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Beneath that rage, there’s something far deeper about Harry’s character that gnaws at Tom’s sanity. Harry is so remarkably loved, so desperately wanted. From the moment of his birth, Tom sees himself as rejected. He sees any tie to another human something to be controlled and manipulated carefully. Nothing in his life has stood up against this lived experience, until Harry. Harry’s parents died rather than abandon him, whereas Tom’s father rejected him. Harry’s friends willingly stay by his side, whereas Tom’s “chosen family” abandons him the moment he shows weakness. Harry stands as a living testament against everything in Tom’s lived experience and ideology. He’s vexed by it, jealous of it, obsessed with it, overwhelmed by it year after year. He’s so wildly envious of this love because it’s the one thing for certain that would have filled the void he constantly tries to substitute with power and control. 

Tom imposed his trauma on Harry. He killed his parents, leaving him alone in what he saw as a cold and unforgiving world, yet Harry was equipped with that first year of love from his parents that protected him from letting that trauma define him. 

It’s clear they feel strongly for one another (whether it be hate, pity, rage, or otherwise). Harry is the other side of the coin, a symbol of hope, a light in the darkness. 

Are there any popular headcanons in the fandom that you like?

I honestly don’t know many headcanons from the fandom about Tom. There are more of them when it comes to the Marauders and Snape. However, I do have a few of my own fun little headcanons and a few I’ve stumbled across online! Enjoy!

Tom enjoys music - it’s a way to connect with the human experience that his lack of empathy has really cut him off from. He’s able to feel a hint or an approximation of the emotions he doesn’t get to exercise. 

Tom enjoys movies - When he was young he used to sneak into the nearby cinemas to catch glimpses of movies, hiding away when he feared he would be caught by the attendants. They brought a spark of color and magic to his very bleak life. 

When he began to focus more of his efforts on gaining power, I think he gave up on his love for music and movies, considering them childish fascinations and distractions from his true goal. I wonder if he missed them from time to time. 

Death Eaters who were rather close to him (like Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and possibly Severus) may have even known about this.

Tom has a weak stomach - The idea occurred to me when I realized we never really see Tom eat or drink anything throughout the series. (We only see him hold a glass of wine in the LV request chapter.) 

Tom’s murder of the Riddle family was devastating to him - When asked he’d later describe this night as an overwhelming victory, but I believe his hopes and dreams about his father were shattered in a single night and it left him utterly devastated.

Poor circulation - This one feels random, I know, but I’ve noticed that in many fandom-centric works, Tom has cold hands. I agree that it somehow makes sense though I literally have 0 justification for it. Lol

Possessive attitude - Tom is a thief at heart, an individual who only needs the best possessions and needs to hold them close at all times. I theorized that Tom is asexual, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be romantically involved with someone! If there ever was any romance with him, I think he’d be possessive to an unhealthy extent. 

Very thrifty - Tom used to embellish his own wardrobe with magic because he didn’t have the money to buy what he needed to appear “upper class”.

DRAMATIC - I think this one is borderline canon. (Look at his rebirth scene, for God’s sake. The only thing it lacked was black glitter.) He adores hearing gossip and justifies it as “collecting information” and then loves to reveal it at the most dramatic moment.

He was not popular at school immediately - I think there was a learning period where Tom was most likely an outsider to the other students before he gathered his loyal crew and started to run the school.

He has a horrible sleep schedule and suffers from night terrors.

He used to keep sleep hours different from the boys in his dorm because he feared they would try to hurt him in his sleep. He trusts no one.

He has frequent nightmares of bombs and air raid sirens and casualties.

I think his lack of sleep makes his paranoia even worse. 

How do you hope the TV show portrayal will represent Tom/Voldemort compared to the movies?

I preface this by saying that I think the TV show is going to do a great job and the movies also did a great job. Gold stars all around.

I personally would have loved to see the series animated, top to bottom, front to back. I’m an animation purist. In my opinion, everything would be better if it were animated. It’s an exquisite art form which should garner more respect and love.

That being said, I will be really impressed if they lean into the horror aspect of Tom. My fixation with Tom as a kid was an introduction into a long lasting love and appreciation of the horror genre. Make him a terrifying entity, a truly unpredictable force of nature who becomes grounded in reality the more Harry gets to know his antagonist. Lean into his monstrous visage so that when he’s introduced as a human later, the comparison is uncanny and jarring. Make him utterly terrifying and snake-like. I’d love to see as much of his backstory as possible! More interactions with the Death Eaters!

