That would, aside from being completely impossible in various ways, actually answer a few questions. Such as how the Defense Professor (don’t want to assign him an actual name when talking about who he might be) is able to do intricate and powerful magic in any body he wears. It would be, to use his word, inefficient to just be that powerful and that in control of his magic. We already know, from Tonks-as-Susan, that a Metamorphmagus can do amazing magic while Metamorphed (probably because they have no “natural” form and are equally comfortable with any humanoid body); this makes it likely that the Defense Professor is a Metamorphmagus somehow. Of course, that doesn’t explain why he needs to “rest”, which other theories do, so we’d need both this and a completely separate explanation of the resting, which are less probably by conjunction.
Also, on an out-of-world note, I doubt Eliezer Yudkowsky would have made the particular comment above if the Defense Professor were a Metamorphmagus; he would be more likely to say Sprout, McGonagall, or Hannah Abbott.
Slightly pedantic answer: they’re still different people, but Voldemort appears to be possessing Quirrell, through some means different than the means used in canon, so that it isn’t too easy for Harry to figure out what’s going on.
Fully nuanced answer: referring to the villain as “Voldemort” may be misleading, because in this version it appears the person who was born Tom Riddle has gone through all kinds of identities and personas and the “Voldemort” persona seems to be less important to him than in canon. Also, though I consider it unlikely, I’m not sure we can entirely ignore the possibility that Riddle magically forked himself, and there are multiple spirits descended from Riddle running around. Also, for all we know the original Quirrell could be flat-out dead, and Riddle (or this particular spirit descended from Riddle) grabbed the body of a random muggle to use while impersonating Quirrell (again, may not be terribly likely).
I’m certainly not sure of this, but Quirrell certainly doesn’t act like canon Riddle; and “Voldemort” doesn’t even look human. He could easily be anyone. Maybe instead of Riddle killing Monroe and taking his place, Monroe killed Riddle and took his place. A smart, Slytherin Dark Lord wannabe like Quirrel would want to hide his true identity from his enemies.
So far the only evidence we have that Voldemort is/was Riddle is that Dumbledore/Moody/etc. think he is. They may be wrong about this. I strongly suspect they’re wrong about Voldemort’s motivations, and have been since the first war began. What else are they wrong about?
I think it’s very unlikely that Quirrel in HPMoR is THE Quirrel, since the basic biographical details given of Quirrel’s time at Hogwarts line up with those given for the canon Quirrel. I think we can take both the Aurors and Professor Quirrel’s assertions at face value on that score.
It seems significant to me that in HPMoR no one has mentioned Quirrel’s previous tenure as Professor of Muggle Studies—they all appear to act as though they didn’t know him before his term as Defense Professor. This suggests to me that the original Quirrel has in fact been missing for some time and never actually became a Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts. This being the case, it would be relatively simple for someone to take on Quirrel’s name, and he likely wouldn’t even have to LOOK like the original Quirrel.
As to who Quirrel is, I think perhaps Moody has the closest hypothesis: the John Monroe identity is probably adopted as well, and the Monroe that people remembered from the Wizarding War was never Monroe himself. This forms a pattern of a powerful wizard identifying missing and possibly dead wizards (or causing that state himself), taking their identities, and using those identities to act in current events. We know from The Incident with Rescuing Bellatrix from Azkaban that the person currently calling himself Quirrel has many other identities, so it’s likely that John Monroe was also not the first.
Moody’s Three Types of Dark Wizards would imply, then, that Voldemort is the second type while Quirrel is the third type.
As for who this person originally was, I have to wonder if John Monroe was the first identity he adopted. If he actually IS the original John Monroe, then he was born in the 40s and is therefore in his 50s at the time of the present story. If he isn’t, then he was born before that and it begins to stretch the imagination that he might be able to pass himself off as being in his late 30s, even considering the longevity of wizards. Granted, while he doesn’t have to be a Metamorphmagus to adopt new identities, it would certainly help while also solving the age problem.
Another possibility might be that our serial identity thief might actually have the same identity as another wizard we’ve heard of who likes to adopt new identities, as hinted in the book Hermione was reading when she was trying to find a way to get Harry’s debt absolved. Were Quirrel to be Nicolas Flamel, it might answer quite a lot of questions, though there are some problems with the idea. Dumbledore is well-acquainted with Flamel and appears to be maintaining contact with him (which would be easy to do, granted, if Quirrel is Flamel) but doesn’t show any signs of knowing that Quirrel is Flamel.
