Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth installment of the Harry Potter Series. JK Rowling takes us with Dumbledore and Harry as they dive into the Pensieve and take a trip down the memory lane. Together, the wise headmaster and the boy with the lightning scar, witness the complex story of the boy who will become Lord Voldemort. They gather information about The Dark Lord’s parentage, childhood, and early life which led them to discover his secrets and vulnerabilities in hopes of thwarting him and his crony of Death Eaters from terrorizing the wizarding world once and for all.
Nothing short of informative, revelatory, and shocking, the plot has left no rock unturned. It supplied as many answers as it roused intrigue and more questions. Who is Lord Voldemort? Who is The Half-Blood Prince? Why is the book entitled as such and how is it significant to the series? With every revelation is another mystery unfolded and a few lives sacrificed, not even the wisest or noblest spared.
My book hang-over persists and I haven’t yet figured out how to get on with life. Help.
*Warning: Spoilers ahead.*
His given name was Tom Marvolo Riddle, a half-blood wizard from a witch mother and a Muggle father.
His mother, Merope, who at that time endured living a wretched life with her abusive and ill-tempered father, Marvolo, and, mentally unstable brother, Morfin, comes from the very ancient wizarding family Gaunt. Her father took pride in the fact that they were the last living and pure-blood descendants of Salazar Slytherin having her daughter wore a locket necklace with an S on it and him a Gaunt ring on his hand which was later passed on to his son , Morfin.
Voldemort’s father, on the other hand, was a handsome young man from Little Hangleton named Tom Riddle with whom Merope was secretly in love with. When Morfin was convicted for 3 years in Azkaban and Marvolo for 6 months, Merope was free for the first time. So she took this chance to bewitch Tom with a love potion. Dumbledore hypothesized that as Merope was no beauty and had less to no chance of making Tom fall for her, she may have used magic to make this happen… and she did, so they eloped and got married.
Merope, in the hopes that Tom would fall in love with her, stopped giving Tom the enchantment. However, that only caused the Muggle she had fallen in love with to leave her. He fled back to his home telling everyone that he was bewitched. Merope was left with nothing but herself and the growing life inside of her who would become, Tom Marvolo Riddle, now known as Lord Voldemort.
JK’s purpose of introducing Tom Riddle’s family is not only for biographical purposes, but also to set the perfect setting to give away the pieces that will complete the complex puzzle that is Voldemort. Tom Riddle’s parentage is important because it had introduced us not only to the Gaunts but as well as the Slytherin locket and the Gaunt ring which were the two objects later turned to Horcruxes.
This also allowed us to trace back Voldemort’s origin and history from the time of his mother’s conception to his childhood, and later on to his young adult life where he goes back to the place where it had all started - in the House of Gaunt.
Tom Riddle Jr is eleven years old in the orphanage. Dumbledore reveals to him that he is a wizard and offers him to study in Hogwarts.
But did Dumbledore knew that he had just met the most dangerous Dark Wizard of all time? “No. I had no idea that he is to grow up to be what he is.”, he says, although he knew that the young “Tom Riddle was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, and to control.”
Dumbledore also discovered that Tom Riddle already knew that he was a Parselmouth. Dumbledore remarked that “Tom Riddles’s ability to speak to serpents did not make him nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination.”
He also “liked to collect trophies” from victims of his bullying behavior and as “souvenirs of unpleasant bits of magic”.
Dumbledore emphasized to “bear in mind this magpie-like tendency for this will be important later” in their pursuit to deconstruct Voldemort and ultimately destroy him.
Tom Riddle’s childhood is very important because it allows us to examine his views, thoughts, intentions, and actions that partook in his criminal behavior in later life. Dumbledore considered Tom Riddle’s childhood to be necessarily predictive of his adult violent behavior. By understanding this early phase of Tom Riddle’s life, his childhood characteristics can be paralleled to his adult life so as to make sense of a pattern to draw a hypothesis from.
Dumbledore recalled that the boy Tom Riddle refused his company to Diagon Alley. Both as a boy and a man, Riddle wants to be alone and prefers to operate alone.
The young Tom Riddle shows a lack of desire for connection with others. He hated anything that links him to the others. The adult Tom Riddle is the same when he refused to be called Tom and renamed himself Voldemort.
He also liked to steal objects from his victimized kids in the orphanage as tokens that gave him a sense of superiority. The adult Tom Riddle is the same. Although as a child, he did not know what Horcruxes were yet, this “magpie-like tendency” became a piece of concrete evidence drawn out from Tom Riddle’s childhood. This fits perfectly next to another piece of the puzzle which is the adult Tom Riddle’s obsession with material possessions that had historical or magical value.
By observing Tom Riddle as a child, it can be speculated that Voldemort is not far from the boy that he was: highly self-sufficient, secretive, and friendless. These characteristics that Dumbledore had described young Tom Riddle are the same words that can be used to describe the real adult Tom Riddle. Be damned that young Tom Riddle who played it so well while in Hogwarts. He was a polite and quiet boy who showed “no sign of arrogance and aggression”, they say. Dumbledore knew better! But still, he chose to give him a chance. So much for Dumbledore’s ability to trust the good in everyone, Hogwarts has just let in a boy in his secondhand robes who would become the most dangerous wizard of all time.
Looking back to the past and early life of Tom Riddle helps us appreciate the humanity of the most feared wizard of all; that the Dark Lord, who has struck fear in the hearts of the wizarding community, is just like all of us, a human after all. And just like any human, he is as vulnerable as anybody; not to underestimate his power, but to remind us that his invincibility has boundaries.
It all makes perfect sense that Voldemort’s early beginning is divulged because it had left him to be a calculable object, instead of a mystery. Had it not been for the memories and Dumbledore’s extraordinary investigative prowess, it would have all been like groping in dark oblivion. The pieces of information gave a sense of direction and logic to what was already done and what it is that Voldemort plots to do. It gave Dumbledore that strong foundation of masterful guesswork, that by understanding the enemy, in as far as tracing back to his roots, may not be how to defeat it, but an advantage and an indispensable and necessary knowledge that can be used to thwart him once and for all.
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