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deathtocapslockAnother question occurred to me while pondering whether and when Tom had access to the Vanishing Cabinets connecting Hogwarts and Borgin & Burkes: did Tom know about all the school’s secret tunnels?
I mean, he spent years diligently searching for the Chamber of Secrets. Presumably he was at least as thorough as, say, the Marauders, who found something like seven tunnels from the castle to points outside the grounds. Are we supposed to believe that Tom only found tunnels which were known to staff or unusable by the time he returned from his world tour under his new identity? Did he somehow not find any of the same tunnels the Marauders did, or were all the tunnels the Marauders discovered created between 1945 and 1971? I have to say, these don't seem like safe assumptions. If anything, Tom probably found more secret tunnels than they did. After all, he found the Room of Hidden Things, which they failed to do. (And the Chamber of Secrets, but since none of the Marauders were Parselmouths as far as we know, that probably doesn’t count against them.) Surely at least one of the tunnels Tom discovered was still both functional and secret during the first Voldemort war. And subsequently.
So… did Voldemort ever make use of the tunnels?
I’ll leave aside Draco’s mission in HBP, assuming that Voldemort wanted to watch him struggle more than he wanted to get Death Eaters into the castle immediately and so wouldn’t have told Draco about any secret tunnels. There’s still at least one instance during the books when a secret tunnel to Hogsmeade would have been handy: Quirrellmort could have used one to meet Hagrid as a hooded stranger with a dragon egg without being seen leaving the castle. And perhaps Barty Jr. could have used one to sneak out of the castle undetected so he could Apparate to Yorkshire and give Voldemort status reports, if they didn’t consider that too risky and didn’t have a different, secure method of communication. And, I don’t know, maybe there are rare books in the library Voldemort might like to consult.
But surely, over the course of thirty years or more, Voldemort could have thought of more uses for secret tunnels into Hogwarts than that. Kidnapping important kids—or staff—to force their relatives into doing something, maybe. (Heh. He could have pretended to kidnap Barty Jr., who would really have just sneaked out willingly, to either force Crouch’s hand on something or make him look really bad in public. It’s a win either way!) Did Dumbledore catch him sneaking in once, and that’s why the tunnel behind the mirror is caved in?
Maybe he used the tunnels sparingly because he wanted to save them for something really important instead of risking his secret entrances for lesser mischief. (So, no Junior Death Eater rallies in the Slytherin common room.) Like the hypothetical plan involving Snape killing Dumbledore (after deploying the Diary), or at least weakening him, after which Voldemort would lead his Death Eaters in triumph to seize the castle. Those who weren’t busy seizing the Ministry after Barty Jr. killed Crouch and framed someone else for it, anyway.
Still. You’d think that with potentially half a dozen ways into the castle, Voldemort might have made a bit more use of them. Especially since having multiple entrances makes it less damaging for him to lose access to any single one. So the tunnel behind the mirror is a bust now. Good thing there’s still the one behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy, and the one behind the statue of the one-eyed witch, and the Vanishing Cabinet, and…
Perhaps he didn’t always use them himself. Dumbledore didn’t know about Peter Pettigrew’s Animagus form until June 1994. During the year or so that Peter was Voldemort’s spy, who would have noticed a rat scampering through the halls, let alone wondered how it got in?
I mean, he spent years diligently searching for the Chamber of Secrets. Presumably he was at least as thorough as, say, the Marauders, who found something like seven tunnels from the castle to points outside the grounds. Are we supposed to believe that Tom only found tunnels which were known to staff or unusable by the time he returned from his world tour under his new identity? Did he somehow not find any of the same tunnels the Marauders did, or were all the tunnels the Marauders discovered created between 1945 and 1971? I have to say, these don't seem like safe assumptions. If anything, Tom probably found more secret tunnels than they did. After all, he found the Room of Hidden Things, which they failed to do. (And the Chamber of Secrets, but since none of the Marauders were Parselmouths as far as we know, that probably doesn’t count against them.) Surely at least one of the tunnels Tom discovered was still both functional and secret during the first Voldemort war. And subsequently.
So… did Voldemort ever make use of the tunnels?
I’ll leave aside Draco’s mission in HBP, assuming that Voldemort wanted to watch him struggle more than he wanted to get Death Eaters into the castle immediately and so wouldn’t have told Draco about any secret tunnels. There’s still at least one instance during the books when a secret tunnel to Hogsmeade would have been handy: Quirrellmort could have used one to meet Hagrid as a hooded stranger with a dragon egg without being seen leaving the castle. And perhaps Barty Jr. could have used one to sneak out of the castle undetected so he could Apparate to Yorkshire and give Voldemort status reports, if they didn’t consider that too risky and didn’t have a different, secure method of communication. And, I don’t know, maybe there are rare books in the library Voldemort might like to consult.
But surely, over the course of thirty years or more, Voldemort could have thought of more uses for secret tunnels into Hogwarts than that. Kidnapping important kids—or staff—to force their relatives into doing something, maybe. (Heh. He could have pretended to kidnap Barty Jr., who would really have just sneaked out willingly, to either force Crouch’s hand on something or make him look really bad in public. It’s a win either way!) Did Dumbledore catch him sneaking in once, and that’s why the tunnel behind the mirror is caved in?
Maybe he used the tunnels sparingly because he wanted to save them for something really important instead of risking his secret entrances for lesser mischief. (So, no Junior Death Eater rallies in the Slytherin common room.) Like the hypothetical plan involving Snape killing Dumbledore (after deploying the Diary), or at least weakening him, after which Voldemort would lead his Death Eaters in triumph to seize the castle. Those who weren’t busy seizing the Ministry after Barty Jr. killed Crouch and framed someone else for it, anyway.
Still. You’d think that with potentially half a dozen ways into the castle, Voldemort might have made a bit more use of them. Especially since having multiple entrances makes it less damaging for him to lose access to any single one. So the tunnel behind the mirror is a bust now. Good thing there’s still the one behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy, and the one behind the statue of the one-eyed witch, and the Vanishing Cabinet, and…
Perhaps he didn’t always use them himself. Dumbledore didn’t know about Peter Pettigrew’s Animagus form until June 1994. During the year or so that Peter was Voldemort’s spy, who would have noticed a rat scampering through the halls, let alone wondered how it got in?
