Concerning Tom Riddle. (And Albus Dumbledore. And later, Harry Potter.)
="Theory to follow" alert - I may state some things as fact that are, in fact, based off what I just said might be true, i.e. I have contracted HBP!Dumbledore-syndrome. ;) You may choose to be like Harry - "DURRRRR... Yes, Professor!" - or like canon-snarkers - "That's utter BS! Where are you getting this from?!". Alternatively, you can just skip this. :P=
In fact, I just realized something that supports my Tommy-boy-had-a-incident-in-his-past-not-so-far-removed-from-Ariana's-assault-by-Muggle-boys theory. (Although it utterly futzes up my characterization of AU!Tom, in retrospect. Ah, well, I suppose I'll just hold that, in that AU, Tom was just Slytherin, possessed of a talent for mind-magic, and unusually talented at controlling it, just as Lily was able to play around with her magic. Actually, after this ramble/"essay", that would explain why he ISN'T evil in the Reversal AU. He just had the sort of unpleasant life Harry had... whereas AU!Dark-Lord!Harry had an incident that made him try to suppress his magic. YAY! An explanation beyond "because I said so, and it fits the AU"! *punches air*) Aberforth says "and at times, she [Ariana] was strange and dangerous". Yeeeeeeeeeess. Strange and dangerous. Methinks this describes the behavior of another Wizarding child when he appears in the Pensieve. And - although my memory may be rewriting things - what is the first thing Tom does upon seeing Dumbledore? He panics. He thinks Dumbledore's going to look at him and see something's wrong. (And boy does he.)
Perhaps there was a charming, oh-so-brave (which makes me suspect said "bravery" was expressed more as him being timid but pushing on anyway) Tom Riddle. But that is most certainly not the side of Tom Dumbledore got to meet, any more than the Trio got to see the "strange and dangerous" side of Ariana Dumbledore in her portrait. He panicked, his magic rose up, and... we get "strange and dangerous" Tom. And this is the Tom Riddle Dumbledore sees, and this explains a damn LOT of Dumbledore's behavior concerning Tom.
(EDIT: ****, I seem to have misremembered "lashed out" as a book quote. Sorry. Isn't.
...Forgive me. *facepalm* Am EDITING.)
The first stunt Tom pulls is to lash out with his magic against Albus Dumbledore. What? You don't remember THAT? "Tell the truth!", anyone? Yes, Tom's magic works in a different way than Ariana's. Of course it does. They're different people, rather obviously. Their psychotic moods take different forms, too - (allow me to take advantage of the associations of elements with Houses) an agitated pool versus a raging fire. Ooh! Compulsion would more 'wash over' a person than 'burn' or 'consume' them! Ah, yes...
Anyway, I do think natural dispositions play into the form magic-induced insanity takes. Percival Dumbledore's reaction to Ariana's damage (and I don't think he went after the Muggle boys until it became clear his daughter was permanently damaged) was, in the end, a rash attack upon the guilty parties. Which is very Gryffindor and just in its own way, and I fully sympathize, but it didn't actually help. What I mean to say by pointing this out is that, in the most horrible of situations, Percival reacted like a Gryffindor - boldly, bravely, chivalrously, but not exactly in the best way from a pragmatic, detached POV. Likewise, his daughter, under immense stress from her magic, struck out physically at those around her (or possibly at herself - Ariana's "poor health" may not have just been an excuse...), likely over imagined or real slights. Albus seems to have strongly taken after his mother, and Aberforth... well, I think his greater loyalty to his sister shows that his personality took after more of the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff [i.e. just, loyal, fairness-devoted Gryffindor/ aggressive, brave, helping-the-weak Hufflepuff] side of the family, even if he was raised Slytherin by Kendra. But their personalities are off-topic here.)
Tom was, in the end, a Slytherin. His mother didn't go after his father in a rage. Instead, having apparently decided or found that she could not longer keep Tom's father under control, she adapted... to the extent she could, considering that she was penniless, uneducated (I'm not sure she lost the ability to do magic so much as had no knowledge of any spells that could help her), effectively without a family, pregnant, ugly, and generally just Really Fucking SCREWED. She may have been intelligent - we don't know. Certainly she doesn't seem to have had Tommy's wild brilliance. But she had the resourcefulness to keep herself going by selling off what little she had and the - something - (I'm not sure "cunning" is the right word so much as "sense" or "presence of mind", but that counts as "cunning" for HP wizards, I suppose) to get to an orphanage when labor set in on December 31st. Now, I'm no expert on Britain, but that's about wintertime, right? Cold? And Britain is an EXTREMELY cold place during the winter? Yeah. For a pregnant woman in poor condition in labor during a cold winter, I'll bet it's an impressive feat to get to the front door of anywhere where your child could manage to survive (given that she likely realized she probably wouldn't live). So, Tom's Mommy wasn't quite so dumb and ineffective as her family (and Dumbledore) thought she was. She had Slytherin inclinations, all right. And her eventual reaction to an untenable situation as she saw it (being horribly mistreated and having Tom Senior not give a damn about her) was to bend the world to her will (fleeing her family and compelling Tom Senior by some means to "fall in love with her"). Tom seems to have inherited these innate responses, as Ariana may have inherited her father's.
