That Quibbler interview ...

[snorkackcatcher]

So, I've been working a bit on my Rita-Merope omniocular character roulette story, and I came across something in the books that I'm not sure quite makes sense ... Comments and suggestions would be appreciated!



The problem I have is that it says in OotP that 'Rita had pressed him [Harry] for every last detail and he had given her everything he could remember'. That would surely include several important things that don't seem to be common knowledge in the wizarding world as of HBP, but which he would have found it awkward to avoid mentioning if he was to explain things properly:

(1) Peter Pettigrew is alive and assisted Voldemort's rebirth

(2) Sirius Black is therefore innocent

(3) The wand connection effect and the fact that the wands of Harry and Voldemort share cores.

(4) Significant details of Voldemort's background:

a. the story of his parents (although his mother's name wasn't mentioned, his father's was)
b. the fact that he used bone from his father's grave
c. the orphanage
d. therefore the fact that he was a half-blood

So how much of this is likely to have been in the interview, and how much is it reasonable to suppose would have been forgotten or deliberately left out by Harry (or alternatively suppressed by Hermione)?

And the related question -- how much of it is actually accepted fact by 'now' (end of HBP)? Certainly (1) and (2) seem to be, but (3) doesn't seem to be and (4) I'm not sure about.

I'd like to find a good way to argue that the stuff in (4) wasn't mentioned at that time, or (even better) was mentioned but not published, and I really need Rita to remember hearing the name 'Tom Riddle'. :)

As a related issue, does anyone else think that the DE Central that Harry gets visions of in OotP is in the old Riddle House?

(Also asking on this revived thread at FAP.)

Comments

[catkind.livejournal.com]

Re 4) - have wondered how LV played his origins, if there was ever a political aspect to his campaign - or in the raising of minions. Could he conceivably have spun it as a rising from humble origins, look how awful these muggles are, must prevent any wizard from having to go through such a childhood again? It's hard to see it could have remained particularly secret given how many of Riddle's schoolmates are still around. Or is LV=Tom Riddle a secret too?

Is it necessary that people don't know (3)? They might know it but not be particularly interested, or count it as part of the 'chosen one' rumour. Haven't really thought this out...

[octobersnow.livejournal.com]

*snerk* Lord Voldemort = Karl Rove of the Wizarding World. Actually, that fits. I can see Voldy being an adept spinner.

[snorkackcatcher]

That's a scary thought. :)

[snorkackcatcher]

Apparently few knew the Riddle connection, though -- according to Dumbledore in HBP people who might know about him were scared off from talking about it. In OotP Bella certainly didn't know -- which is another strike against it being in the interview -- but you have to wonder why the other DEs don't, given that they can see what's happening in the graveyard (although Voldy only ever mentions that his father was buried there, not any of the other details). Hmm.

(3)'s not too important for my fic, but it doesn't seem to be well known (or more of the Order would have been worried by the implications when Ollivander disappeared).

[catkind.livejournal.com]

Point. One wonders how it all started though. If he didn't use his connections as Riddle, he would have had to arrive back in the UK hooded, or unrecognisable as a result of all that longevity treatment, and pretend to be a stranger (pretend to be foreign? pretend to be 250 years old already?). In a world where everyone went to the same school, how did LV get into the Slytherin in-crowd without knowing anybody?

Don't think I've been sufficiently worried by Ollivander's disappearance either. Is he to be forced to make LV a new wand? Or find out how to use the twinning effect against Harry?

It does kind of sound like DD is trying to cover up LV's origins too. Never mind calling him Voldemort and not You-Know-Who, why not go the whole hog and tell people to call him Tom Riddle? If DD kept saying it, everyone would know, even if they were scared to say it. Um. Better go before I stray into the territory of any feral magic dishwashers...

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, it could be argued that revealing Riddle was a half-blood could be seen as evidence by the pure-blooders (see, I always said interbreeding produces unstability...)

[snorkackcatcher]

True, but as I said to catkind, After the Rain already used that in Mordant. :(

[tree_and_leaf]

Ooh, I'd forgotten that...

