killed Myrtle.)
Tom showed up wearing an ancient ring engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows about the same time Morfinn Gaunt, admitted murderer of one Tom Riddle and his parents, complained of losing his family’s heirloom ring.
A Muggle killing by a previously-convicted Muggle-hexer (the last scion of a degenerate, impoverished family) would hardly rate front page coverage in the Prophet, and it’s wildly unlikely the tiny article reporting the sordid little crime would bother to list anything as insignificant as the Muggle victims’ names. And no one outside Hogwarts knew young Tom Marvolo Riddle’s name anyhow; he had no intention, ever, of becoming famous under that sobriquet.
But the victims’ names must surely have been mentioned at Morfinn’s trial and in his files. (Um, surely they must? Although Bob Ogden’s official paperwork, seventeen years earlier, referred to Morfin’s victim only as “said Muggle.” Maybe Muggles’ names are rarely recorded. When a this-universe human is arrested for cruelty to an animal, after all, the animal is not necessarily named—just the species given and offense against it noted.)
Was Albus Dumbledore already on the Wizengamot then? He’d already been asked at least once to stand for Minister of Magic, so I think he must have been. And how many other Hogwarts staff and students could say the same?
If he saw the names, Dumbledore might have guessed at once some version of what really happened.
He might, however, have misinterpreted young Tom’s motive.
One of the results of Tom’s crime spree was the theft of his uncle’s ring. Set with a black stone, not a gem, engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, and claimed by Gaunt family legend to date back to the Peverells.
Or if Albus didn’t learn at the time about Tom’s other crimes and just thought Tom came by his newest trophy through simple theft, Albus might still have misinterpreted Tom’s motive.
Remind me, what was it that Albus and Gellert were hell-bent on finding when THEY were sixteen?
Albus might have jumped to the conclusion that Tom sought to master death the same way he and Gellert had: by finding and uniting the Deathly Hallows. And have been smugly confident that even though Tom might possibly have gained one of them, he’d never attain at least one of the other two. Since Albus happened to know where it was, and to believe that young Tom could not defeat the Deathstick’s master (neither Gellert nor later, Albus). Tom’s inexplicable-to-other-teachers decision to go work at a mere shop (which happened to trade in antiquities and Dark objects) would then make perfect sense to Albus, and so would Tom’s sudden decision to decamp to the continent, where the Deathstick had last been seen…. But by then it wasn’t there any more.
If Albus had also had the overweening vanity to imagine that his attempt to purge Hogwarts of information about Horcruxes had actually prevented Tom from finding out about that means of trying to cheat death, he might have believed young Tom’s aspirations to immortality doomed to ultimate failure. (Tom was not, after all, of the spiritual purity even to think about creating a Philosopher’s Stone.) So Albus might not have worried much about them (while still worrying, perhaps, about Tom’s other known interests).
In which case, Albus probably went for years smugly thinking that the problem posed to the WW by the newest Dark Lord was fundamentally temporary. (Which would, of course, somewhat mitigate Albus’s culpability in allowing Tom to become Lord Voldemort.) And so on Halloween 1981, the discovery that Tom’s body had been destroyed without effecting Tom’s actual death must have come as a considerable shock to Albus.
No wonder Albus never even considered that Tom must have created at least one Horcrux before the Harrycrux. It was an overwhelming blow to Albus’s vanity to learn that Tom had made ANY.
But there’s an even more fundamental problem. Why wasn’t Dumbledore hunting for Tom’s (presumably singular) Horcrux in, say, 1948? Or at least, after Tom’s return from the continent as “Lord Voldemort,” master of the Death Eaters?
I mean, you have a monster who likes to kill and who covets personal immortality—why wouldn’t he make a Horcrux? Or rather, why would Dumbledore assume that he had not?
What follows is, of course, pure speculation.
Tom Riddle made up a name for himself that indicated his interest in immortality (or more precisely, his fear of death) back when he was in his teens. At the same age, he showed a taste for grandiosity and an interest in wizarding legends. (He billed himself, after all, as the Heir of Slytherin when he killed Myrtle.)
Tom showed up wearing an ancient ring engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows about the same time Morfinn Gaunt, admitted murderer of one Tom Riddle and his parents, complained of losing his family’s heirloom ring.