So, when the magic finally gets out of Tom's control, its bursting-out takes the form of a grotesquely exaggerated form of this "innate response" to a horrible situation - it compels, instead of physically doing damage. And here, this presents an interesting alternative explanation of Tom's misdeeds - not the premeditated viciousness of a psychopath, but the crazed outbursts of a madman. (Technically, they were the deeds of a spiteful psychopath when committed - but only as much as Ariana's killing of her mother was the deed of an enraged monster. Tom was not a psychopath most of the time. And I'm CERTAINLY not saying Tom's magic doesn't have a vicious side - both Mommy's family and Daddy had a distinctly unpleasant side, to say the least - but I'm saying the method of "making the people who annoy me pay" varied.)
All right, the readers of this ramble say - then whack me over the head with the actual text of the orphanage scene. Billy Stubbs quarreled with Tom the day before. The hanging of Billy's rabbit had to be premeditated. And besides, he hardly compelled that rabbit into hanging himself. Fine, you guys can sit back for a moment and gloat, but I repeat - Tom and Ariana are two different people. And Ariana's magic seemed to get more vicious as she got older - why did she kill her mother when she was 14, instead of all the other times in previous years where both Aberforth and Albus had been off to Hogwarts? Why else was that rage worse than ones when she was 8, or 9, or 11, or 12, or what-have-you?
I suspect that the Rabbit Incident was before Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop went into a cave with Tom Riddle and were never quite right in the head again, so that Tom Riddle was (relatively speaking) more stable back then. And Tom was, much as I hate to sound as if I'm blaming Ariana for innately having a bad temper or something, probably a tad more slow to anger or better at controlling himself despite his anger - at the time of the argument, anyway. Now, one can work oneself up... Especially overnight... And where a normal child may just have seethed in bed or cried into their pillow, Tom had problems. Yeeess. However, at this point, his fits were (to tell from the one other case of such an afflicted child) not quite as psychotic as they would be later, and so he settled for killing Billy's rabbit to teach Billy a lesson rather than breaking Billy's mind. (Note also that this method of killing didn't actually require magic - methinks he was more restrained about using magic back then, too. The compelling would come into play with getting Billy's rabbit to come along with him and whenever anyone wandered out to see what all the scraping was. "Go back to bed and forget about this! ...Especially the stepladder!" :P Or something along those lines...)
When Tom "came to" - in other words, his magic ran out/calmed down and his "strange and dangerous" mood faded -, the deed was already done. In my fanon, the magical 'exhaustion' would have lasted for quite a bit - especially when Tom was younger - and so when Mrs. Cole asked him, she would have found a boy frantically denying that he'd done any such thing, and his words might have held just a smidgen of "added persuasiveness" - not that it would have quite been intentional, but there all the same. Sane!Tom would have been horrified at what he'd done, and of course denied it. If pressed in that state- say, by someone he cared about or respected [not that he HAD any such person in reality] -, he probably would have changed "I didn't do it" to "I didn't mean to do it". However, "strange and dangerous" Tom would have gone violently defensive and, indeed, violent on the magical level - not out of any sense of guilt, but to ward off an assault. (NOTE: I don't mean it in the "POOR WOOBIE" sense, but in the "cornered, feral animal" sense. Go for their jugulars before they can go for yours.)
Then, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop. I have no idea whether this one was the result of some way in which they had slighted him in the past (and which he now remembered as his magic grew wilder and more vicious) or just something they had done that fateful day. In any case, he SOMEHOW managed to get them and himself into that cave (although I'm really confused as to how - magic or no, I wish JKR had just told us WHAT route that cave was accessible by!) and then, where no one could find them, had some fun. In retrospect, I wonder if, long ago, they had done something that made Tom try to utterly suppress his magic. (Let me clarify one thing: Even if they did, they didn't deserve what they got any more than Dudley deserved to get his arm broken by the Queen of the Psychotic Sues, i.e. Rose Potter.) It would explain why Tom loved that spot so much that he decided to put a Horcrux there. Nothing like revenge, ay? Their actions drove them out of his head, and now he gets to drive them out of theirs? *shudders* If this was the case, he could even have been set off by something else, but decided this was the perfect time to get sweet revenge. Ugh. Poor kids.
And these, of course, are only the incidents Mrs. Cole tells Dumbledore about - she implies there are others. However, these are probably the most notable, most vicious incidents - after all, the only fits of Ariana's that we know about in any detail beyond the general are the ones where she killed her mother and (in my fanon) ended up accidentally offing herself, yet we KNOW she had FAR more than those two.