Adwait313: Has the jinx on the dada teaching post at hogwarts been lifted J.K. Rowling: Yes, at last! Incidentally, I know some have asked about Quirrell with regard to this question. J.K. Rowling: He was teaching at Hogwarts for more than a year, but NOT in the post of D.A.D.A. teacher. He was previously Muggle Studies professor.
Voldemort is the only one with a plausible motive to want Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban.
Quirrel drops a bunch of hints directly:
He says he has resolved his parental issues to his satisfaction, and he says they were killed by Voldemort.
After he got what he needed from the Muggle martial arts dojo, Voldemort comes along and destroys it. Later, when discussing the chamber of secrets with Harry, he mentioned that Voldemort would not leave an important source of power lying around for anybody else to use it, so he probably killed Slytherin’s creature.
He tells his whole defense class that he used to want to be a dark Lord.
He tried to become the ruler of magical England by setting himself up as “David Monroe” against Voldemort. Later, once Harry wants to stop being stuck in Hogwarts, he suggests pretending to be Voldemort to set Harry up as a hero everyone else depends on.
He doesn’t want Dumbledore to know whom he really is.
At the end of the Azkaban arc, it turns out that is a very large number of identities, so it’s not particularly implausible to think that he is Voldemort too.
I don’t know… in the books, Quirrell was possessed by Voldemort or something. The omake implies that Eliezer changed this because Harry PEV would have been able to figure it out really quickly and there wouldn’t have been a story. I thought that Quirrell just wasn’t possessed in HPMoR, but in the recent discussion thread I saw a bunch of people saying “Quirrellmort”, which confused me.
The omake was to show how easily HJPEV could have won if Voldemort had remained exactly the same as in canon—living on the back of Quirrel’s head, hidden by a turban, causing Harry pain whenever he looked in his direction, while the professors probably wouldn’t stop Harry from reporting this to Dumbledore.
In Methods, we get Quirrel with zombie mode and rationalist mode, who causes Harry to feel a sense of doom, and McG warning him harshly that the defense professor is far too valuable to be investigated before the students can have a proper education for the first time in years. Also, Quirrel has a bald spot (does this correspond to where Facemort would have appeared in canon?).
Well, iirc in the books Quirrell was described as being a worldly Dark-ish badass before he became possessed by Voldemort, upon which he became very timid. The fact that HPMoR Quirrell’s character matches the canon pre-Voldemort Quirrell, combined with explicitly noting that he wasn’t wearing a turban, combined with the omake, seemed to me like Eliezer was basically saying “In this world, Quirrell did not become possessed by Voldemort and returned safely from his travels”. I’m not really sure what the evidence to the contrary is.
Well, iirc in the books Quirrell was described as being a worldly Dark-ish badass before he became possessed by Voldemort, upon which he became very timid.
I don’t think you do rc, I’m afraid. He was basically a timid Muggle Studies professor with a latent interest in the Dark Arts. Definitely not worldly or badass in any way.
I believe the “he used to be the Muggle Studies professor” thing is merely fanon. (Or maybe it was Word of God? I don’t remember. It definitely wasn’t in the books.)
I have to depart from the majority of responses to your question and offer, “There is yet insufficient data to answer the question.”
The tendency is to answer a qualified “yes” because that would be the answer in regard to canon. However, this is not canon. It also isn’t an alternate history of canon, since Eliezer has modified things where he felt it made more sense to have them changed. For example, there is in this post a comment by Eliezer stating that he places the Peverells before the founding of Hogwarts, whereas canon states that Hogwarts was founded first (the decision makes sense, considering that Hogwarts itself seems to offer enough continuity of knowledge to make strange the idea that the Peverell story could have been reduced to myth given that their artifacts actually exist).
In short, the only reason people are so sure that Quirrel is Voldemort is because he was Voldemort in canon.
I don’t think there is very strong evidence for it, but there isn’t really sufficient evidence against the hypothesis either. Canon!Quirrel and HPMOR!Quirrel don’t even appear to represent the same character (they use the same name, but there the differences basically stop, and the HPMOR version appears to be a case of identity theft). So in that sense, not only is what we know from canon unreliable, but we’re not even really talking about a character that is derivative of his counterpart in canon, so all bets are off.
What people might point to as evidence (the zombie state, the feeling of dread, and the danger of Harry and Quirrel casting spells on each other) are things that invoke enough similarity to canon to encourage people to think of them as evidence that the situations are identical, but those pieces of evidence are fundamentally different between canon and HPMOR.
In canon, Quirrel usually acts rather normal with no hint of a zombie state and actually isn’t even possessed when Harry sees him in the Leaky Cauldron (he seems to give Harry the dread feeling in that scene in HPMOR)-- because we know in retrospect that he was possessed for most of the book, we have a tendency to incorrectly match that with the zombie state in HPMOR.
