Dumbledore's Boggart

[felicitys_mind]

What is Dumbledore’s Boggart?

In a July 2006 Leaky Cauldron/Mugglenet interview, Rowling suggested we’d be able to develop theories about Dumbledore’s boggart from reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

A boggart takes the form of what a person fears most, and I believe HBP reveals that Dumbledore’s greatest fear is harm coming to

Comments

[mari4212]

I think the original poster was stating that the drinker of the potion would experience the torture of the children, not just witness it. In that case, it wouldn't matter whether the drinker had empathy or not.

[felicitys_mind]

The potion was meant to be incapaciting to anyone who drank it, and the drinker was reliving the torture from the point of view of the children, not from Riddle's point of view. Even a masochist (someone who enjoys feeling pain) would not have had immunity to the potion but would experience the torture as the children had. The drinker would also have still been "out of it" while drinking the potion. And Voldemort's point was to show what young Tom Riddle had done to the children, irrespective of whether the drinker was a sadist, a masochist, or whatever

[felicitys_mind]

Wel, the diary was intended to identify Tom Marvolo Riddle as the student who had opened the Chamber of Secrets in 1943, so he did definitely leave clues to his identity in that.

I am also arguing that he left evidence in the Gaunt ruins and in the Cave that demonstrated his brilliance and magical ability and connects him with a crime that occurred in that location. You don't have to agree, but he is a psychopath, and leaving evidence that could connect him to the crime that happened at that location is something a psychopath would do. Tom Riddle was proud of those acts of evil and he wanted credit for them.

[travisprinzi]

I'm not sure Voldemort ever intended anyone "with less empathy" to make their way to that horcrux (or any horcrux), or at least no person with so little empathy that they wouldn't experience pain while living through the torture of those two children. Let me explain:

What kinds of people would attempt to find and destroy Voldemort's horcruxes? People on the "good side." Now recall Dumbledore's explaining to Harry about the "flaw" in his plan at the end of OP - he described himself as acting "exactly how Voldemort expects us fools who love" to act.

In other words, Voldemort sees love and empathy as a weakness to be exploited. Those on the "good" side are those who, like Dumbledore, have the capacity for love and think love exceedingly important. So Voldemort planted that potion for the purpose of exploiting that weakness in whichever witch or wizard discovered and tried to destroy the horcrux.