Crime and Punishment

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I was just rereading HBP, “Lord Voldemort Request,” and the final interchange floored me when I finally paid it adequate attention. Twinkles said, and a great sadness filled his face, “The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom…. I wish I could….”
Excuse me?



The Dumb One had forced Tom to make repayment for his crimes? When had that happened, precisely?

I can only presume that this is Albus’s interpretation of the scene in Tom’s orphanage when the wise visiting wizard cast a charm that made Tom’s private wardrobe first seem to be engulfed in flames, and then to “rattle” from the stolen trinkets hidden within. Finally Tom was forced to display his mean trophies. And then The White Wizard displayed his morality:


“You will return them to their owners with your apologies,” said Dumbledore calmly, putting his wand back into his jacket. “I shall know whether it has been done. And be warned: Thieving is not tolerated at Hogwarts.”

Tom did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colorless voice, “Yes, sir.

“At Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, “we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have—inadvertently, I am sure—been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school. You are not the first, nor will you be the last, to allow your magic to run away with you. But you should know that Hogwarts can expel students, and the Ministry of Magic—yes, there is a Ministry—will punish lawbreakers still more severely. All new wizards must accept that, in entering our world, they abide by our laws.”

“Yes, sir,” said Riddle again.

Let’s assume for the moment that Tom did in fact return his sordid trophies to those still able to reclaim them, i.e. to those of Tom’s victims still alive, sane, ambulatory, and resident at the orphanage.

Now, suppose Tommy had caught me showing off my yo-yo skills to admiring fellow orphans, and used the yo-yo itself in various creative ways to torment me. Perhaps he first made it entangle my hands while my former admirers laughed at my ineptness, and then tripped my feet while they stopped laughing in fear, and then strangled me almost to death with my own toy…. Suppose he then confiscated the toy as a souvenir of the encounter. Had he done some such, I might not, in fact, want the yo-yo back. It would be a memento to me of the encounter, as much as to my tormentor.

Or perhaps the yo-yo was little Billy’s, and its string was what his pet rabbit had been hanged with…. Let’s not even think about what Tom could do with a girl’s thimble. (I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me….)

But leaving such considerations aside, Albus seriously believed that returning a few stolen trinkets would, to Tom’s orphanage fellows, constitute full repayment for his many crimes against them? For years of terror?

Um. You know. That’s a rather unique viewpoint. Really, it gets more unique, the more one imagines what it must have been like to live at little Tommy’s mercy. It gets to be quite a view without compare.

Well, Albus does believe he can’t be understood by the rest of us. In this matter, he's right.

*

What exactly were Riddle’s crimes by the time the Dumb One visited Tom in that beleaguered orphaniage? Mrs. Cole told Albus, “He scares the other children."

"You mean he is a bully?" asked Dumbledore.

"I think he must be," said Mrs. Cole, frowning slightly, "but it's very hard to catch him at it. There have been incidents…. Nasty things…..

"Billy Stubbs’ rabbit… well, Tom said he didn’t do it and I don’t see how he could have done, but even so, it didn’t hang itself from the rafters, did it?... All I know is he and Billy had argued the day before. And then on the summer outing…. well, Amy Benton and Dennis Bishop were never quite right afterwards, and all we ever got out of them was that they’d gone into a cave with Tom Riddle…. And, well, there have been a lot of things, funny things….”

This is as indefinite as it is sinister (and it’s an abrogation of responsibility that the Hogwarts representative chose not to explore more precisely how the child had been misusing his magic), but two definite crimes have been mentioned: killing a pet rabbit, and driving Amy Benton and Dennis Bishop insane.

(See my essay “Accessory after the Fact” for my parsing of the clues that Dennis and Amy had been sent to the lunatic asylum for their “not quite rightness”.)

But even if you don't accept my reading that they'd been transferred to the loony bin, we have Mrs. Cole's statement that they never recovered from whatever Tom did. Tom inflicted long-term, possibly permanent, mental damage on them.

Then there’s Tommy’s own confession to Albus: “I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.”

Tom says, “I can,” which is to say that he had already tested these powers. So he’s confessed to having coerced or possessed animals, used magic to harm people, and caused pain magically.

Further, he told Dumbledore “with ringing force” to “Tell the truth!” and it’s clear that he expected Dumbledore to obey unthinkingly. That was a homegrown version of the Imperius Tom deployed, and he’s clearly experienced at it; when Dumbledore doesn’t react properly, Tom was shocked, wary, and instantaneously demanded, “Who are you?”