In canon, Harry’s scar physically hurts when Quirrel turns away from him while he’s possessed. In HPMOR there is the the ‘feeling of dread,’ which isn’t reliant on Quirrel’s orientation to Harry at all, but rather it is reliant on proximity and the state of Quirrel’s mind (it is reduced in both Quirrel’s zombie state and in his animagus form).
In canon, the resonance between Harry and Voldemort is between their wands, not between themselves (Voldemort is able to cast torture spells on Harry just fine). The encounter between Harry’s Patronus and Quirrel’s Avada Kedavra did not create a Priori Incantatum event in HPMOR. It also affected Quirrel rather more severely than it did Harry.
From this, one has to conclude that this evidence that Quirrel is Voldemort is inconclusive at best and is generally misleading. It doesn’t discount the possibility that HPMOR!Quirrel is possessed by Voldemort in a way that results in somewhat different symptoms, and it doesn’t discount the possibility that Quirrel is actually Tom Riddle in the physical and mental sense.
So, insufficient data to answer the question. But add in author agency and you have to really question the obvious solution that we’re being led to by things that only seem similar to canon. And I should note that “author agency” may also freely apply to comments the author has made outside the story as himself.
What people might point to as evidence (the zombie state, the feeling of dread, and the danger of Harry and Quirrel casting spells on each other) are things that invoke enough similarity to canon to encourage people to think of them as evidence that the situations are identical, but those pieces of evidence are fundamentally different between canon and HPMOR.
These aren’t actually things I would point to as evidence of Quirrell’s identity (though they are certainly suggestive of.. something). The Pioneer plaque thing may be one, but here are some clues that are less often mentioned:
Quirrell’s “love potion” speech in Chapter 70 describes Tom Riddle’s family situation fairly precisely; also, in Chapter 20, he implies (if you squint) that he killed his parents.
We know Quirrell to have many identities, and we are warned of Dark Wizards who have many identities.
Plots that we know of to be Quirrell’s remind people of Voldemort’s plots. (This is in equal measure evidence that Harry Potter is Voldemort.)
In Chapter 26, Quirrell demonstrates a rather strong interest in prophecies concerning Harry Potter.
In Chapter 40, after finding out that a ring which was in Voldemort’s possession in canon is actually the Resurrection Stone, Quirrell immediately changes his plans and leaves to do something unspecified.
Voldemort has an obvious motivation to do things such as rescue Bellatrix Black from Azkaban.
Unfortunately, even those things aren’t particularly strong evidence if you’re really being objective.
Quirrel’s commentary about love potions in Chapter 70 is generic enough that no one objects to it except on the grounds that it’s not appropriate for the children present, so clearly his point that it DOES happen is widely recognized enough that to the adults present it’s not particularly notable that he points it out.
That Quirrel has many identities and Dark Wizards sometimes have many identities isn’t even really strong evidence that Quirrel should be considered a Dark Wizard (even though he seems pretty damn Darkish a lot of the time). It’s only evidence that he has many identities.
Plots reminding people of Voldemort’s plots is susceptible to confirmation bias, just like most of the evidence I mentioned in the earlier post.
Demonstrating a strong interest in Harry Potter prophecies is a matter of course/survival for ANYONE acquainted with Harry Potter, since he’s Harry Potter and they might get caught up in said prophecies.
This is probably the strongest evidence of Quirrel being Voldemort, but it’s still circumstantial since we don’t know where Quirrel actually went. He might also have just realized that Dumbledore’s wand is the Elder Wand… or have been a Death Eater who saw the stone in question, or have otherwise deduced the location of the ring. Still, the simplest answer here appears to be him knowing about it because he’s Voldemort… but that isn’t as simple if you don’t automatically assume he’s been possessed by Voldemort as the canon!Quirrel was.
Voldemort does have an obvious motivation to rescue Bellatrix, but Quirrel does actually take Bellatrix to a Healer (which you wouldn’t expect Voldemort to do), and Bellatrix hasn’t been sent on any missions since her rescue… that we’ve heard of. In canon, Voldemort basically just sets her loose. Also, Quirrel acknowledges that what was done to Bellatrix was wrong (much more strongly and genuinely than anyone else in either HPMoR or Canon, all of whom are happy to judge her on her actions), which looks more like a connection to Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, who certainly wouldn’t be remorseful for abusing her. Of course, that could be a ruse.