A Muggle killing by a previously-convicted Muggle-hexer (the last scion of a degenerate, impoverished family) would hardly rate front page coverage in the Prophet, and it’s wildly unlikely the tiny article reporting the sordid little crime would bother to list anything as insignificant as the Muggle victims’ names. And no one outside Hogwarts knew young Tom Marvolo Riddle’s name anyhow; he had no intention, ever, of becoming famous under that sobriquet.
But the victims’ names must surely have been mentioned at Morfinn’s trial and in his files. (Um, surely they must? Although Bob Ogden’s official paperwork, seventeen years earlier, referred to Morfin’s victim only as “said Muggle.” Maybe Muggles’ names are rarely recorded. When a this-universe human is arrested for cruelty to an animal, after all, the animal is not necessarily named—just the species given and offense against it noted.)
Was Albus Dumbledore already on the Wizengamot then? He’d already been asked at least once to stand for Minister of Magic, so I think he must have been. And how many other Hogwarts staff and students could say the same?
If he saw the names, Dumbledore might have guessed at once some version of what really happened.
He might, however, have misinterpreted young Tom’s motive.
One of the results of Tom’s crime spree was the theft of his uncle’s ring. Set with a black stone, not a gem, engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, and claimed by Gaunt family legend to date back to the Peverells.
Or if Albus didn’t learn at the time about Tom’s other crimes and just thought Tom came by his newest trophy through simple theft, Albus might still have misinterpreted Tom’s motive.
Remind me, what was it that Albus and Gellert were hell-bent on finding when THEY were sixteen?
Albus might have jumped to the conclusion that Tom sought to master death the same way he and Gellert had: by finding and uniting the Deathly Hallows. And have been smugly confident that even though Tom might possibly have gained one of them, he’d never attain at least one of the other two. Since Albus happened to know where it was, and to believe that young Tom could not defeat the Deathstick’s master (neither Gellert nor later, Albus). Tom’s inexplicable-to-other-teachers decision to go work at a mere shop (which happened to trade in antiquities and Dark objects) would then make perfect sense to Albus, and so would Tom’s sudden decision to decamp to the continent, where the Deathstick had last been seen…. But by then it wasn’t there any more.
If Albus had also had the overweening vanity to imagine that his attempt to purge Hogwarts of information about Horcruxes had actually prevented Tom from finding out about that means of trying to cheat death, he might have believed young Tom’s aspirations to immortality doomed to ultimate failure. (Tom was not, after all, of the spiritual purity even to think about creating a Philosopher’s Stone.) So Albus might not have worried much about them (while still worrying, perhaps, about Tom’s other known interests).
In which case, Albus probably went for years smugly thinking that the problem posed to the WW by the newest Dark Lord was fundamentally temporary. (Which would, of course, somewhat mitigate Albus’s culpability in allowing Tom to become Lord Voldemort.) And so on Halloween 1981, the discovery that Tom’s body had been destroyed without effecting Tom’s actual death must have come as a considerable shock to Albus.
No wonder Albus never even considered that Tom must have created at least one Horcrux before the Harrycrux. It was an overwhelming blow to Albus’s vanity to learn that Tom had made ANY.
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1945
Date: 2011-08-31 05:58 pm (UTC)I tentative accept Jodel's timing on Albus's beginning investigation into Tom's murder/thefts--that he did so only after the Smith family noticed two powerful antiques missing. By which point young Tom was long gone, and Albus probably earnestly hoped he would never resurface. (Does Wizarding Britain even have extradition treaties with all the rest of the world? Certainly one had the impression that the foreign equivalent of Aurors didn't seem to pursue Azkaban escapee, mass murderer Black with any zeal.)
And of course Tom Riddle never does resurface. Not under his own name.
That's what I meant about "no intention, ever, of becoming famous" under it--he used it until he was ready to vanish overseas and drop it, but (unlike Albus) he's not known to have published research under it while at school, he refuses Sluggy's and other teachers' introductions to those in power--only those who know him personally really know how powerful and intelligent he is. For all anyone else knows, he's just another Head Boy, there's one every year by definitiion, and my grandson is exaggerating when he raves about Tom's talents. Didn't even apply at the Ministry, did he? Couldn't be too ambitious, or knew he wasn't actually bright enough to get ahead there without another patron, better placed than Horace.
Good looking boy, too, maybe he was worried what he might have to do to work his way up. With no family connections to ease the way....