Which establishes that Tom has must have used his spell repeatedly, enough at least to know that there has to be something special about Dumbledore if he can resist it.

Tom has thus confessed to or demonstrated homemade, wandless versions of two of the three Unforgivable Curses, folks, and he had already at least one death (of a pet) to his, ah, credit.

To summarize: in the orphanage Albus learned that young Tom had used magic deliberately and repeatedly to cause pain, fear, mental damage, and probably physical harm (“bad things happen”) to his fellow orphans; he had used magic to coerce both animals and humans; he had taken trophies, souvenirs of his most memorable successes in tormenting his fellows. This child had invented and perfected crude (wandless) versions of both the Cruciatus and the Imperius. He had, almost certainly, tortured other children into insanity. He had killed, if only a pet so far.

The other children were scared of him. Gee, why?

And Albus knew all this.

And the Dumb One’s response at the time was to lecture the budding psychopath, “Thieving is not tolerated at Hogwarts.”

Torture, possession, mind-control, telekinesis to hurt people, ARE? Just not theft?

Evidently.

*

But Albus’s attitude makes sense when we adjust for one additional variable.

Twinkles has many admirable intellectual attributes (just ask him, he’ll list them!), but there’s one we readers in this forum seldom grant him:

Empathy for those without his resources. For the weak.

*

And now it all falls into place.

From when Albus was a little boy, he was smarter and more powerful than most of his peers. And he internalized this, accepted this as normal, at a very young age.

And Albus now is emotionally divorced enough not to care much about public opinion—being regarded as mad, so long as he’s simultaneously granted to be brilliant is fine with him. “Nitwick. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak,” and donning a vulture hat at Yule.

If this attitude goes back a long ways, his peers couldn't even have ganged up on him and used humiliation effectively against him. (Compare young Severus's jealousy of his dignity.)

So Albus may have been nearly untouchable by anything others could do even as a child. He certainly is now, and has been for decades at least.

So now circle around to the point when above-it-all Albus met with that orphan. No one around Albus NOW—no one perhaps since Al’s first or second year as a student—perhaps no one EVER—can really bother Twinkles. No one can cause Dumbles serious physical or emotional pain. No one can coerce or possess him.

He fears no person, and perhaps never seriously has. (The one thing he says he fears is confronting his responsibility for killing Ariana.)

But Albus was the custodian of innumerable interesting secrets and trinkets. Whether or not anyone ever succeeded in penetrating his defenses, OF COURSE he expected people sometimes to try.

By the time Twinkles visited Tom’s orphanage, no sane person even tried to harm Albus. But optimistic sorts might still try to steal from him.

So, when he tries to understand that a miscreant might have offended against persons, theft is the only possibility that can actually register for Albus. It’s the only one Twinkles can relate to.

So yeah, Tom caused pain and terror to his fellow orphans, killed their pets, drove two of them insane…. Yawn.

But, horror of horrors, he also successfully stole from them!

Make restitution for that crime, sirrah, and know that some things are not to be tolerated!

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, Albus arrived at Hogwarts with the scandal of his father's arrest for Muggle-maiming over his head. And his mother's caution over revealing Ariana's condition. He schooled himself not to care, so as not to be hampered by public opinion. He did it too well.

But thanks for pointing out the outcome - what Dumbles did and did not care about as a grown man, in charge of many children.

There were only 2 people who had any kind of emotional power over Dumbles - Gellert and Aberforth. He put Gellert in prison and made Aberforth look like a fool who shouldn't be listened to. No more worries on that front!

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

So yeah, Tom caused pain and terror to his fellow orphans, killed their pets, drove two of them insane…. Yawn.

True, Dumbledore's lack of empathy was on a par with, if not far worse than, Tom's, but you forgot one other factor! Those Tom harmed up to that point were Muggles (and non-magical animals). For all the lip service paid to Dumbledore as a Muggle-lover, I doubt he ever cared at all about the fates of Muggles... again, not that he really cared about anyone's. The bottom line at the orphanage was that it was far more important that a magical person be given a magical education than it was to address any harm done to mere Muggles. Presumably, other magical children could take care of themselves.