Now, back to when Dumbledore enters. Sane!Tom knows what he's done, and he knows something's wrong with him... but though he honestly feels terrible remorse, something had to make him try to shut off his magic in the first place, and though it may not have taken the exact same form as it did with Ariana, it was probably the most traumatizing thing he'd ever experienced, and he probably fears a repeat, except even worse now that something IS wrong with him. Hence, he panics and loses control of his magic - very quickly, as he's VERY spooked - and Sane!Tom slides into Strange-and-Dangerous!Tom.
After his typical tactic fails - as Tom may have raw talent on his side, but Dumbledore has training -, "strange and dangerous" Tom Riddle is... wary. He retreats and regroups, waiting for Dumbledore to show weakness so he can get Dumbledore to dance to his tune. He doesn't get it - indeed, he ends up showing weakness himself.
At any rate, Tom defends himself, sounding rather wild as he does so. And by "wild", I don't mean "frantic", I mean "A bit mad". Can't really support this so much as point to the overall tone of his speech. He's really not sounding manipulative here. In fact, when he's not hiding behind his "innocent, charming boy" persona, on the non-magical level, Tom isn't all that manipulative at all from what we SEE in canon. Even when he's talking to Slughorn, he's creeping the HELL out of Slughorn, and Slughorn is obviously going against his better judgment. Dare I say he's getting a bit of prodding to keep talking? :P He. Is. Really. NOT. A smooth. Manipulator. Oh, he thinks he is, but in reality? *dies laughing* Nooooooooooooooooo.
(EDIT for clarification: Well, actually, there's Hepzibah Smith and Morfin Gaunt. But I'll note that, with Morfin, he's rather tense, and the first thing he does after getting all he needs out of Morfin is compelling him to "forget" the memory of the event and "remember" that he killed Tom Senior. He reads, in my memory of events, more like he's keeping himself barely under control than that he's fully in control, and that some of his 'control' is derived from him being too interested to be pissed off. And when he's dealing with Smith, he's just making the rounds of being behind his "charming boy" persona (admittedly a bit faded after the creation of the Horcrux and many years) - and is acting somewhat like he's thinking "Not another day of dealing with this woman" - until he notices the locket and the cup. "But," you say, "This really doesn't seem like the boy you're portraying..." Wait up, okay? I have to reveal exactly what Dumbledore was DOING when he interacted with Tom. THEN everything will make sense.)
Tom's reaction to being told he has magic is to show joy that 'makes his face less human' or something. I forget the exact wording. But he's quite happy about it. Well, he's in one of his "strange and dangerous" moods. He's going to be wildly excited about anything that makes him better, more special, and he's especially going to be interested in how to use this to fulfill his... impulses, let us say. Eh. I'm not exactly sure how to phrase it, but I get the characterization.
Anyway, at this point, Dumbledore is... quieter and asks him what he can do. Pre-DH, everyone thought he was reacting solely to this creepy little madman (madboy?) - and considered the way he acted towards Tom later (once he knew what Tom was like) to be utterly batshit. Post-DH, we know about Ariana. And most crucially of all, we know Dumbledore knows about Ariana (well, duh. XD). He's not just seeing this psychotic eleven-year-old wizard. He's remembering a psychotic witch who died young.
Tom replies (the following text is is taken from hbpspork) that "he can make things move without touching them, and that he can compel animals to do what he wants. Then we get the kicker:
I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.""
Ooooooo-kay. Well, his talent seems to be in "compelling" (in a sense, "making things move without touching them" is... compelling inanimate objects, I guess? :P;;), and he can hurt people who "annoy" him.
Strange and dangerous, all right. And Tom is obviously missing more than a few screws. He brags about his magical abilities - particularly the one that allows him to hurt things. (Frankly, he's really talking more to himself or some imagined, cowering audience at this point than to anyone actually present.) Methinks Dumbledore is getting chills up and down his spine - this behavior is ringing a bell. (And while we have no DIRECT evidence for Ariana acting anything like this, Aberforth's "strange and dangerous" comment about his beloved sister implies that there was more to her behavior than just sheer rage. The phrasing is rather unnerving - what did she do to merit that? Surely "and at times she was prone to wild rages" or something would match the fanon [namely, that her rages were all there were to the madness] better than "and at times she was strange and dangerous"?)
So what does he do?
He attempts to simultaneously impress and intimidate Tom by pseudo-setting the wardrobe on fire. Now, some have asked what the FUCK Dumbledore was thinking, and said this is somewhat OOC for Dumbledore. Absolutely right. But let's jump back to Dumbledore's past (ah, how I LOVE the Dumbledore backstory! :D).