The fact is, we aren’t going to get any concrete evidence of this until we actually see Voldemort in the flesh. And when it comes down to it, I’m not exactly offering any counter-evidence that he isn’t Voldemort. But the evidence certainly isn’t strong enough to be as sure of it as most of the people talking about Quirrel and Voldemort in these discussions are. And frankly I keep thinking that Quirrel seems to actually care about things more than you’d expect Voldemort to be capable of emulating.
And frankly I keep thinking that Quirrel seems to actually care about things more than you’d expect Voldemort to be capable of emulating.
The trouble is that we know very little about Voldemort’s personality. Canon!Voldemort is practically a cardboard cut-out of a villain, whose attributes can be summed up as cruelty, power, fear of death and being like a snake. He is also at times clever and manipulative, but these attributes fade in and out (see the “Bahl’s Stupefaction” reference, for example).
Is HPMOR!Voldemort copy-pasted from the original? It seems unlikely for a variety of reasons, such as the fact that he’d make an unworthy villain for Harry Potter to face, or the fact that Eliezer is a good writer who would not leave a major character two-dimensional.
How, then, is he different? His foes describe him as extremely intelligent, with the implication that he has been upgraded in a similar way to Harry, yet as Harry realises, a rational!Voldemort should not have had to fight a protracted campaign in the first place, never mind losing it. His treatment of Dumbledore and his brother is indeed cruel, as are a number of other actions, though they are always cruel to serve an end, not because he is evil for evil’s sake. He is implied to be very powerful, though little evidence of this is provided. We know little about his attitude to death, but there’s no reason to believe it’s greatly altered from canon. And little is made of any possible snake affinity, though if he is Riddle, he is a Parseltongue and the Heir of Slytherin.
In short, it seems like we know very little about HPMOR!Voldemort, including what he might care about, or how much, so we’re not going to get far if we attempt to use his personality as evidence.
That is the trouble indeed. We only have a few reliable pieces of information regarding Hpmor!Voldemort’s character: the incident with Dumbledore’s brother and his treatment of Bellatrix. The former is filtered through his enemies and the latter comes from the mouth of one of the most likely suspects. We also have Harry’s memory of his mother’s death.
The trouble with the ransoming of Dumbledore’s brother is that we don’t know about his motivations. We just know he did it and we have a report from Snape that he was pleased to force Dumbledore to start playing, as it were. We can assume that he had several reasons to take those actions—it’s win-win for him. He either cripples the Order or he strikes a compromising personal blow against its leader. That’s evidence for his tactical acumen, though it doesn’t speak to his character except that he’s capable of following through.
Bellatrix’s situation at least shows that Harry has Voldemort modeled well enough to fool a half-sane, withered and abused Bellatrix into believing he is Voldemort. And her behavior supports everything Quirrel says about how she was treated—which points to him having insider information of some kind. He doesn’t have to be Voldemort to get that information, but it would be one explanation for him knowing. On the other hand, he does seem to be making moral judgements about her treatment that you wouldn’t expect him to make were he Voldemort (reading him talking about it made me think he was focused on Bellatric for more personal reasons).
Speaking of the breakout, Bellatrix does see both Quirrel’s animagus form and his own appearance after the polyjuice has worn off. She didn’t seem like she recognized him at all, so either she didn’t remember him (which she wouldn’t if he was a happy memory), or he was able to signal her somehow not to say anything (not so reliable given her state, but possible). Quirrel doesn’t take polyjuice to maintain his daily form, else it would have worn off when his disguise did (and it seems like a terrible idea to overlay a polyjuice over another one). Of course, he could be a metamorphmagus, which would allow him to pretend to take polyjuice. I should point out here that Eliezer doesn’t appear to be in the habit of changing characters’ abilities except as a direct consequence of an alteration of their personality or mental framework. Voldemort wasn’t an animagus or a metamorphmagus in canon as far as we know; a smarter Voldemort would learn to be the former but can’t learn to be the latter. And we don’t know certain things like, ‘can you be both at the same time?’
I’m re-reading HPMoR right now, I’m at chapter 31. I’m fuzzy on what happens in most of chapter 32 on.
Stupid question: is Quirrel Voldemort? I don’t really care about spoilers.
At this point, it would be the greatest fake-out in literary history if Quirinus Quirrell was actually just Quirinus Quirrell.
Surprise! It’s actually Nymphadora Tonks!
