Could Tom Riddle really build a following in school

[tygershark.livejournal.com]

As we all know the books left a lot of questions unanswered. So many things are contradictory and just flat out don't make any sense. 

I've often thought about Tom Riddle's time at Hogwarts and those memories that Dumbledore showed Harry. Many of the things Dumbles told Harry didn't make any sense. Worse some of the reasons he gave Harry for the things that he did make even less sense. I'm thinking here of Trelawney's interview being held in the Hog's Head because it was raining. Was she related to the Wicked Witch of the West? Did she fear death by melting? But I digress, back to my musings about Tom.

How was it that Tom was able to amass a loyal following that included the likes of Avery, Lestrange, and one can only assume Malfoy. Although they must have been the fathers of Lucius Malfoy's generation. I know Dumbledore tells Harry that he believed Tom did it by virtue of his Parslemouth ability, his charm, good looks, and superior intellect, but I have to wonder. Perhaps I'm too cynical, but during those "lessons" Dumbledore is so cagey in what he reveals I really have trouble taking anything he says at face value.

So here is my thought process, Tom starts Hogwarts in 1938 and he is sorted into Slytherin. The boy's origins at this point are a complete mystery. All that is known is that he was born and raised in a Muggle orphanage. With the great importance placed upon bloodlines and family ties, it is reasonable to assume that the child's parents were not magical. Having children out of wedlock would have been nearly unthinkable to the society stuck in the Victorian age. So as far as Riddle's housemates could see he was a muggle-born or at best a half-blood. Even him being a half-blood I think they would've discounted because again bloodline and family were so important. He could've been the product of a sexual assault but I think in their minds that would've been just as bad since he would've been a bastard. 

What I picture is this muggle-born boy being sorted into the house that values blood purity over everything, he's there on a bursary/scholarship so he's penniless. He would have only second-hand robes and supplies, he would have known little to nothing about the wizarding world and its customs. We already know that Snape was not well treated within his house for being poor, it is possible that the difference was that Tom was attractive whereas Snape was not. I can see that Tom's housemates might have made his time there a living hell. I can even see that he might have felt that but for the ability to do magic he was no better off than at the orphanage.

So what about his Parselmouth abilities, could he have won his housemates over by displaying one of the traits of their founder? Possibly, but then again that might have made his situation worse. I think that the Slytherins would only have seen this jumped-up little "mudblood" having delusions far above his station and made it their mission to put him in his place. 

I just don't buy that the Slytherins would have followed someone that as far as they knew was a "mudblood." Remember, Dumbledore tells Harry that Tom found out about his mother's family in the summer of his sixteenth year. Even if he found out much earlier about his family, I think the Slytherins would not have believed him or him trying to appropriate a status to which he had no right. I'm also not really sure about Tom's inclusion in the Slug Club unless it was for his brilliance alone. As a muggle-born or even a half-blood, Tom wouldn't have had much in the way of future potential to attract Sluggy's attention.

Dumbledore told Harry that he had considerable trouble locating anyone with memories of Tom's school days and those that did were reluctant to talk about it. But why would reluctance matter to a Master Legillimens? For that matter, why could Dumbledore not get the "true" memory off Slughorn? 

In the alternate universe of my headcanon Dumbledore implanted those memories into Slughorn. The reason he couldn't find memories of Tom's time at Hogwarts is that everyone remembered Tom's school career very differently and what they remembered wouldn't fit the narrative Dumbledore wanted. In this alternate universe, Tom is treated as the muggle-born he appears to be and he resents the stuck up pure-bloods and vows revenge. He finds out he's descended from the Slytherin line but he keeps that information to himself. It is only after he leaves Hogwarts and vanishes for those ten years that he becomes Lord Voldemort. Then when he comes back to England no one except Dumbledore suspects that he's Tom Riddle. Voldemort avenges himself on Malfoy, Lestrange, Avery, and the rest by coopting the pure-blood dogma and enslaving their children. All the while taking great pleasure in seeing their sons and daughters groveling at his feet. 