Albus didn't deal with Ariana if he could avoid it - that's pretty clear. I think his mother let him, after a point - his time was better expended being taught how to keep people's attention off his family and (later) studying and corresponding with the greatest minds of his day so that he could act as a diversion. ("Didn't that Kendra use to have a daughter?" "What Kendra?" "Kendra Dumbledore-" "Dumbledore? As in Albus Dumbledore?" And then the conversation would turn to Albus, Kendra's mystery daughter forgotten. Not to mention that Albus could always turn the conversation back to himself - *dies laughing at the thought* - if his family came up. I... err, that sounded unintentionally hilarious. *laughs*) And besides, Aberforth was far better at dealing with Ariana, and Kendra herself could, if worst came to worst, cope with Ariana, of course. So Albus wasn't needed until Kendra died, and even then, he resented it and probably made a hash of it. (Methinks Albus became quite adept at Transfiguring whatever he could into something he could use as a barrier between himself and his sister until she either ran out of energy or Aberforth came home.) So he wouldn't use his strategy for handling Ariana on Tom because - guess what? He didn't HAVE a strategy!
So who did? Who would teach a mad, "strange and dangerous" child even MORE ways to use magic? Especially if said child could use that specific spell to HURT? And who the fuck would get it into their head to try to impress and intimidate a child who has full well demonstrated their capacity for wild viciousness?
Ahem. Three people certainly had contact with insane!Ariana (other than Percival, who doesn't count due to his being hauled off to Azkaban early on), and I think we've established they wouldn't do this. (Aberforth and Kendra wouldn't be encouraging her strange-and-dangerousness, and Albus would be too busy trying to get out of dealing with her.) HOWEVER! A fourth might have had contact with Ariana. A fourth who was wild and dangerous on his own, had the sheer innate nastiness to perform Cruciatus, and was raised going to a school where Dark Arts - those terrible, rather unspecified things - were not only allowed, but taught. Good old Gellert Grindelwald.
Wonderful! This theory is also giving me back-up for my fanon that Grindelwald knew Ariana a hell of a lot better than "That damn girl who rushed in when I was dueling Albus and Aberforth"! *grins* Ahem. Well, Grindelwald would have seen a girl with the occasional mood that could full well empathize with - powerful, wild, and insane - and who, on top of that, had been ruined by Muggles. And who better than he, a fellow powerful, wild, "mad" (according to those damned tattletales who just didn't understand his brilliance - he should have hit them with a few more Cruciatuses to get the truth through their thick heads) wizard who also happened to be brilliant and well-educated, to 'fix' her? And, being a Durmstrangite, he decided that the best thing for her to see to understand why magic was so wonderful, why she should respect him, and why he was so impressive himself was him performing some fancy magic. Possibly of the nasty sort, but we don't know. (And besides, the first time he ended up meeting her probably ended up with him on the receiving end of one of Ariana's rages. Given that he wasn't supposed to hurt his boyfriend's sister - and he probably liked her style, anyway -, he would have treated her like a younger Durmstrang student, i.e. intimidate her into stopping the attack. And being an Evil Overlord in training, he would have wanted to impress any younger such student... followers are always good, after all...)
Albus hung around Gellert a great deal that summer, and they shared their plans and ideas, and so even if he wasn't present the first time to see Gellert's attempt to handle Ariana, Gellert would have hauled him in to show him just how effective it was. And it sure as hell would have impressed Albus. Ariana cowed? Ariana impressed? Ariana in a (reasonably) good mood towards someone, and not just anyone, but a (relative) stranger? And she certainly would have been more there than usual (as she would have been still "strange and dangerous" instead of having "a sort of vacant sweetness"). Of course, Gellert himself could charm Albus, and so if he could wax poetic on how this strategy might end up fixing Ariana and making her independently functional (which Gellert would fully believe... his standard for "functional" including himself as it would...), well... gee, what more could Albus ask for? Verily, a boyfriend from heaven. :P And "strange and dangerous" Ariana would be quite happy with this - someone who respected her enough to see her as worthy of impressing and liked her (like calls to like, after all) and, on top of all that, hated Muggles? HOORAY! (Although it would have taken a bit of Gellert-administered therapy to finally convince the "sweet and scared" more-sane Ariana that no, the problem hadn't been with her all those years ago, it had been with the Muggles.) So all would have been great (except from Aberforth's perspective... more on why once we get to Tom in the magical world). Certainly (from Albus's POV) better than Aberforth and his mother's method, which, while it kept her manageable (and so much for that, his mother had been killed trying to deal with Ariana the classic way), didn't help. But Gellert's trying to tutor Ariana worked.
(In particular, once he got past the "introductory" stage, methinks Grindelwald attempted to coach her on going with her magic and its whims and such... but that's for personal fanon. Hmm. I was just amusingly reminded of the episode of Winnie the Pooh - oh, hush, I was seven or eight! - where Eeyore wants to be "popular", so Tigger [who views himself as "popular"] teaches Eeyore how to be like him. ...The problem being that Eeyore out-Tiggers Tigger, and Tigger begins to think this was a very bad idea. Out-Grindelwalding Grindelwald, anyone? :) )
And Albus, being an idiot (which, canonically, he is), didn't consider even after Grindelwald had shown exactly what nasty tendencies he had and Ariana was dead that perhaps Grindelwald's method had been developed both by and for use of a very different man than Albus Dumbledore, and for more than merely making a mad child functional. Yeeeessss. For making that child loyal, too.