That would, aside from being completely impossible in various ways, actually answer a few questions. Such as how the Defense Professor (don’t want to assign him an actual name when talking about who he might be) is able to do intricate and powerful magic in any body he wears. It would be, to use his word, inefficient to just be that powerful and that in control of his magic. We already know, from Tonks-as-Susan, that a Metamorphmagus can do amazing magic while Metamorphed (probably because they have no “natural” form and are equally comfortable with any humanoid body); this makes it likely that the Defense Professor is a Metamorphmagus somehow. Of course, that doesn’t explain why he needs to “rest”, which other theories do, so we’d need both this and a completely separate explanation of the resting, which are less probably by conjunction.
Also, on an out-of-world note, I doubt Eliezer Yudkowsky would have made the particular comment above if the Defense Professor were a Metamorphmagus; he would be more likely to say Sprout, McGonagall, or Hannah Abbott.
Basically, yes.
Slightly pedantic answer: they’re still different people, but Voldemort appears to be possessing Quirrell, through some means different than the means used in canon, so that it isn’t too easy for Harry to figure out what’s going on.
Fully nuanced answer: referring to the villain as “Voldemort” may be misleading, because in this version it appears the person who was born Tom Riddle has gone through all kinds of identities and personas and the “Voldemort” persona seems to be less important to him than in canon. Also, though I consider it unlikely, I’m not sure we can entirely ignore the possibility that Riddle magically forked himself, and there are multiple spirits descended from Riddle running around. Also, for all we know the original Quirrell could be flat-out dead, and Riddle (or this particular spirit descended from Riddle) grabbed the body of a random muggle to use while impersonating Quirrell (again, may not be terribly likely).
It’s also possible that Voldemort/Quirrell isn’t Riddle.
I would consider it a plot twist if Quirrell turned out not to be anyone he possibly could be.
Some discussion of that theory here and here.
Dumbledore would have to be really amazingly stupid if Quirrell = Riddle.
Wait, what? I don’t remember reading this, or picking up on any hints of this. Care to explain?
I’m certainly not sure of this, but Quirrell certainly doesn’t act like canon Riddle; and “Voldemort” doesn’t even look human. He could easily be anyone. Maybe instead of Riddle killing Monroe and taking his place, Monroe killed Riddle and took his place. A smart, Slytherin Dark Lord wannabe like Quirrel would want to hide his true identity from his enemies.
So far the only evidence we have that Voldemort is/was Riddle is that Dumbledore/Moody/etc. think he is. They may be wrong about this. I strongly suspect they’re wrong about Voldemort’s motivations, and have been since the first war began. What else are they wrong about?
I think it’s very unlikely that Quirrel in HPMoR is THE Quirrel, since the basic biographical details given of Quirrel’s time at Hogwarts line up with those given for the canon Quirrel. I think we can take both the Aurors and Professor Quirrel’s assertions at face value on that score.
It seems significant to me that in HPMoR no one has mentioned Quirrel’s previous tenure as Professor of Muggle Studies—they all appear to act as though they didn’t know him before his term as Defense Professor. This suggests to me that the original Quirrel has in fact been missing for some time and never actually became a Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts. This being the case, it would be relatively simple for someone to take on Quirrel’s name, and he likely wouldn’t even have to LOOK like the original Quirrel.
As to who Quirrel is, I think perhaps Moody has the closest hypothesis: the John Monroe identity is probably adopted as well, and the Monroe that people remembered from the Wizarding War was never Monroe himself. This forms a pattern of a powerful wizard identifying missing and possibly dead wizards (or causing that state himself), taking their identities, and using those identities to act in current events. We know from The Incident with Rescuing Bellatrix from Azkaban that the person currently calling himself Quirrel has many other identities, so it’s likely that John Monroe was also not the first.
Moody’s Three Types of Dark Wizards would imply, then, that Voldemort is the second type while Quirrel is the third type.
As for who this person originally was, I have to wonder if John Monroe was the first identity he adopted. If he actually IS the original John Monroe, then he was born in the 40s and is therefore in his 50s at the time of the present story. If he isn’t, then he was born before that and it begins to stretch the imagination that he might be able to pass himself off as being in his late 30s, even considering the longevity of wizards. Granted, while he doesn’t have to be a Metamorphmagus to adopt new identities, it would certainly help while also solving the age problem.
Another possibility might be that our serial identity thief might actually have the same identity as another wizard we’ve heard of who likes to adopt new identities, as hinted in the book Hermione was reading when she was trying to find a way to get Harry’s debt absolved. Were Quirrel to be Nicolas Flamel, it might answer quite a lot of questions, though there are some problems with the idea. Dumbledore is well-acquainted with Flamel and appears to be maintaining contact with him (which would be easy to do, granted, if Quirrel is Flamel) but doesn’t show any signs of knowing that Quirrel is Flamel.
Best as I can tell, Quirrell was never actually a Muggle Studies professor in canon. It seems to be an entirely fanon thing.
