A Worse State… Case in Point, Gellert?

[terri_testing]

In a comment on sunnyskywalker’s post about Horcruxes, marionros wrote:
Off topic, but this I would think this attitude ("look how good I am at self-control, I'm so awesome! It proves that I'm the right person to own the Deadly Hallows/direct the coming war/do whatever I please") a far better reason for why Dumbledore didn't have sex his entire

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

I love this analysis. Yes, it was originally Dumbles' idea.

I think we do have evidence that Gellert continued experimenting with Dark Arts after 1899. Though I don't know if that included torture specifically. Because when Tom brings up the memory of the young blond wand thief in Gregorovich's mind no name comes attached to the memory. I think by the time Gellert became ruler of magical eastern Europe his appearance had changed drastically from the younger version. Now I know this can happen naturally (just ran into a RL example recently) I think in the Potterverse such extreme changes are suspect.

[terri_testing]

Good point. But it's alittle more complicated than that.

we see Gellert in 199, fully recognizable.

we see him in year whenver, th merry theif, stealing the Elder Wand from Gergoroivich.

But no one, between 1945 and 1997, ver tracs eithe the Deathstick from a young thief to na a man languisishiing in Nurmengard...

OR identfiies an old man, guaring his wand in a cold prison cell, with viatl young man pulling its powers out to play with.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Dumbles claims to have heard rumors about Gellert's new, very powerful wand. And he did give Ollivander a feather of Fawkes', apparently before September 1938 (assuming Tom didn't get a new wand in the 1960s).

[terri_testing]

Didn't someone once comment that the really evil thing Tom did was ruin his looks?

[terri_testing]

Although actually, thinking about it further, I don't think even the supposition that it's normal for experimenting with the Dark Arts to so ruin one's looks as to make one unrecogniable will save Jo's continuity here.

Because Gellert, unlike Tom, used his birth identity through his whole career. So even if his appearance had so degraded that Gregorovich couldn't identiry his publicity shots with the "merry thief" of so many years ago, eventually (maybe only after his defeat) someone would get around to publishing before-and-after photos of someone so infamous.

(And you'd imagine that when Gregorovich heard rumours of a super-powerful new Dark Wizard, he'd wonder if that's who stole his wand, neh?)..

So the only way your suppostion would work to explain Jo's sloppy writing, is if we further postulated that the photo of Al and Gell, bff, was the only image ever captured of Gellert before he lost his looks.