But because Albus honestly didn't want to be around Ariana 2.0 more than he absolutely had to, he didn't think of this, and so he didn't try to cozy up to Tom. (I maintain Gellert wouldn't have done this as an intentionally cunning thing, but rather do it as an appropriately chivalrous and noble thing. And besides, it's always a wonderful experience to see someone's face light up as they finally comprehend the glorious greater good that you've laid out for them... and that you are capable enough to champion. Gryffindor fanaticism can look like Slytherin cunning, but it doesn't spring from the same motives. ""This is a worthy and great cause" AND "I am brave and bold and chivalrous and generally awesome enough to champion this cause"" is NOT equivalent to "This is a worthy and great cause BECAUSE I am brave and bold and chivalrous and generally awesome enough to champion it", nor does it IMPLY the latter. [Well, as the latter implies it, "not equivalent to" and "not imply" are the same in this case, but this is rhetoric, not Logic. :P]) If he had, Dumbledore would probably have ended up as "The Only One He Ever Worshipped" instead of "The Only One He Ever Feared". :P As is... he made a MASSIVE error by using this tactic to get Tom under control. MASSIVE. Well, it wasn't JUST that. It was his seeing Tom (correctly) as Ariana 2.0 and... you'll get the long-promised answer VERY soon.
Back at the orphanage, Dumbledore intimidates Tom some more and tries to teach him the error of his ways. And, you fool, you're doing NOTHING to endear yourself to him! *facepalm* You think he would have learned from Ariana that when you're dealing with a kid with magically-induced-madness and wildness, the one who can get said kid under control are their favorites. Oy. ...Wait, I'm the one who just pointed out he didn't pay much attention to Ariana if he could avoid it. *laughs in embarrassment* So, Dumbledore's not setting himself up as a god to Tom, he's setting himself up as a devil. His Slytherin traits all flew out the window when he started flashing back to his mad sister, all right.
And this - THIS! - is what explains his seemingly baffling lines to Tom, namely (taken from hbpspork, hence the odd color):
You have - inadvertently, I am sure - been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school.
[...]
All new wizards must accept that, in entering our world, they abide by our laws.
Everyone thought "inadvertently" made no sense, as Dumbledore had JUST been told Tom knew perfectly well what he was doing - by Tom himself, no less. But NOW, in light of Ariana's... issues..., it makes SENSE! Dumbledore knows he has been talking with the boy in one of his "strange and dangerous" moods, and so is speaking for Tom's benefit when he's back to normal! "Inadvertently" refers to his inability to keep himself from having a fit! It all makes sense!
Dumbledore also shows that he really didn't pay attention to Ariana and hasn't thought about her in retrospect, in that he acts like just telling Tom to be good will - now that he's impressed Tom - make him be good. Oh, Dumbles. You fucking MORON. XDDDD;; NOW I think we see Albus's method of dealing with Ariana. No WONDER he didn't like dealing with her.
Albus: Ariana, be good!
Ariana: *GIGGLING HYSTERICALLY* You think you can tell me to be good, Alby? Do you? DO YOU? Hah! You can't tell me what to do! NO ONE tells me what to do!
Albus: *draws himself up to his full height* I shall not tolerate this!
Ariana: *after laughing hysterically, attacks him*
Albus: ...You aren't supposed to do that! D: *dodges behind furniture*
:P
And Tom, while impressed, is still in a odd mood, and so the conversation progresses. 'I haven't got any money.' 'Fine, money. Want an escort?' Tom's not interested, because even if he's calmer now that he's been cowed, he's still independent and not interested in restraints. And he doesn't like other people having his name, because gawddammit he KNOWS he's different and special and such. :P
Dumbledore's commentary on this to Harry is, I must say baldly, a cover-up. HE knows EXACTLY what was going on with young Tom Riddle, but refuses to admit to it. Instead, he paints a portrait of that being Tom's natural state (!), and frankly bullshits about it. He KNOWS what Harry saw was unusual - hell, he knows even HARRY knows it would be unusual - and yet just hastily covers it up as "Oh, well, Tom was special that way" [obviously paraphrased]. Methinks that if Harry had watched present-day!Dumbledore's behavior while in that memory, Dumbledore would have been mumbling "Lalala, I'm not leeeeeestening..." Indeed, if Dumbledore wasn't trying to show Harry Tom's psychology, I suspect he might have said "Tom was a sickly boy, and never left the orphanage (except to go to Hogwarts) on account of his poor health..." XD
But back to TOM. Dumbledore saw him as Ariana 2.0. What did he do?
Well, he figured that not letting Ariana run amuck in the magical world had ended up a failure, and Tom had already somehow managed to stay in the Muggle world for eleven years without mangling the Statute of Secrecy up, down, and sideways, so he might as well expose Tom to the magical world and see what happened. Without touching the boy any more than he had to. Of course, Albus somehow failed to grasp that Tom's magic by its nature allowed him to keep word from getting out, but Albus was trying his best NOT to think in this situation...
