i'm referring mostly to what might have gone through dumbledore's mind when he first met riddle, since that's when it would have been easiest to get rid of him. so i was talking about when dumbledore set riddle's wardrobe on fire and stuff.
honestly, i've already forgotten what my reasoning was with my comment about ariana. i think i meant that like, they're both messed up and potentially dangerous?
is it canon that memory charms could really have that effect? like, he could forget how to use his magic, but couldn't he just figure it out again the same way he did originally? nothing in canon suggests to me that a memory charm would be able to remove his personality like that.
i'm not saying dumbledore and tom riddle did the same things as kids, just that dumbledore could have thought something along the lines of "the things you do as a kid don't define your whole life". hindsight is 20/20, i'm just not sure how reasonable it is to expect dumbledore to have figured out that tom riddle was evil after meeting him for like 20 minutes at the age of 11.
and once he got to hogwarts, well, he charmed everyone but dumbledore, and maybe even dumbledore a little bit? at that point, dumbledore could have made all the recommendations he wanted and he probably would have been blown off because everyone else thought he was perfect and wonderful. i mean... he had slughorn charmed to the point that he didn't report the horcrux conversation to anyone. if that's not a warning sign, i dunno what is.
that's kind of the point of young!voldemort, i think, that he was able to disguise how evil he truly was until it was too late to stop him. we can see it easily because we spent so much of book 6 going through memories of important points in tom riddle's life, but dumbledore at the time didn't have the luxury of knowing what was and was not foreshadowing. so, i dunno, i feel a lot more charitable towards him for it. i don't know if i would have done any better if i were in his shoes.
edited to add: i get the impression that bullying is pretty common in british boarding schools, and teachers everywhere tend to turn a blind eye towards bullies because "uwu they're good kids who could never do such a thing uwu" even when they know perfectly well what the little shits are doing. or they go "tee hee! i shall join in! this is clearly appropriate behaviour for a teacher!" .............i'm not bitter.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-03 07:25 am (UTC)honestly, i've already forgotten what my reasoning was with my comment about ariana. i think i meant that like, they're both messed up and potentially dangerous?
is it canon that memory charms could really have that effect? like, he could forget how to use his magic, but couldn't he just figure it out again the same way he did originally? nothing in canon suggests to me that a memory charm would be able to remove his personality like that.
i'm not saying dumbledore and tom riddle did the same things as kids, just that dumbledore could have thought something along the lines of "the things you do as a kid don't define your whole life". hindsight is 20/20, i'm just not sure how reasonable it is to expect dumbledore to have figured out that tom riddle was evil after meeting him for like 20 minutes at the age of 11.
and once he got to hogwarts, well, he charmed everyone but dumbledore, and maybe even dumbledore a little bit? at that point, dumbledore could have made all the recommendations he wanted and he probably would have been blown off because everyone else thought he was perfect and wonderful. i mean... he had slughorn charmed to the point that he didn't report the horcrux conversation to anyone. if that's not a warning sign, i dunno what is.
that's kind of the point of young!voldemort, i think, that he was able to disguise how evil he truly was until it was too late to stop him. we can see it easily because we spent so much of book 6 going through memories of important points in tom riddle's life, but dumbledore at the time didn't have the luxury of knowing what was and was not foreshadowing. so, i dunno, i feel a lot more charitable towards him for it. i don't know if i would have done any better if i were in his shoes.
edited to add: i get the impression that bullying is pretty common in british boarding schools, and teachers everywhere tend to turn a blind eye towards bullies because "uwu they're good kids who could never do such a thing uwu" even when they know perfectly well what the little shits are doing.
or they go "tee hee! i shall join in! this is clearly appropriate behaviour for a teacher!"
.............i'm not bitter.