--J.K. Rowling and the Live Chat, Bloomsbury.com, July 30, 2007 (2.00-3.00pm BST).
Right, OK. Word of God then. I was unsure whether it was that or pure fanon.
David.
Ah yes, sorry!
Short answer: Yes, but we still have no idea what that actually means.
Sorry, I should have added “and how do we know?”
In addition to the rot13′d reason:
It’s true in Canon.
Voldemort is the only one with a plausible motive to want Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban.
Quirrel drops a bunch of hints directly:
He says he has resolved his parental issues to his satisfaction, and he says they were killed by Voldemort.
After he got what he needed from the Muggle martial arts dojo, Voldemort comes along and destroys it. Later, when discussing the chamber of secrets with Harry, he mentioned that Voldemort would not leave an important source of power lying around for anybody else to use it, so he probably killed Slytherin’s creature.
He tells his whole defense class that he used to want to be a dark Lord.
He tried to become the ruler of magical England by setting himself up as “David Monroe” against Voldemort. Later, once Harry wants to stop being stuck in Hogwarts, he suggests pretending to be Voldemort to set Harry up as a hero everyone else depends on.
He doesn’t want Dumbledore to know whom he really is.
At the end of the Azkaban arc, it turns out that is a very large number of identities, so it’s not particularly implausible to think that he is Voldemort too.
Also, mysterious feeling of doom. And Quirrel can sense Harry’s feelings. And their magic can’t interact.
Same way we know about the Pioneer Plaque.
Quirrell told Harry?
Va ybat-fvapr ergenpgrq nhgube’f abgrf, Ryvrmre znqr gur pbaarpgvba rkcyvpvg.
I wonder if EY has been fooling us with those retracted author-notes.
Oh, okay, thank you.
www.rot13.com
What would it mean to “be” Voldemort? Quirrell seems to be entangled with past-Voldemort in some ways, but not in others.
I don’t know… in the books, Quirrell was possessed by Voldemort or something. The omake implies that Eliezer changed this because Harry PEV would have been able to figure it out really quickly and there wouldn’t have been a story. I thought that Quirrell just wasn’t possessed in HPMoR, but in the recent discussion thread I saw a bunch of people saying “Quirrellmort”, which confused me.
The omake was to show how easily HJPEV could have won if Voldemort had remained exactly the same as in canon—living on the back of Quirrel’s head, hidden by a turban, causing Harry pain whenever he looked in his direction, while the professors probably wouldn’t stop Harry from reporting this to Dumbledore.
In Methods, we get Quirrel with zombie mode and rationalist mode, who causes Harry to feel a sense of doom, and McG warning him harshly that the defense professor is far too valuable to be investigated before the students can have a proper education for the first time in years. Also, Quirrel has a bald spot (does this correspond to where Facemort would have appeared in canon?).
Well, iirc in the books Quirrell was described as being a worldly Dark-ish badass before he became possessed by Voldemort, upon which he became very timid. The fact that HPMoR Quirrell’s character matches the canon pre-Voldemort Quirrell, combined with explicitly noting that he wasn’t wearing a turban, combined with the omake, seemed to me like Eliezer was basically saying “In this world, Quirrell did not become possessed by Voldemort and returned safely from his travels”. I’m not really sure what the evidence to the contrary is.
I don’t think you do rc, I’m afraid. He was basically a timid Muggle Studies professor with a latent interest in the Dark Arts. Definitely not worldly or badass in any way.
I believe the “he used to be the Muggle Studies professor” thing is merely fanon. (Or maybe it was Word of God? I don’t remember. It definitely wasn’t in the books.)
Hm, you’re right. Everyone treats it as canon, but I can’t find an actual reference anywhere.
On the other hand, Word of God says his main hobby, other than travel, is pressing flowers, which I don’t think wins him any worldly badass points.
Which omake? Could you offer a link please?
See Omake #1 in chapter 11.
It’s… not clear and there are a whole bunch of theories, including some in which multiple characters other than Quirrel are Voldemort.
I have to depart from the majority of responses to your question and offer, “There is yet insufficient data to answer the question.”
The tendency is to answer a qualified “yes” because that would be the answer in regard to canon. However, this is not canon. It also isn’t an alternate history of canon, since Eliezer has modified things where he felt it made more sense to have them changed. For example, there is in this post a comment by Eliezer stating that he places the Peverells before the founding of Hogwarts, whereas canon states that Hogwarts was founded first (the decision makes sense, considering that Hogwarts itself seems to offer enough continuity of knowledge to make strange the idea that the Peverell story could have been reduced to myth given that their artifacts actually exist).