So Ariana 2.0 trooped off into the Wizarding World. And verily, this was a worse screw-up than befriending Gellert Grindelwald and helping him with his tactics (propaganda-wise and also, possibly, military-wise), for Grindelwald might have risen anyway (although he could have also just fizzled out due to getting no concrit on his propaganda and lessons in Cunning 101). But Tom? Albus aided him TWICE when he could have been kept from rising. The first time was this. The second time... I think those of you more cynical about canon!Dumbledore may have already guessed.
Yes, he let a magically unstable boy into a school with such a great magical aura that it sabotages Muggle technology. BRILLIANT, DUMBLEDORE! (To be honest, he never gives the impression in King's Cross that he actually knew why Ariana was mad. And I think that was willful ignorance, considering that Aberforth knew, but Albus never was one to see what he didn't want to say...) And I think it goes without saying that this only made Tom's problems WORSE. MUCH worse. In fact, for a boy already struggling to hold back his magic, a place where he was REQUIRED to do magic SEVERAL TIMES DAILY... Very bad. By the time Tom GOT to Hogwarts, he may have already been sane again and regretting his decision, but he could hardly refuse the chance nice Mr. Dumbledore had given him... and maybe things would be better?
No. They weren't. And I think the nice, charming, intelligent, oh-so-brave Tom Riddle slipped away quite fast, and by the time Tom was first calling himself Lord Voldemort ("a few years before" he was 16, so... when he was 13), that Tom - the sane Tom, a boy who might have been "sweet and scared and harmless" - had gone forever, consumed by his own magic. And only the "strange and dangerous" Tom was left in his place. (I'd actually say that "Lord Voldemort" marked the transition. It's not a name a harmless Tom Riddle would have come up with, but definitely would have fit the tastes of "strange and dangerous" Tom Riddle, who no longer wanted to be the same boy who had been so helpless many years ago.)
...I'll take a minute to applaud JKR for having this hidden within the text. She still has the ability she had with PoA, but this was a tale spelled out over two books, and I think she wanted to let the readers find this for themselves. Thinking of HBP and DH as part of the same book indeed, JKR. ;) Smooth.
Back to the story. However, the teachers were used to nice, timid - but so brave!-, harmless Tom. And the strange and dangerous Tom Riddle had become better at aping him. People were charmed by that boy - especially his fits of wild brilliance! And if he was a bit odd when he was brilliant, well, who knows how the mind of a genius works? (Off-topic - I think Dumbledore packed the school with professors who were downright brilliant at their chosen fields [even if not necessarily the best professors - see Snape and Hagrid] so that they wouldn't be taken in by another Tom Riddle.) The strange and dangerous Tom Riddle liked playing people so that they did as he wished, got a savage enjoyment out of seeing them dance to his tune, whether because of magical compulsion or because of his fine acting. And he knew how to be that boy - even if he hated it now that he was strong and wild ALL the time. The image grew cracks as he grew older and farther and farther away from that boy, but...
Slughorn got to see it crack, and the experience left him troubled forever after. (Especially due to his giving Tom the knowledge he needed to start forming Horcruxes.) Dumbledore, I think, never quite realized that the sane Tom he had thought would prevail (if a bit wilder than he would have been otherwise) had gone.
Oooooooh. In fact, that Tom disappeared in his third year, which means his degeneration could have sped up in second year? Why? What started distracting Dumbledore five years before Tom graduated, i.e. in Tom's second year?
Grindelwald's rise.
BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-NGO! Yes! Yes! This explains it! Dumbledore was trying to keep a watch on Tom! I admit, I was too cynical about the old boy! He was trying to hold to his good intentions, he was trying to do a better job the second time around! *claps* Aaaaaaaaaah! Yes! *nods happily* Great. No wonder it took Tom a while to fade despite Hogwarts's environment. Dumbledore was... Yeeeeeesss. All RIGHT! This explains a lot!
(Holy crap, JKR still has the ability to layer things like this? Wow.)
But, anyway, as Dumbledore was distracted, he didn't realize Tom had gone. In fact, as the strange and dangerous Tom was getting better at aping his nicer self, Dumbledore probably thought Tom was a success story. Well, that showed Aberforth. He DID know how to handle Ariana 2.0. ...That's what he thought...
Sixth year should have been the giveaway. A student died. Tom didn't seem to show much remorse, and in fact was throwing Hagrid in the way.
...Or so we think. Frankly... I think Dumbledore could trust Tom to keep his mouth shut about something even in his strange and dangerous moods. The strange and dangerous Tom hated Dumbledore by that point - he had tried to intimidate him and never cozied up to him, and in fact had tried to curb his wild behavior in favor of a saner Tom. He would never confess to Dumbledore HELPING him.