That sounds much more interesting to me than what we got. Tom was descended from rotten stock so that's why he's evil. Something for me to consider writing, maybe after I'm finished with my present fic.

Comments

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13844247/chapters/32196621

In chapter 8 of her fanfic, "Come Once Again And Love Me" (it is a time-travel-of-the-mind premise, think what happened with Wolverine in "X-Men Days Of Future Past"), @laventadorn had Severus and Lily sit down and discuss just why were so many Slytherins attracted to Dark Lords, and it was some of the best meta analysis in a plot & character driven HP fic I've ever seen.

[tygershark.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting I'll check it out. Thanks for the link.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/I know Dumbledore tells Harry that he believed Tom did it by virtue of his Parslemouth ability, his charm, good looks, and superior intellect/

He also tells Harry that Tom's gang was “a motley collection, a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish, gravitating towards a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty." I suppose that if the weak were desperate enough for protection and the thuggish were bloodthirsty enough, they might not care what the background of their leader was. But if Tom had been shunned due to his background like your headcanon suggests, I don't know why the ambitious would gravitate to his 'shared glory.'

I agree that Tom's reception in Slughorn's memories doesn't really reflect the blood purity obsession of the wizarding world. Not only is Tom in the Slug Club, but in Slughorn's memories, the other boys (who would likely be in Slytherin) throw him "admiring glances." Tom does mention some concern about his background, but both Slughorn and the boys don't seem to care about it. If Slytherin House cares so much about blood purity, why do they seemingly not care about this penniless orphan rising through the ranks?

/We already know that Snape was not well treated within his house for being poor/

But we don't see him treated nearly as badly by them as he is by the all-Gryffindor Marauders. James even starts sneering at Snape on the train before they're even Sorted, paralleling your sentence here:

/I think that the Slytherins would only have seen this jumped-up little "mudblood" having delusions far above his station and made it their mission to put him in his place/

It's as if there's this fundamental disconnect between what Slytherin House is supposed to be and how its members actually act. Yes, they're the ones to snarl "Mudblood" at Hermione and others, but when they're not doing that, what do they do? They accept poor, obscure orphan Tom Riddle and enable him to rise to power. Lucius Malfoy accepts poor, halfblood Snape. Draco Malfoy approaches and initiates conversation with a boy who's dressed in secondhand Muggle clothes that are too big for him before he has any idea who that boy is. Regulus Black has a close enough relationship with his house elf that the elf's mistreatment moves him to turn against a Dark Lord. Eileen Prince and Merope Gaunt both marry Muggle men. Horace Slughorn evolves his Slug Club over time to include girls and Muggle-born students (yes, he does make insensitive remarks about Hermione's background, but he still accepts her and treats her with far more attention than he does for pureblood Ron).

And yet despite all of that, Slytherin House is supposed to be the home of snobbish, insular, aristocratic brats who are obsessed with bloodlines and lineage. They're meant to be the snooty rich kids who don't let anyone else into their clique and turn up their noses at everyone else.

/In this alternate universe, Tom is treated as the muggle-born he appears to be and he resents the stuck up pure-bloods and vows revenge/

In this alternate universe, would the Chamber of Secrets fiasco therefore be a manifestation of his inner self-loathing or an attempt to curry favor with the purebloods before giving up?

/Voldemort avenges himself on Malfoy, Lestrange, Avery, and the rest by coopting the pure-blood dogma and enslaving their children. All the while taking great pleasure in seeing their sons and daughters groveling at his feet/

That does fit how we see him treat them. He preaches about blood purity, but we see that he doesn't really treat purebloods any better than he does Muggle-borns. And blood purity doesn't really have anything to do with his actual goal: immortality. One theory that's been proposed here is that he realized that half-bloods like himself and Snape had a better chance of being magically powerful, so he promoted the pureblood line to weed out the competition.

