My interpretation of that was extremely different: that Harry got riddled when he was a baby, in Godric’s Hollow.
In canon, Ginny reads the diary a lot and this enables Riddle to take her over when he wants to. When he does, she’s basically a puppet: it’s (fully aware) Riddle scrawling on walls and summoning basilisks, and Ginny’s completely unaware of it; afterwards, Ginny is basically her normal self again, with no memory of what Riddle did while operating her body.
There’s no sign in HPMOR of anything like that happening to Harry. The Harry whom QQ addresses as “Tom Riddle” has (so far as we can tell) psychological continuity with the Harry we’ve been following through the previous hundred-plus chapters. There’s no sign of “absences” like Ginny had. After being addressed as “Tom Riddle” (and, again, with no indication of any personality changes or anything) Harry resolves explicitly that he is going to do whatever he can to stop QQ. So if we are supposed to understand that the diary had some major effect on Harry, it has to have done it in a way that doesn’t “mirror canon” much at all.
What I think is being described here is something more like a personality-upload from Voldemort to baby-Harry, so that what remained in Godric’s Hollow that day was (at least according to Voldemort’s plans) Tom Riddle implanted in baby-Harry.
(What I can’t work out is whether we’re supposed to understand that it went wrong, with the Riddle personality getting kinda isolated, like grit in a pearl, as Harry’s “dark side”, or that it worked exactly as planned and the Harry we see now is what you get when Tom Riddle’s mind grows up in baby-Harry’s brain, raised by his adoptive parents. I’m not even sure what the latter means exactly. Perhaps the idea is something like this: after the upload, what we get is more or less the same as what we’d have got if baby-Riddle had been raised in Harry’s place, but Riddle’s adult memories are also stashed away for later use and the latter are the “dark side”.)
[EDITED several hours after posting to fix an embarrassing word-omission. I don’t think the sense was ever unclear.]
but Riddle’s adult memories are also stashed away for later use and the latter are the “dark side”.
I agree with everything you said except that. Look at this line from chapter 17 after Harry picked up Neville’s remembrall:
The Remembrall was glowing bright red in his hand, blazing like a miniature sun that cast shadows on the ground in broad daylight.
It makes it pretty clear that the second spell Voldemort cast on baby-Harry was Obliviate. Since we know that obliviated memories can not be recovered only Riddle’s thought-patterns are left in Harry, and that’s his dark side.
Not necessarily—infants brains are to plastic to retain memory, so it’s entirely possible it just erased itself all on it’s own.
Uhm. I’ve been entertaining the idea that Slytherin did something to his descendants to make them immune to memory magics. In which case, maybe the entire point of horcruxing an infant was to get a fork of his mindstate without his memories, because the direct approach would not cut it.
On the other hand, this chain of inferences is getting a wee bit longer than I am at all comfortable with.
My interpretation of that was extremely different: that Harry got riddled when he was a baby, in Godric’s Hollow.
The problem with this is that presumably since Harry was AKed by adult Voldemort, his scar contains a Horocrux of adult Voldemort.
So if we are supposed to understand that the diary had some major effect on Harry, it has to have done it in a way that doesn’t “mirror canon” much at all.
Well, EY often mirrors canon, while making certain changes for the sake of plausibility—for instance the philosoper’s stone works differently. I’m not exactly sure why he would want to change the effects of possession, but I could certainly see him changing the way it works.
the Harry we see now is what you get when Tom Riddle’s mind grows up in baby-Harry’s brain, raised by his adoptive parents. I’m not even sure what the latter means exactly.
I suppose it would mean baby-Harry knowing how to walk and talk from day one.
The more I think about it, the less sense any of this makes. I mean, sure I can buy that Harry’s scar is a Horocrux subtly influencing his behaviour. I could imagine that there are multiple entities in his head. But ‘Harry’ seems to be the primary. If he can’t remember any of Riddle’s memories, what does it mean to say that he is Riddle?
I agree that Harry has been Harrymort from infancy. But I can’t agree that the diary has no major effect:
There’s no sign in HPMOR of anything like that happening to Harry.
Harry figures out Quirrell’s identity almost immediately after Snape casts some sort of “Dispel Magical Confusion”, yet the only character who would have the knowledge and incentive to magically confuse Harry about this is Quirrell himself, who seems to be incapable of directly using magic on Harry or Harry’s magic.
I’m not sure exactly how Riddle’s horcrux-diary would get around that rule. If two copies of Riddle can’t use magic on each other normally, what does it matter if the two copies are Harry+Quirrell or Harry+diary?
But Quirrel does want to keep Harry confused about something, and then he gives Harry a fascinating book that resembles an object of Voldemort’s which magically confuses someone in canon, and then Harry appears to lose focus regarding both the book and the questions that Quirrell wants him confused about, and then Harry appears to have been the subject of a magical confusion… The book sure looks suspect.
Yes, I could certainly believe that having the diary has had some effect on Harry’s mental state (though I think he’s been a bit oblivious to Quirrell since before he had it). But that’s quite a different matter from saying that since getting the diary he’s been subject to such a transformation that before he was Harry Potter and now he’s Tom Riddle.
the only character who would have the knowledge and incentive to magically confuse Harry about this is Quirrell himself, who seems to be incapable of directly using magic on Harry or Harry’s magic
I seem to recall there being early evidence that McGonagall was influenced by Quirrell, one way or another, to ensure that he ended the school term as teacher. It seems out of character for her to knowingly enchant Harry, but I recall a line where she explicitly dismissed a felt sense of doom in a way that seemed out of character.