And Dumbledore had to have helped Tom, either by turning a blind eye or by actively suggesting someone Tom could use as a scapegoat. After all, Dumbledore was a Parselmouth. JKR has confirmed he knew Parseltongue (and Mermish, and so on), and you either get that through a Dark ritual or by birth. (I don't think she's ever contradicted this.) And if he performed a Dark ritual, it had to be when he was young and not yet repulsed by all things Dark. So by the time Riddle had unleashed the basilisk, Dumbledore could hear the language of snakes perfectly well. And so he would know something had been awoken in Hogwarts that sure as hell was no spider. Given that it killed without marks (and, if he asked Moaning Myrtle, he would know that it killed instantaneously), he could figure out pretty fast that it was a basilisk. If he WANTED to. And even with the duel with Grindelwald on the horizon, he could figure it out. Hell, given that he knew Tom had problems and that Tom was a Parselmouth and that he specifically SUSPECTED TOM (as was seen canonically even by Tom), he really had an open-and-shut case if he WANTED to bring Tom down.
But no, a far older and stranger set of instincts than "Protect the students" rose up when Tom killed. "Cover it up." He probably had grown to see Tom as his second chance at Ariana, the chance to do what he should have down when he was younger. And he'd neglected Tom as he had Ariana - if he had only kept an eye on Tom like he was supposed to, Myrtle would not lie dead on the girls' bathroom's floor. So, as his mother had taught him, he covered for Tom. He didn't suggest that they bring in a Care of Magical Creatures expert who specialized in spiders or something - who would know that acromantulas did not kill like that-, he didn't reveal his suspicions about Tom, he didn't interrogate Tom, he didn't trace the source of the hissing - which he bloody well could have done, three TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS managed it! -, he didn't do ANY of the things he could have done. In particular, he didn't do any of the things he and he alone could have done. (Except convince Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper.)
In any case, he refused to take his second opportunity to bring Riddle down before the madman could rise to power. And he ended up truly regretting it.
Tom made his Horcrux. Yes, after all this was over. The diary Horcrux KNEW about all these events. It was not made at the instant of Moaning Myrtle's death. And this is when Riddle began to go from worse to worst. His mind was already in terrible shape. Then he ripped it. Oh ****. That's when the loss of his humanity became irreversible - he wasn't about to feel remorse! The strange and dangerous Riddle would never feel remorse! And so, the Wizarding World was supremely SCREWED.
==
[Anyway, all my notes of his characterization up to then are now moot. (I think he had only made that one Horcrux by the time he *met* Hepzibah Smith, though. He seems to have retained some of his personality, although he's a lot calmer and more emotionless... although the strain of acting "normal" shows. He wore a SUIT! Not dress robes, but a SUIT! XDDDDDDD)]
So that's enough of Tom. After Voldemort started making Horcruxes, even Dumbledore (now free of worrying about Grindelwald) realized that the Tom he had tried so hard to make a good boy was gone, and that he'd massively f'ed-up. I'm sure he was happy to see Tom go to Albania - and hoped he'd remain there in obscurity. Then... whooooops. Voldemort returned, and what did Dumbledore do when he was gaining power?
Well, what did he do when Grindelwald was on the rise? -_-;; And Lord Voldemort was his creature as much as anything. Voldemort was living proof of his failure. It hurt even worse than Grindelwald's rise that the boy he'd tried to raise right, the boy he'd seen as his second chance, had... well, all of HP fandom knows.
I'll skip over the Voldemort War and only note that Dumbledore harassing Snape about protecting Harry might have stemmed from Dumbledore's own disastrous experiences with the consequences of his own irresponsibility.
Heck, let me put the next part in another post. It's too batshit to belong in this one. :P
In fact, I just realized something that supports my Tommy-boy-had-a-incident-in-his-past-not-so-far-removed-from-Ariana's-assault-by-Muggle-boys theory. (Although it utterly futzes up my characterization of AU!Tom, in retrospect. Ah, well, I suppose I'll just hold that, in that AU, Tom was just Slytherin, possessed of a talent for mind-magic, and unusually talented at controlling it, just as Lily was able to play around with her magic. Actually, after this ramble/"essay", that would explain why he ISN'T evil in the Reversal AU. He just had the sort of unpleasant life Harry had... whereas AU!Dark-Lord!Harry had an incident that made him try to suppress his magic. YAY! An explanation beyond "because I said so, and it fits the AU"! *punches air*) Aberforth says "and at times, she [Ariana] was strange and dangerous". Yeeeeeeeeeess. Strange and dangerous. Methinks this describes the behavior of another Wizarding child when he appears in the Pensieve. And - although my memory may be rewriting things - what is the first thing Tom does upon seeing Dumbledore? He panics. He thinks Dumbledore's going to look at him and see something's wrong. (And boy does he.)
Perhaps there was a charming, oh-so-brave (which makes me suspect said "bravery" was expressed more as him being timid but pushing on anyway) Tom Riddle. But that is most certainly not the side of Tom Dumbledore got to meet, any more than the Trio got to see the "strange and dangerous" side of Ariana Dumbledore in her portrait. He panicked, his magic rose up, and... we get "strange and dangerous" Tom. And this is the Tom Riddle Dumbledore sees, and this explains a damn LOT of Dumbledore's behavior concerning Tom.