[dorea-ysleen.livejournal.com]

What if it's not purity of blood that the Slytherins actually care about, but wizarding traditions? In Madame Malkin's Draco tells Harry that muggleborns shouldn't be allowed at Hogwarts because "they don't know our ways".

In my head canon, it's a rather recent development that only muggle holidays are observed at Hogwarts - especially the commercial version of Halloween, which isn't even that old. Sure, some of that could have happened before segregation, when lots of wizards would have known and maybe observed/pretended to observe the Christian holidays, but what if afterwards they went back to the older celebrations, like yule, samhain, beltane and so on.

Then suddenly they have muggle holidays, muggle studies (instead of or surviving the termination of wizading culture classes), History of Magic becomes a joke... and everyone who has a problem with that is obviously a bigotted racist. I mean it seems like nowadays muggleborns arrive at Hogwarts already disregarding wizarding traditions and villainising/looking down on people who care. That would of course breed resentment and give the few actual racists lots of arguments.

[sunnyskywalker]

It's very odd how we keep hearing that Slytherins are obsessed with blood purity, but in practice, they cheerfully welcome scruffy kids with Muggle surnames. I mean, maybe things are different behind the closed doors of the Slytherin common room than in public, but we don't know that they are. And maybe they treat the half-bloods as second-tier friends (useful and sometimes great fun, you know, but not people you'd want to marry your sisters)--but this doesn't seem especially worse than the rest of the wizarding world, so why blame the Slytherins alone? Gryffindor McGonagall is horrified at the the thought of leaving a wizard baby with the Dursleys after watching them eat breakfast and gossip with the neighbors. What's so horrifying, unless it's their fashion sense or that they're Muggles? Or maybe she's horrified that 16-month-old Dudley threw a tantrum. Because she's never met a toddler before, or because she has different and really scary ideas about child discipline?

But if we go with what we're told about Slytherin rather than the muddled confusion we actually see, Tom probably shouldn't have been popular. At least, not for the first year or four even if he did immediately start a determined campaign to win people over. He didn't seem to have ever tried charming people pre-Hogwarts, so it would probably take him time to learn those manipulative skills. (Good thing he had a master to learn from! Er, wait, no...)

He did have another skill that might have helped, though: he was always good at mind-affecting magic, even before he knew what he was doing. He could force people to tell the truth and "make" animals do things. So... maybe he could magically influence people into admiring him? Probably not all at once, or it would look suspicious, but maybe his housemates "warmed up to him" unusually quickly and "luckily" admired his skills rather than being jealous.

Even if Tom was popular, I could see him wanting revenge against purebloods, though. He researches all kinds of old magic, so he probably knows about the magic Hogwarts acceptance book, and works out that his name would have been in it well before Dumbledore brought his letter. He might think, "They couldn't check the book occasionally and make sure wizard orphans are adopted by wizarding families? They just left me in that orphanage with nothing! No, less than nothing--with the threat of being carted off to an asylum! I'll show them..."

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/He didn't seem to have ever tried charming people pre-Hogwarts, so it would probably take him time to learn those manipulative skills/

One possible reason for the shift is because Tom realized that he wasn't the only big fish in the pond anymore once he arrived at Hogwarts. He didn't have to be charming in the orphanage because everyone was scared of him and nobody knew what he was. But at Hogwarts, nobody would write off his actions as bizarre 'accidents.' Instead of teaching him to reform his behavior (as Dumbledore likely hoped), Hogwarts taught him to hide it better.

/maybe he could magically influence people into admiring him? Probably not all at once, or it would look suspicious, but maybe his housemates "warmed up to him" unusually quickly/

Still, how many people would need to be charmed by Tom before somebody started wondering why everyone seemed to make an exception for him? Imagine if Severus had this ability and more and more people started to admire him despite his background and greasy hair? Even if everyone recognized how gifted he was at potions, somebody would've gotten suspicious of how this 'jumped-up upstart' was suddenly everyone's darling, especially since everyone at the school is aware that mind-altering spells and potions exist.