With this said, and given that Dumbledore gave Tom the stink-eye while Tom was a student at Hogwarts, but apparently did nothing more, I wonder about Dumbledore's impetus to bring Tom down. Was he personally offended at this upstart trying to grab the world, especially when he warned about theft? Was it atonement for his mistakes with Gellert and Ariana -- but if so, why did he wait until Tom had amassed so much power? Did he believe Tom would never be better than him and he could always counter him, and that was fine until ... what changed? Did he twig that Hogwarts could be compromised when Tom came looking for a job?

I know we are supposed to think Dumbledore opposed Riddle because of freedom, justice, and the Greater Good. He doesn't seem to be engaged in assuring social good in society, however. He doesn't even seem engaged in scholarship while at Hogwarts. Was Riddle a Moriarty-type obsession for him? For all his cheery, hand-wavy "love" speeches -- and where did those come from? --it's amazing that Dumbledore could accept that a gormless boy would be Riddle's downfall, but of course, he actually engineered that boy's mindset to a fine point, even after death. Why didn't he try that with Tom?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Silly Severus, thinking that nearly causing his death would get the Marauders expelled. He should have accused James of stealing the Snitch.

I wonder if Dumbles brought up the matter of the flaming closet because he found out that Tom had been stealing magical trinkets?

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

But Albus was the custodian of innumerable interesting secrets and trinkets. Whether or not anyone ever succeeded in penetrating his defenses, OF COURSE he expected people sometimes to try.

I wonder was DD thinking about the way Grindelwald got the Elder Wand.
And later when the wand was his was he worried about Tom steeling it?
I'm horrible with years so I'm not sure when DD got the wand and was Tom in Hogwarts at the time. But if he was?
It wouldn't surprise me if a big part of "Tom watching" and later refusal to let him teach at Hogwarts was DD's paranoia that the Elder Wand will be stolen again.

Why be concerned about Tom hurting kids when you can worry about your precious Deathstick?

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----To summarize: in the orphanage Albus learned that young Tom had used magic deliberately and repeatedly to cause pain, fear, mental damage, and probably physical harm (“bad things happen”) to his fellow orphans; he had used magic to coerce both animals and humans;

Something I'd been thinking about (before you made this post) is whether Albus truly understood at the time the extent to which Tom was deliberately using his magic to harm others. Looking back, Albus could certainly see that eleven-year-old Tom had already mastered wandless magic, but I'm not sure how clear this was to him in 1938. Likewise, looking back, Albus could see that eleven-year-old Tom was a budding psychopath, but, again, I'm not sure how clearly he saw this in 1938.

Tom was obviously a troubled kid. Albus learned that Tom didn't get along with the other children in the orphanage and that Mrs. Cole thought Tom was insane. But this has long been the experience of most wizards among Muggles. As the examples of the Dursley family and the attack on Ariana show, Muggles often believe that wizards are freaks; they don't understand magic, and they fear what they don't understand. Thus, Albus could have easily attributed Tom's problems to the fact that he was a misunderstood magical orphan living in the midst of Muggles rather than to Tom's innate personality. He may have believed that things would improve once Tom was at Hogwarts with his own kind. (And, in fact, Tom did appear to be just fine once he was at Hogwarts).

Moreover, very few children are able to control their magic before they start at Hogwarts, and very few wizards ever learn how to perform wandless magic. Therefore, Albus may have assumed that, like the vast majority other magical children, most of the magic which Tom had performed had been accidental magic due to emotional outbursts or due to the need to protect himself from the intolerant Muggles.

Indeed, Albus says to Tom, We teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have—inadvertently, I am sure—been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school. You are not the first, nor will you be the last, to allow your magic to run away with you.

This may be why Albus focused specifically on Tom's thievery; he didn't realize how much control Tom already had over his magic. Thus, he was less concerned about the pain, fear, mental damage, coercion, etc. because he believed that, unlike the thievery, those incidents were mainly accidental in nature. He didn't understand at the time how the thievery was just a small part of much larger problem.

Albus may claim that he knew all along that Tom was a bad seed, but I'm not sure if he recognized just how dangerous Tom actually was in 1938. Hindsight is 20/20.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm pressed for time atm so I'm only just quickly scanning this through til I can return later, but this? "Thieving is not tolerated at Hogwarts"- riiiight. Tell that to Luna Lovegood. Her possessions go missing to the point where she has to put up posters requesting their return apparently on a yearly basis. (The hell kind of Head of House is Flitwick that nothing ever happens to the girls bullying her?) I'm guessing this is another case of Informed Attribute, as is common with HP.