And most of all, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE make his eyes red this time?

Was there a turning point where Tom could have turned back and redeemed himself?

When I originally wrote this book, I theorized that Tom could have been ‘saved’ if something or someone had intervened in his life somewhere between the ages of 11-14. When I spoke with my good friend Lorrie Kim (writer of the Snape book), she asked me a pointed question.

When is someone too far gone to be saved?

I understand and there’s no clear cut answer (and certainly no judgement for anyone who disagrees with me). It was at that moment that I realized that I must be an idiotic optimist, an absolute fool of an idealist. In my mind, he’s redeemable at any point where he might choose to self-reflect and come to terms with his decisions and the destruction it’s caused. He could save himself at any time, but it would mean letting go of his need for power and control as a salve for his emotional wounds, and realizing the pain and loss he’s caused in his attempt to evade death. Harry clearly thinks he can be saved, even at the end. In his own halting way, Harry offers Tom the advice that he believes will help, “Try…try for some remorse….” (DH741)  

That being said, I’ll stand by my initial assessment that it would have been easiest to persuade Tom to walk another path in his youth, before the horcruxes. Children who show early signs of problematic behavior have more hopeful results when empathetic actions are rewarded, so they can logically connect the benefit of helping the people around them with good feelings.

How is Voldemort different from a villain like Grindelwald?

We get surprisingly little information about Grindelwald. There’s a section of the Voldemort book that talks all about the dynamic between them during their conversation in DH, but I’ll do my best to sum up my personal thoughts here. (The Fantastic Beasts movies expand on this narrative a great deal, but I’m a books-only HP scholar, so we’ll see what we can surmise from the mentions.)

From how Albus speaks of his time with Gellert in the final few chapters of DH, it seems as though Gellert was a different sort of dark lord. Albus speaks of how their ideas caught his imagination. “You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me…Did I know, in my heart of hearts, what Gellert Grindelwald was? I think I did, but I closed my eyes.” Though it’s impossible to say for sure, I think, from this passage we can extrapolate that Gellert genuinely believed his ideals would bring about a better world, but he had a hunger to control that world.

Do you see Tom Riddle as purely evil?

No, he’s human. I think it’s pretty plain to see his obvious shortcomings. 

Tom as a character is made up of both positive aspects and negative ones. He’s incredibly intelligent, resilient, resourceful, and ambitious (yes, I’ll stand by this as a POSITIVE trait). Yet, he’s born into the world so achingly alone, unable to connect with the people around him due to no fault of his own. He’s born into horrible neglect, abuse, and war, without anyone to guide him through this unforgiving life. 

Does this mean that all is forgiven and forgotten because he had a rough childhood and doesn’t have a basic understanding of empathy? UH NO, that’s a jump buddy, calm down. But in that same breath, this lived reality means that we can’t completely disregard his past. He sees the world in a cold, unforgiving way because he has never known a world that was anything but cold and unforgiving. In the ethereal King’s Cross platform, Dumbledore points out that Tom could never appreciate fairy tales, and while this is a fair assessment, it’s also reductive. Fairy tales are meant to be comforting experiences (and sometimes warnings) shared between a child and a guardian. To level that sort of accusation at someone who has never had a guardian is, simply put, pretty cruel. 

If we’re going to fault Tom, it shouldn’t be because of his lack of understanding when it comes to love and empathy, it should be because of his conduct. They’re linked in this case, but not always. Plenty of people who have an underdeveloped sense of empathy (namely people who have ASPD, or in layman’s terms, classify as psychopaths and sociopaths) go on to live fulfilling lives without causing catastrophic damage. 

In different circumstances, Tom might have found his way to leading a fulfilling life on his own terms. Maybe those terms would have looked different than what Albus or Harry think contentment looks like, but it would have been contentment nonetheless.

My impression is that the core character of Tom isn’t purely evil. He had the makings of an incredible Minister for Magic, or professor, or a headmaster had things shaken out just a bit differently. But there were so many factors around him, violent, vitriolic, and ready to convince him that life is war and only the most powerful survive. 

And when life is a constant battleground, he only sees a single escape: immortality and domination.