/He might think, "They couldn't check the book occasionally and make sure wizard orphans are adopted by wizarding families? They just left me in that orphanage with nothing! No, less than nothing--with the threat of being carted off to an asylum! I'll show them..."/

That would be an interesting motive and one that could also resonate with Harry, but unfortunately something like that is never explored in canon. Tom says to Dumbledore that he doesn't want to go back to the orphanage, but it's taken for granted that he must return there. Just like it's taken for granted that Harry must live with the Dursleys, and the series doesn't question that either.

In fact, I think that there was a discussion a while ago in this community about that premise: why wizards don't set up orphanages or adoption agencies for magical orphans. They're so concerned about secrecy, but they don't ever think of the ramifications of allowing magical children to be raised by Muggle families who aren't in on the secret.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, yes, I think that is a plausible reason why he changed tactics. I'm just wondering how he learned to charm people, and how long it took. Instinctive Legilimency? Observing Dumbledore? And was it a few months, or a few years before he really succeeded? (People sometimes retcon their own memories based on what happened later, so if Tom was popular from, say, the middle of third year on, people might forget that they barely noticed him for the first year and then only noticed him a bit the second, and so on.)

I really wonder how much Tom's looks helped him. Lockhart demonstrates his ineptitude blatantly and publicly on numerous occasions, but he's apparently gotten away with this for years because of his fabulous hair and dazzling smile. (He can't have Oblivated everyone.) Maybe wizards are even greater suckers for good looks than we are?

And there's always self-delusion and good old-fashioned hypocrisy. If purebloods are the most magically talented, and Tom is ridiculously talented, then he must be pureblood, QED. He doesn't know who his parents really were, and who knows whether the orphanage recorded their real names? So he's a pureblood, if maybe a bastard one, who got lost in the Muggle world by accident somehow, and we can all sleep soundly at night without questioning our society's fundamental beliefs. Or, maybe he's a half-blood, but obviously his wizarding parent was really special, so he isn't like those other half-bloods, and... look, he's just different, okay? No, it isn't logical, but lots of people are illogical in exactly that way. Plus, you know what Hermione says about wizards and logic...

[oryx_leucoryx]

And there's always self-delusion and good old-fashioned hypocrisy. If purebloods are the most magically talented, and Tom is ridiculously talented, then he must be pureblood, QED.

Slughorn's words in the memory add up to that. Tom says his background might be a hindrance in the Ministry, Slughorn responds with saying that his talent must mean he comes from the best wizarding stock or words to that effect.

[tygershark.livejournal.com]

All very good points. Yet again it shows the disconnect between what the books said and what was shown. In the narrative that JKR set up Tom Riddle should not have been able to use his charisma to gather followers.

Slughorn's words in the memory add up to that. Tom says his background might be a hindrance in the Ministry, Slughorn responds with saying that his talent must mean he comes from the best wizarding stock or words to that effect.

Again here is what I perceive as a disconnect. Sluggy says Tom's talent and possible pureblood background will carry him. But in the case of the Ministry, there is only one Muggleborn mentioned who is at an above entry-level position, Dirk Cresswell. He was forced out for falsifying his background as I recall. Then he went on the run when they were rounding up the muggleborns. If he had to falsify his Geneology that suggests the Ministry has a policy of either not hiring or promoting muggleborn.

[oryx_leucoryx]

When I read it I thought he falsified his genealogy after the takeover of the Ministry.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yes, wasn't there a sudden cottage industry in falsified genealogies then? Even Umbridge started flaunting her "Selwyn locket."

[sunnyskywalker]

I've been thinking more about this, and I think Tom's popularity could work in stages.