[snorkackcatcher]

Hmm. He seems to have taken the first DEs from his old school gang, so some of them must know -- but the second generation (Lucius, Bella, Snape) don't seem to. Presumably the first generation were the recruiting sergeants for them? Some of them appear to have been the kids of the first lot.

I'm hoping Dumbledore spirited Ollivander away (there wasn't a struggle) so that he couldn't be forced to make Voldy a new wand with a different core. Or even better, to equip the whole Order with Fawkes-core wands so they stand a better chance against him.

As for why not using the name Tom Riddle -- the only thing I can think of is that he doesn't want it investigated and Voldy getting concerned about whether his Horcruxes are safe and moving them. After the Rain had this problem with Mordant pre-HBP, and although the answers there more or less worked I can't really use them here ...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

although Voldy only ever mentions that his father was buried there, not any of the other details
Did Riddle ever mention that his mother or father was a Muggle (after all, he believed his father was a wizard for some time) at school, though> As soon as he perceived the importance of blood in the WW he could easily have come up with a simple story of his mother running away from her true people etc. etc. without mentioning that the man he ran with was a Muggle, and that he grew up in the Muggle orphanage because the WW didn't know about him. Riddle sounds like a pseudonym, after all.

[snorkackcatcher]

You know, I'm not sure. In the Slughorn memory his gang seemed to know something about his ancestry, but this is actually a pretty good explanation for why it wasn't better known (which I may well nick, with credit!). On the other hand, Barty Crouch Jnr had apparently been told some of the story ... Argh. This stuff is making my head hurt. Maybe I should get a ticket to the NY show and ask JKR personally? :D

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Overall, I doubt Harry would have left anything out. He's not known as "The Boy Who Could Keep His Mouth Shut", especially in Book 5.
1 & 2) I could easily see Hermione and/or Rita mentioning "a Death Eater" rather than naming Pettigrew if too much deviation was required from the main article, the point of which is that Voldemort is back. Alternatively, they might have published it, but it just wasn't as important as the part about Voldemort to anyone but Harry, so the general public weren't paying much attention. I bet Rufus Scrimgeour was paying attention, though.

3) I think he would have had to mention the wands connection effect. Voldemort doesn't look dangerous if he is defeated in a duel by a teenager, but if the teenager escapes only by a fluke (or destiny if you prefer) Voldemort's power is undiminished. I think it would be public knowledge that the wands connected and weird stuff happened, but people may not know about priori incantem - that's pretty esoteric stuff.

4) Harry could have easily narrated the story without mentioning the orphanage or Tom's muggle/witch parents in particular. The graveyard would surely have been used as a dramatic setting, and I'm sure the name Tom Riddle would have been used, but there's no reason for Harry (who is not very political yet) to go into detail about Voldemort's half-blood background. No reason why Rita wouldn't go and check it out herself, though.

[tree_and_leaf]

What, Rita doing proper research, as opposed to getting half a piece of information and going with that?

[snorkackcatcher]

In my fic, she has no choice due to a combination of boredom and blackmail. :)

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think Rita likes to know everything she possibly can. Then she'll put her spin on it and turn the story into how she's decided it really was!

[snorkackcatcher]

Yeah, that's the problem with CAPSLOCK!Harry. Pettigrew's presence seems to have been completely ignored in canon -- the only thing I can think of which suggests his name might have been mentioned is that everybody seemed to have officially accepted the idea of Sirius' innocence very easily after the DoM battle, so maybe the idea was out there.

The wands situation isn't too important for my story, except isasmuch as it makes Harry seem like the 'Chosen One'.

Regarding (4) -- hmm, I suppose that with everything going on Harry might have forgotten exactly what Voldemort said while waiting for the DEs to turn up? I just looked at the 'House of Gaunt' scene in HBP again and actually it was the name 'Marvolo' he heard in CoS that gave him the clue what was going on, not anything to do with Merope ... That's looking like the best bet.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think (4) can't have been in the interview, otherwise one of the Death Eaters would have said something along the lines of 'calm down, Bellatrix, that's the same rubish he was spouting in the Quibbler'. This may be because Harry didn't mention it (he's pretty focussed on getting the story out about the fact that Voldemort is back, rather than the mechanics of it. Or he may think that going into Voldemort's origins would be counterproductive - taking his cue from Dumbledore, who is cagey about it).