In short, the only reason people are so sure that Quirrel is Voldemort is because he was Voldemort in canon.
I don’t think there is very strong evidence for it, but there isn’t really sufficient evidence against the hypothesis either. Canon!Quirrel and HPMOR!Quirrel don’t even appear to represent the same character (they use the same name, but there the differences basically stop, and the HPMOR version appears to be a case of identity theft). So in that sense, not only is what we know from canon unreliable, but we’re not even really talking about a character that is derivative of his counterpart in canon, so all bets are off.
What people might point to as evidence (the zombie state, the feeling of dread, and the danger of Harry and Quirrel casting spells on each other) are things that invoke enough similarity to canon to encourage people to think of them as evidence that the situations are identical, but those pieces of evidence are fundamentally different between canon and HPMOR.
In canon, Quirrel usually acts rather normal with no hint of a zombie state and actually isn’t even possessed when Harry sees him in the Leaky Cauldron (he seems to give Harry the dread feeling in that scene in HPMOR)-- because we know in retrospect that he was possessed for most of the book, we have a tendency to incorrectly match that with the zombie state in HPMOR.
In canon, Harry’s scar physically hurts when Quirrel turns away from him while he’s possessed. In HPMOR there is the the ‘feeling of dread,’ which isn’t reliant on Quirrel’s orientation to Harry at all, but rather it is reliant on proximity and the state of Quirrel’s mind (it is reduced in both Quirrel’s zombie state and in his animagus form).
In canon, the resonance between Harry and Voldemort is between their wands, not between themselves (Voldemort is able to cast torture spells on Harry just fine). The encounter between Harry’s Patronus and Quirrel’s Avada Kedavra did not create a Priori Incantatum event in HPMOR. It also affected Quirrel rather more severely than it did Harry.
From this, one has to conclude that this evidence that Quirrel is Voldemort is inconclusive at best and is generally misleading. It doesn’t discount the possibility that HPMOR!Quirrel is possessed by Voldemort in a way that results in somewhat different symptoms, and it doesn’t discount the possibility that Quirrel is actually Tom Riddle in the physical and mental sense.
So, insufficient data to answer the question. But add in author agency and you have to really question the obvious solution that we’re being led to by things that only seem similar to canon. And I should note that “author agency” may also freely apply to comments the author has made outside the story as himself.
These aren’t actually things I would point to as evidence of Quirrell’s identity (though they are certainly suggestive of.. something). The Pioneer plaque thing may be one, but here are some clues that are less often mentioned:
Quirrell’s “love potion” speech in Chapter 70 describes Tom Riddle’s family situation fairly precisely; also, in Chapter 20, he implies (if you squint) that he killed his parents.
We know Quirrell to have many identities, and we are warned of Dark Wizards who have many identities.
Plots that we know of to be Quirrell’s remind people of Voldemort’s plots. (This is in equal measure evidence that Harry Potter is Voldemort.)
In Chapter 26, Quirrell demonstrates a rather strong interest in prophecies concerning Harry Potter.
In Chapter 40, after finding out that a ring which was in Voldemort’s possession in canon is actually the Resurrection Stone, Quirrell immediately changes his plans and leaves to do something unspecified.
Voldemort has an obvious motivation to do things such as rescue Bellatrix Black from Azkaban.
Unfortunately, even those things aren’t particularly strong evidence if you’re really being objective.
Quirrel’s commentary about love potions in Chapter 70 is generic enough that no one objects to it except on the grounds that it’s not appropriate for the children present, so clearly his point that it DOES happen is widely recognized enough that to the adults present it’s not particularly notable that he points it out.
That Quirrel has many identities and Dark Wizards sometimes have many identities isn’t even really strong evidence that Quirrel should be considered a Dark Wizard (even though he seems pretty damn Darkish a lot of the time). It’s only evidence that he has many identities.
Plots reminding people of Voldemort’s plots is susceptible to confirmation bias, just like most of the evidence I mentioned in the earlier post.
Demonstrating a strong interest in Harry Potter prophecies is a matter of course/survival for ANYONE acquainted with Harry Potter, since he’s Harry Potter and they might get caught up in said prophecies.
This is probably the strongest evidence of Quirrel being Voldemort, but it’s still circumstantial since we don’t know where Quirrel actually went. He might also have just realized that Dumbledore’s wand is the Elder Wand… or have been a Death Eater who saw the stone in question, or have otherwise deduced the location of the ring. Still, the simplest answer here appears to be him knowing about it because he’s Voldemort… but that isn’t as simple if you don’t automatically assume he’s been possessed by Voldemort as the canon!Quirrel was.