My interpretation of that was extremely different: that Harry got riddled when he was a baby, in Godric’s Hollow.
In canon, Ginny reads the diary a lot and this enables Riddle to take her over when he wants to. When he does, she’s basically a puppet: it’s (fully aware) Riddle scrawling on walls and summoning basilisks, and Ginny’s completely unaware of it; afterwards, Ginny is basically her normal self again, with no memory of what Riddle did while operating her body.
There’s no sign in HPMOR of anything like that happening to Harry. The Harry whom QQ addresses as “Tom Riddle” has (so far as we can tell) psychological continuity with the Harry we’ve been following through the previous hundred-plus chapters. There’s no sign of “absences” like Ginny had. After being addressed as “Tom Riddle” (and, again, with no indication of any personality changes or anything) Harry resolves explicitly that he is going to do whatever he can to stop QQ. So if we are supposed to understand that the diary had some major effect on Harry, it has to have done it in a way that doesn’t “mirror canon” much at all.
What I think is being described here is something more like a personality-upload from Voldemort to baby-Harry, so that what remained in Godric’s Hollow that day was (at least according to Voldemort’s plans) Tom Riddle implanted in baby-Harry.
(What I can’t work out is whether we’re supposed to understand that it went wrong, with the Riddle personality getting kinda isolated, like grit in a pearl, as Harry’s “dark side”, or that it worked exactly as planned and the Harry we see now is what you get when Tom Riddle’s mind grows up in baby-Harry’s brain, raised by his adoptive parents. I’m not even sure what the latter means exactly. Perhaps the idea is something like this: after the upload, what we get is more or less the same as what we’d have got if baby-Riddle had been raised in Harry’s place, but Riddle’s adult memories are also stashed away for later use and the latter are the “dark side”.)
[EDITED several hours after posting to fix an embarrassing word-omission. I don’t think the sense was ever unclear.]
I agree with everything you said except that. Look at this line from chapter 17 after Harry picked up Neville’s remembrall:
It makes it pretty clear that the second spell Voldemort cast on baby-Harry was Obliviate. Since we know that obliviated memories can not be recovered only Riddle’s thought-patterns are left in Harry, and that’s his dark side.
Not necessarily—infants brains are to plastic to retain memory, so it’s entirely possible it just erased itself all on it’s own.
Uhm. I’ve been entertaining the idea that Slytherin did something to his descendants to make them immune to memory magics. In which case, maybe the entire point of horcruxing an infant was to get a fork of his mindstate without his memories, because the direct approach would not cut it.
On the other hand, this chain of inferences is getting a wee bit longer than I am at all comfortable with.
Yes, that’s very plausible.
The problem with this is that presumably since Harry was AKed by adult Voldemort, his scar contains a Horocrux of adult Voldemort.
Well, EY often mirrors canon, while making certain changes for the sake of plausibility—for instance the philosoper’s stone works differently. I’m not exactly sure why he would want to change the effects of possession, but I could certainly see him changing the way it works.
I suppose it would mean baby-Harry knowing how to walk and talk from day one.
The more I think about it, the less sense any of this makes. I mean, sure I can buy that Harry’s scar is a Horocrux subtly influencing his behaviour. I could imagine that there are multiple entities in his head. But ‘Harry’ seems to be the primary. If he can’t remember any of Riddle’s memories, what does it mean to say that he is Riddle?
I agree that Harry has been Harrymort from infancy. But I can’t agree that the diary has no major effect:
Harry figures out Quirrell’s identity almost immediately after Snape casts some sort of “Dispel Magical Confusion”, yet the only character who would have the knowledge and incentive to magically confuse Harry about this is Quirrell himself, who seems to be incapable of directly using magic on Harry or Harry’s magic.
I’m not sure exactly how Riddle’s horcrux-diary would get around that rule. If two copies of Riddle can’t use magic on each other normally, what does it matter if the two copies are Harry+Quirrell or Harry+diary?
But Quirrel does want to keep Harry confused about something, and then he gives Harry a fascinating book that resembles an object of Voldemort’s which magically confuses someone in canon, and then Harry appears to lose focus regarding both the book and the questions that Quirrell wants him confused about, and then Harry appears to have been the subject of a magical confusion… The book sure looks suspect.
Yes, I could certainly believe that having the diary has had some effect on Harry’s mental state (though I think he’s been a bit oblivious to Quirrell since before he had it). But that’s quite a different matter from saying that since getting the diary he’s been subject to such a transformation that before he was Harry Potter and now he’s Tom Riddle.
I seem to recall there being early evidence that McGonagall was influenced by Quirrell, one way or another, to ensure that he ended the school term as teacher. It seems out of character for her to knowingly enchant Harry, but I recall a line where she explicitly dismissed a felt sense of doom in a way that seemed out of character.
Wild speculation: hat-and-cloak is Harry possessed by Riddle via Bacon’s diary.