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HopingToWriteWell77 t1_j1zo4z0 wrote

Reply to comment by Chaos-Pand4 in [WP] In an alternate timeline, the Sorting Hat attempts to prevent Tom Riddle’s fall by putting him into… by Chaos-Pand4

Tom Riddle Sr. was under the effects of a love potion when Tom Marvolo Riddle was conceived. It is canon knowledge that when one parent is under the influence of a love potion at the time a child is conceived, that child will be unable to feel love of any kind. Tom Marvolo Riddle was born without any ability to love, or feel compassion for, any living thing.

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Gaelhelemar t1_j1zxif9 wrote

Well that’s sucky worldbuilding there. Tom didn’t become evil on his own, he was destined to be evil. I don’t like that one bit.

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HopingToWriteWell77 t1_j228dgb wrote

Well, he did enjoy torturing the other kids at the orphanage, didn't he? "I can make them hurt, if I want to." He got another boy's rabbit to hang itself from the rafters, and a couple of younger kids were so traumatized by him that they were, according to the orphanage head Mrs. Cole, "never quite the same after."

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Gaelhelemar t1_j22duz1 wrote

Yeah, that's upbringing, not because he was literally souless.

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HopingToWriteWell77 t1_j24inq9 wrote

Harry had a horrible upbringing, too, but did he torture other kids for fun? No, he just learned how to run really fast and avoid being punched.

However, if you look at Tom Riddle - who was well cared for, if not given as much love and attention as a child should have since there were so many of them at the orphanage - what do we see? We see a kid who collects harmonicas and other odds and ends from his victims when he is ELEVEN. At eleven years old, Harry was looking forward to not having to go to the same school as his cousin. Tom was a clever, sneaky liar who assumed Dumbledore was a doctor sent by Mrs. Cole to look at him, possibly take him away to a madhouse, and then promptly told Dumbledore that Mrs. Cole was the mad one who didn't like him and that he never touched any of the other kids or anyone's pets, and that she'd made it all up. He was a manipulative, clever, and downright disturbed child.

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Chaos-Pand4 OP t1_j200p0t wrote

That doesn’t really change the fact that putting him in slytherin gives him access to all of the tools, associates, and philosophy that he needs in order to become a Dark Lord.

I don’t necessarily state that he loves being a candy maker… just that he likes having his ego stroked about it.

There are lots of psychopaths out there who DON’T become serial killers too.

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HopingToWriteWell77 t1_j22adg0 wrote

It was Tom that was the problem, not the house he was in.

I agree, given the right circumstances, he might have turned out all right, but from the moment he was born he was doomed. As a child, he actively hurt the other children at the orphanage, to the point where two of them were never quite the same afterwards and everyone else was afraid of him. He kept trophies, too - at age eleven!

But he still could have been saved at Hogwarts - if the wizarding community had realized his home life was poor, and had a system in place for orphaned or unwanted magical children, and he'd been taken in by a family like the Weasleys. He could have been taught proper right and wrong, and perhaps he could have been saved.

Tom hunted for his father everywhere in that school for years, assuming that he was the magical one because he believed that had his mother been magical, she could have saved herself. He only looked for Marvolo once he'd been unable to find any Tom Riddle in any records, finding Marvolo Gaunt and his son Morfin. When he was fifteen, he went to see if Morfin was worth knowing, found a filthy, hairy wreck, and was told he looked like a Muggle down in the village that his mother had once run off with. At fifteen/sixteen, he killed his father and paternal grandparents, framed his uncle, and took his uncle's family ring as a trophy. He assumed, and was never told otherwise, that his father had only left his mother because he found out she was a witch - he did not know about the love potion.

He was obsessed with power at age eleven. That stayed throughout his life. He assumed, at age eleven, that dying made his mother weak and non-magical. He kept trophies of his victims, at age eleven. No matter where he was placed, he would likely have turned out evil, because he would have had classes with the Slytherins and been exposed to their ideologies.

Although, yes, he may have become a candy maker.

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Chaos-Pand4 OP t1_j22bjdo wrote

Yeah but there’s Voldemort evil and there’s Umbridge evil. I think he would always be a shit person, but without the tools to spin it into anything, he might just be middle-management levels of evil.

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