Alternatively, Rita cut it out, because she thought it was too incredible, she wanted to sit on it until she could verify it (mind you, that implies that she's acting like a responsible journalist), or she wants to save it up for later - or trying to limit the amount she offends the DEs by, in case they win...

On (3): I think Harry would have played down the mechanics of the connection, though I agree it has to be mentioned in some form. But we're told earlier in GoF that he doesn't want people knowing about the connection. I expect Rita spun it into part of him being 'the Chosen One', or perhaps came up with some sentimental link to Lily's sacrifice - I can't see her being interested enough into an osbcure point about the nature of wandmaking to dig deeply enough to work out what that implied. (Sirius is the only person, other than Dumbledore, who seems to know about it, but I could see Sirius, while only putting minimal effort into schoolwork, going deeply into areas of magic that interest him, and accumaulating a lot of out-of-the-way lore).

[snorkackcatcher]

Hmm, I like the idea of Rita spinning (3) into a link with Lily -- although I'm not sure Hermione would have stood for it (I can imagine her demanding editorial control!).

I'm not sure exactly how seriously Rita is supposed to have taken Harry's story -- I think I'm going to be pitching her as sceptical but slightly uneasy in case there's something there. She may well really be thinking Harry is 'disturbed and dangerous' at the time of the interview. (I'm already having to finesse on one point brought up on that FAP thread -- she was there in the hospital wing at the end of GoF and thus might have heard quite a lot. I'm going to say she arrived after all the action, and Hermione caught her almost straight away.)

Harry surely has to have mentioned the name Tom Riddle to Rita, but maybe not the rest of the details -- as I said to lilacsigil, he could have not paid attention to them in the panic of the situation.

[heartsncraftslb.livejournal.com]

Okay...I have a few ideas on the subject.

1/2: I have a definite feeling Harry mentioned Peter Pettigrew; after all, in the first chapter of OotP, Fudge seemed to be pretty quick to admit the Ministry was wrong on a great deal of counts, including Voldemort's return and the fact that Sirius was innocent. It's possible he realized that much of the Quibbler interview was spot-on, including the fact that Pettigrew is indeed alive, AND was the one who joined forces with Voldemort.

3: I'd guess that Harry said something along the lines of, "the wands connected" to Rita, but don't know how much he'd elaborate. Certainly he either shrugged off further questions, or claimed ignorance as to why that would happen, if Rita asked. I have the feeling he just plowed on, at that point, to get through the story of his escape from the graveyard.

4: As for the graveyard itself, Harry may have just said he and Cedric were transported to a graveyard, and after Cedric was killed, Harry was tied to a tombstone, and LV "used bone from the grave". I have a feeling Harry wouldn't've wanted to go into too much details about the specific incantations used.

(Sorry if this is useless blithering or makes no sense...it seems I'm about to be late to pick my kiddo up at Kindy, but this got me thinking -- thanks for setting my brain in motion! Now I want to write the actual Quibbler interview. Down, plotbunny, down!) - LB

[snorkackcatcher]

1/2: yes, I'm coming to that conclusion now too ...

3: it did say Rita pressed for every little detail -- well, she would. I suppose here it doesn't matter too much now as Voldemort and the DEs probably already have enough information to deduce what happened (it seems to be a known effect)? Although I imagine Rita would be more interested in the sensational details than the magical theory behind them.

4: I'm pretty sure Harry doesn't know where the graveyard was (he didn't recognise the name 'Little Hangleton' when he saw it in the Pensieve). But he definitely saw the name 'Tom Riddle' on the grave -- it was quite prominent in the text. I suppose on reflection there's nothing that necessarily indicated that this Riddle wasn't a wizard to the DEs around -- although if they really have made the Riddle House their HQ, that would be a bit of a giveaway!

It would be good to see the interview done as a piece in itself -- it would certainly fit the omniocular challenge!