So yeah, Tom Riddle was fairly forgettable, for those who didn't actually know him.
Finally, regarding prosecuting Tom for murder... We only have Albus's word for it that he ever attempted to secure Morfin's release from Azkaban but that Morfin died while the bureaucracy was still deliberating. In fact, we have several options: Albus presented his evidence (Frank Bryce's eyewitness account of seeing young Tom that day plus Morfin's memories) and the Ministry considered it too inconclusive to re-open the case. Or the Ministry decided to re-open the case but dropped the idea when Morfin died. Which they would only do, surely, if they thought both the possibly-innocent wizard and the one who'd framed him were BOTH dead? Or at least firmly out of reach, in which case why make waves that can do nothing but splash mud on the Ministry? But then someone should have been watching in case Tom Riddle ever returned.
Or, of course, Albus collected his evidence but never shared it.
Re: 1945
Date: 2011-09-01 12:15 am (UTC)I recently realized how this came to be. Think about the Smith heirs' POV: Their dear aunt Hepzibah died, of mysterious poisoning. Her life-long loyal house-elf Hokey admits to the deed, though has no motive for doing this on purpose. The poisoning gets attributed to Hokey's senility. Hokey is disgraced and traumatized (what kind of house-elf is she to make such a mistake?) and has no prospects of finding a new master who would be willing to take her on after such performance.
Meanwhile Smiths search for the artifacts, repeatedly. They are nowhere to be found, and if Hokey can still say anything intelligible it is that she put them back in their normal location under the usual protections. So the Smiths may have hoped a Legilimens would be able to find out when Hokey saw those items last. How many of these are around? Not that many, at least, not in respectable society.
And of course the memory revealed Tom's visit 2 days before Hepzibah's death and his reaction when she showed him her trinkets. It also revealed that the locket was purchased by Burke from an impoverished pregnant woman. So Albus asked Burke and confirmed the story, confirmed the authenticity of the locket and added the detail that it was around Christmas-time. Between that story and whatever Albus already suspected about Tom's involvement with the chamber of secrets (which was attributed to the heir of Slytherin) Albus had reasons to check out both Slytherin's surviving descendants as well as Tom's wizarding ancestry (for which he had the clue of the name 'Marvolo'). Both lines of investigation lead to the Gaunts, Little Hangleton, and Morphin in his cell in Azkaban. I don't think Albus needed the entire 10 years of Tom's absence to figure all of this out (even if at the time he was very busy teaching Transfiguration or anything else).
Of course if Albus visited Little Hangleton at this time he'd have found whoever lived at that time in what once was the Riddle House, Frank Bryce tending the gardens, and the abandoned Gaunt Hovel.
Re: 1945
Date: 2011-09-01 06:12 am (UTC)Re: 1945
Date: 2011-09-01 02:15 am (UTC)I wonder what Professor Marchbanks thought of him. She must have met him for OWLs and NEWTs. OTOH, Tom already planned to change his name by OWLs time and had no plans for entering the Ministry (or St Mungo's staff or anywhere else where academic credentials matter). So maybe he didn't try too hard, just enough to enter those NEWTs classes that mattered to him. (Definitely DADA, Transfiguration, Charms and Potions, probably also Arithmancy. Definitely not Muggle Studies, probably not Divination.)
As for Albus: Even if he involved the Ministry and they decided there was no point in re-opening either case - with Morfin being dead, Hokey either dead or insane but not imprisoned and Tom being missing, presumably dead - when Tom returned he did not alert the Ministry that Tom is no longer missing but this newcomer calling himself Lord Voldemort. And there were those 'rumors' about this person, rumors involving a group calling itself The Death Eaters. I wonder what those entailed. Because there were many years yet until people like Molly and Arthur would feel they had to elope before it was too late and people like Minerva and Hagrid started referring to You-Know-Who.
Gaming the tests
Date: 2011-09-01 06:24 am (UTC)Top to top-tnree on every test, but not overwhelmingly over the other kids' performances, would give the impression of "deserves his teacher's accolades and obvious attention, but isn't that unusual"
"Not trying too hard" could mean getting an A, for some kids. Or it could mean getting an O, but without further breathless notes of "I've never in my life seen anyone do that with a wand!"
As to the rest of your comment, about Albus--YEAH.