If he was quiet and personable for the first year or two and caught on quickly how to delicately flatter the older and more socially prestigious kids, they'd initially accept him as useful (like Severus, only better looking), albeit maybe with some grumbling or reluctance. By some point in second year, they'd have noticed how unusually talented he was. Some would start muttering about that, but he could honestly tell them that he was an orphan and no one knows for sure who his true parents are. (The orphanage has names, but must not have traced them or they'd have tried to foist the kid off on his relatives, and Mrs. Cole would have complained that they refused to take him or something. So Tom could say that the names the orphanage has are obviously false ones to hide his true parentage.) Everyone reassures themselves with the thought that he's a pureblood bastard who got lost in the Muggle world somehow. He manages a few clever schemes to help his housemates get revenge on rivals, and maybe helps them with their homework or something (only more subtly than Hermione). It isn't quite a gang, let alone his gang, but he's gradually getting kids used to listening to him and depending on him.

Then in fourth year, Tom traces the Gaunts, gets the ring that summer, and starts dropping hints that he's found his family in fifth year (when he finds the Chamber and writes Heir of Slytherin graffiti). His friends accept the Quester's ring as proof that he's from an old family, because who else would pass on such a thing? Now they can laugh at the joke about his lack of background, because they all know the truth, right? (Not the actual families involved, but they probably have their suspicions--encouraged by Tom.) They're sure that once Tom's proven himself for a few years out of school, his family will be more willing to make it an open secret, and Tom's "background" will be settled to everyone's satisfaction. Tom steps up the stealthy revenge plots, helps someone influential pass his NEWTs, and various other helpful maneuvers. But now he's more of a first among equals. They stay up late talking about power and immortality and cool stuff, and Tom sounds like he seriously intends to do the stuff they're talking about, and makes it sound so possible... There might still be a few holdouts who think he "isn't quite our class," but they aren't getting useful homework help and keep suffering from unexplained accidents, so they're listened to less and less. They're obviously jealous losers, right?

Sixth and seventh years, he really steps up his game, and now definitely has that "gang" Dumbledore mentioned, with Tom is now their leader. They still aren't quite sure which families his parents are from, but they're sure to be from the oldest and purest ones. How else would Tom be such a handsome, brilliant, and magically gifted young man with such charisma? And obviously they are too smart to be fooled by some half-blood or Muggle-born upstart, so there's further "proof" that he's pureblood.

And Tom still remembers his first two years, when people weren't shy about denigrating him even as they tried to use him, and how the wizarding world abandoned him to the orphanage when they could have rescued him years earlier, and is determined not just to use them, but to destroy them. And make them thank him for it.

Could that work?

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a compelling backstory. :) In this version, would Tom open the Chamber of Secrets to prove his merits to his pureblood classmates, to eliminate Muggle-borns because he genuinely felt contempt for them, or both?

Also, Tom's motive of revenge for being used reminds me of a theory I saw on Jodel's Red Hen website where he determined to use everyone before they used him. Unless Tom's grudge lasted for the rest of his life, though, I still don't see how it connects to his desire for immortality. If he's immortal and the most powerful wizard alive, then I don't see why he needs to use or hate anyone, be they pureblood or Muggle-born. He's already achieved immortality and he's already an extremely powerful wizard, so what more power does he want and why does he want it?

[sunnyskywalker]

Or because he liked the rush of getting away with letting out a deadly monster, and stirring up fear and hatred between different segments of wizarding society was a bonus? Muggle-borns might just have been easier targets to start with. Getting accepted by purebloods gave him access to their useful social networks, which would make eventually destroying them easier. He wouldn't need to use them or hate them, but how many people do, really? It's often some kind of warped emotional need rather than strictly practical.

Other possibilities: his position as the most powerful wizard would be more secure if he were the only wizard. Or wizards are just more exciting prey than Muggles (who can't fight back).

And of course his motivations may have changed over time. Maybe he first wanted to prove himself and get revenge--and also be immortal, because why would he accept dying. Then he decided that taking out the few people like Dumbledore who might be effective rivals would remove the last threats to his immortality (and destabilizing wizarding society made it easier to weaken them). And then realized it was just so much fun that he'd do it for that reason alone, and he'd play on whichever societal divisions worked best at the moment.

It's hard to put together a coherent psychology for Voldemort together because his actions are so determined by plot needs, but we can try ;-)