Voldemort does have an obvious motivation to rescue Bellatrix, but Quirrel does actually take Bellatrix to a Healer (which you wouldn’t expect Voldemort to do), and Bellatrix hasn’t been sent on any missions since her rescue… that we’ve heard of. In canon, Voldemort basically just sets her loose. Also, Quirrel acknowledges that what was done to Bellatrix was wrong (much more strongly and genuinely than anyone else in either HPMoR or Canon, all of whom are happy to judge her on her actions), which looks more like a connection to Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, who certainly wouldn’t be remorseful for abusing her. Of course, that could be a ruse.
The fact is, we aren’t going to get any concrete evidence of this until we actually see Voldemort in the flesh. And when it comes down to it, I’m not exactly offering any counter-evidence that he isn’t Voldemort. But the evidence certainly isn’t strong enough to be as sure of it as most of the people talking about Quirrel and Voldemort in these discussions are. And frankly I keep thinking that Quirrel seems to actually care about things more than you’d expect Voldemort to be capable of emulating.
The trouble is that we know very little about Voldemort’s personality. Canon!Voldemort is practically a cardboard cut-out of a villain, whose attributes can be summed up as cruelty, power, fear of death and being like a snake. He is also at times clever and manipulative, but these attributes fade in and out (see the “Bahl’s Stupefaction” reference, for example).
Is HPMOR!Voldemort copy-pasted from the original? It seems unlikely for a variety of reasons, such as the fact that he’d make an unworthy villain for Harry Potter to face, or the fact that Eliezer is a good writer who would not leave a major character two-dimensional.
How, then, is he different? His foes describe him as extremely intelligent, with the implication that he has been upgraded in a similar way to Harry, yet as Harry realises, a rational!Voldemort should not have had to fight a protracted campaign in the first place, never mind losing it. His treatment of Dumbledore and his brother is indeed cruel, as are a number of other actions, though they are always cruel to serve an end, not because he is evil for evil’s sake. He is implied to be very powerful, though little evidence of this is provided. We know little about his attitude to death, but there’s no reason to believe it’s greatly altered from canon. And little is made of any possible snake affinity, though if he is Riddle, he is a Parseltongue and the Heir of Slytherin.
In short, it seems like we know very little about HPMOR!Voldemort, including what he might care about, or how much, so we’re not going to get far if we attempt to use his personality as evidence.
That is the trouble indeed. We only have a few reliable pieces of information regarding Hpmor!Voldemort’s character: the incident with Dumbledore’s brother and his treatment of Bellatrix. The former is filtered through his enemies and the latter comes from the mouth of one of the most likely suspects. We also have Harry’s memory of his mother’s death.
The trouble with the ransoming of Dumbledore’s brother is that we don’t know about his motivations. We just know he did it and we have a report from Snape that he was pleased to force Dumbledore to start playing, as it were. We can assume that he had several reasons to take those actions—it’s win-win for him. He either cripples the Order or he strikes a compromising personal blow against its leader. That’s evidence for his tactical acumen, though it doesn’t speak to his character except that he’s capable of following through.
Bellatrix’s situation at least shows that Harry has Voldemort modeled well enough to fool a half-sane, withered and abused Bellatrix into believing he is Voldemort. And her behavior supports everything Quirrel says about how she was treated—which points to him having insider information of some kind. He doesn’t have to be Voldemort to get that information, but it would be one explanation for him knowing. On the other hand, he does seem to be making moral judgements about her treatment that you wouldn’t expect him to make were he Voldemort (reading him talking about it made me think he was focused on Bellatric for more personal reasons).
Speaking of the breakout, Bellatrix does see both Quirrel’s animagus form and his own appearance after the polyjuice has worn off. She didn’t seem like she recognized him at all, so either she didn’t remember him (which she wouldn’t if he was a happy memory), or he was able to signal her somehow not to say anything (not so reliable given her state, but possible). Quirrel doesn’t take polyjuice to maintain his daily form, else it would have worn off when his disguise did (and it seems like a terrible idea to overlay a polyjuice over another one). Of course, he could be a metamorphmagus, which would allow him to pretend to take polyjuice. I should point out here that Eliezer doesn’t appear to be in the habit of changing characters’ abilities except as a direct consequence of an alteration of their personality or mental framework. Voldemort wasn’t an animagus or a metamorphmagus in canon as far as we know; a smarter Voldemort would learn to be the former but can’t learn to be the latter. And we don’t know certain things like, ‘can you be both at the same time?’
WoG says no, for canon.