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roisindubh211cause nobody in fandom reads my lj...
This might be a bit out there
I was thinking about JK Rowling saying that Voldemort has never known love, otherwise he wouldn't be who he is. And I remembered the last book where Harry learns about Merope Gaunt, who is dying as she gives birth and only lives long enough to name her son. Tom Riddle, when he learns about his mother, is shocked that she didn't love him enough to stay alive- that a "real" witch would protect herself with magic.
I have a feeling that the constant harping on the Power of Love(TM) we keep getting in these books is hinting at this- Voldemort doesn't understand love, and starts despising his parents because they didn't love enough- his father abandoned his mother (well, what would you do if some crazy girl down the street has been drugging you for months, perhaps years?) and his mother didn't care enough to live for him. What was his reaction to Harry Potter's mother dying for her son, willingly- did he think about it? If he had had a few extra moments would he have thought more about it, and would that have saved the Wizarding World from more of his attentions, or made it worse? Part of me is imagining his childhood self full of jealousy that this boys' father stayed to fight for his family, that his mother gave up her life for her son. The possibility of Harry having part of Voldemort's soul stuck in that scar makes this an even more attractive theory- what happens to the bits of soul when you destroy a horcrux? Do they 'pass through the veil' or stick themselves back to the original soul- can you manipulate what happens to them? Because then if you could stick that bit back on it has experienced everything Harry has, from the Dursleys to his subconscious memories of his parents' love to Mrs. Weasley's many sweaters and Easter Eggs (notice how moved he is by the one he gets in fifth year- one of redhen's essays pointed that out and it stuck in my head a bit...)
Here's another weird idea, also based on one of her essays (check out redhen-publications.com ). She proposes that Voldemort is Voldemort (instead of the handsome, charming Tom Riddle he could have been) because of Dementors. That perhaps they found Merope in her pregnancy and followed her, feeding off her emotions and taking her magic till she had no will to live, and then followed the (already affected) newborn boy into the Muggle orphanage, and continue hovering around him, making all of his caretakers feel vaguely uneasy whenever they go near the child and making the baby terrified- too scared, apparently, to even cry (see HBP). They probably leave after a while, before the little boy can really talk yet (and telling people stories about skeletal creatures in hoods probably wouldn't gain him any friends among the other orphans or the people in charge). THe damage is done anyway. Nobody has ever loved him, not since he was born, anyway. Merope may have been delighted to find she was pregnant at first, depending on how long it was before Riddle Senior left her.
Now, back to the power of a mother's love- what if Voldemort could be forced to see that this had happened, that the closest thing his mother could feel to love was to drag herself somewhere that would take care of a baby, to give him a name, that of the love of her life and her own father (who she no doubt loved after a fashion- she wasn't a rebel like Sirius Black, nobody expected her to run off with a muggle) before she died. Would he see that as evidence that her life had been worse than death? Would he just change his tactics to the goal of wiping out Dementors?
This might be a bit out there
I was thinking about JK Rowling saying that Voldemort has never known love, otherwise he wouldn't be who he is. And I remembered the last book where Harry learns about Merope Gaunt, who is dying as she gives birth and only lives long enough to name her son. Tom Riddle, when he learns about his mother, is shocked that she didn't love him enough to stay alive- that a "real" witch would protect herself with magic.
I have a feeling that the constant harping on the Power of Love(TM) we keep getting in these books is hinting at this- Voldemort doesn't understand love, and starts despising his parents because they didn't love enough- his father abandoned his mother (well, what would you do if some crazy girl down the street has been drugging you for months, perhaps years?) and his mother didn't care enough to live for him. What was his reaction to Harry Potter's mother dying for her son, willingly- did he think about it? If he had had a few extra moments would he have thought more about it, and would that have saved the Wizarding World from more of his attentions, or made it worse? Part of me is imagining his childhood self full of jealousy that this boys' father stayed to fight for his family, that his mother gave up her life for her son. The possibility of Harry having part of Voldemort's soul stuck in that scar makes this an even more attractive theory- what happens to the bits of soul when you destroy a horcrux? Do they 'pass through the veil' or stick themselves back to the original soul- can you manipulate what happens to them? Because then if you could stick that bit back on it has experienced everything Harry has, from the Dursleys to his subconscious memories of his parents' love to Mrs. Weasley's many sweaters and Easter Eggs (notice how moved he is by the one he gets in fifth year- one of redhen's essays pointed that out and it stuck in my head a bit...)
Here's another weird idea, also based on one of her essays (check out redhen-publications.com ). She proposes that Voldemort is Voldemort (instead of the handsome, charming Tom Riddle he could have been) because of Dementors. That perhaps they found Merope in her pregnancy and followed her, feeding off her emotions and taking her magic till she had no will to live, and then followed the (already affected) newborn boy into the Muggle orphanage, and continue hovering around him, making all of his caretakers feel vaguely uneasy whenever they go near the child and making the baby terrified- too scared, apparently, to even cry (see HBP). They probably leave after a while, before the little boy can really talk yet (and telling people stories about skeletal creatures in hoods probably wouldn't gain him any friends among the other orphans or the people in charge). THe damage is done anyway. Nobody has ever loved him, not since he was born, anyway. Merope may have been delighted to find she was pregnant at first, depending on how long it was before Riddle Senior left her.
Now, back to the power of a mother's love- what if Voldemort could be forced to see that this had happened, that the closest thing his mother could feel to love was to drag herself somewhere that would take care of a baby, to give him a name, that of the love of her life and her own father (who she no doubt loved after a fashion- she wasn't a rebel like Sirius Black, nobody expected her to run off with a muggle) before she died. Would he see that as evidence that her life had been worse than death? Would he just change his tactics to the goal of wiping out Dementors?