(EDIT: ****, I seem to have misremembered "lashed out" as a book quote. Sorry. Isn't.
...Forgive me. *facepalm* Am EDITING.)
The first stunt Tom pulls is to lash out with his magic against Albus Dumbledore. What? You don't remember THAT? "Tell the truth!", anyone? Yes, Tom's magic works in a different way than Ariana's. Of course it does. They're different people, rather obviously. Their psychotic moods take different forms, too - (allow me to take advantage of the associations of elements with Houses) an agitated pool versus a raging fire. Ooh! Compulsion would more 'wash over' a person than 'burn' or 'consume' them! Ah, yes...
Anyway, I do think natural dispositions play into the form magic-induced insanity takes. Percival Dumbledore's reaction to Ariana's damage (and I don't think he went after the Muggle boys until it became clear his daughter was permanently damaged) was, in the end, a rash attack upon the guilty parties. Which is very Gryffindor and just in its own way, and I fully sympathize, but it didn't actually help. What I mean to say by pointing this out is that, in the most horrible of situations, Percival reacted like a Gryffindor - boldly, bravely, chivalrously, but not exactly in the best way from a pragmatic, detached POV. Likewise, his daughter, under immense stress from her magic, struck out physically at those around her (or possibly at herself - Ariana's "poor health" may not have just been an excuse...), likely over imagined or real slights. Albus seems to have strongly taken after his mother, and Aberforth... well, I think his greater loyalty to his sister shows that his personality took after more of the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff [i.e. just, loyal, fairness-devoted Gryffindor/ aggressive, brave, helping-the-weak Hufflepuff] side of the family, even if he was raised Slytherin by Kendra. But their personalities are off-topic here.)
Tom was, in the end, a Slytherin. His mother didn't go after his father in a rage. Instead, having apparently decided or found that she could not longer keep Tom's father under control, she adapted... to the extent she could, considering that she was penniless, uneducated (I'm not sure she lost the ability to do magic so much as had no knowledge of any spells that could help her), effectively without a family, pregnant, ugly, and generally just Really Fucking SCREWED. She may have been intelligent - we don't know. Certainly she doesn't seem to have had Tommy's wild brilliance. But she had the resourcefulness to keep herself going by selling off what little she had and the - something - (I'm not sure "cunning" is the right word so much as "sense" or "presence of mind", but that counts as "cunning" for HP wizards, I suppose) to get to an orphanage when labor set in on December 31st. Now, I'm no expert on Britain, but that's about wintertime, right? Cold? And Britain is an EXTREMELY cold place during the winter? Yeah. For a pregnant woman in poor condition in labor during a cold winter, I'll bet it's an impressive feat to get to the front door of anywhere where your child could manage to survive (given that she likely realized she probably wouldn't live). So, Tom's Mommy wasn't quite so dumb and ineffective as her family (and Dumbledore) thought she was. She had Slytherin inclinations, all right. And her eventual reaction to an untenable situation as she saw it (being horribly mistreated and having Tom Senior not give a damn about her) was to bend the world to her will (fleeing her family and compelling Tom Senior by some means to "fall in love with her"). Tom seems to have inherited these innate responses, as Ariana may have inherited her father's.
So, when the magic finally gets out of Tom's control, its bursting-out takes the form of a grotesquely exaggerated form of this "innate response" to a horrible situation - it compels, instead of physically doing damage. And here, this presents an interesting alternative explanation of Tom's misdeeds - not the premeditated viciousness of a psychopath, but the crazed outbursts of a madman. (Technically, they were the deeds of a spiteful psychopath when committed - but only as much as Ariana's killing of her mother was the deed of an enraged monster. Tom was not a psychopath most of the time. And I'm CERTAINLY not saying Tom's magic doesn't have a vicious side - both Mommy's family and Daddy had a distinctly unpleasant side, to say the least - but I'm saying the method of "making the people who annoy me pay" varied.)
All right, the readers of this ramble say - then whack me over the head with the actual text of the orphanage scene. Billy Stubbs quarreled with Tom the day before. The hanging of Billy's rabbit had to be premeditated. And besides, he hardly compelled that rabbit into hanging himself. Fine, you guys can sit back for a moment and gloat, but I repeat - Tom and Ariana are two different people. And Ariana's magic seemed to get more vicious as she got older - why did she kill her mother when she was 14, instead of all the other times in previous years where both Aberforth and Albus had been off to Hogwarts? Why else was that rage worse than ones when she was 8, or 9, or 11, or 12, or what-have-you?
I suspect that the Rabbit Incident was before Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop went into a cave with Tom Riddle and were never quite right in the head again, so that Tom Riddle was (relatively speaking) more stable back then. And Tom was, much as I hate to sound as if I'm blaming Ariana for innately having a bad temper or something, probably a tad more slow to anger or better at controlling himself despite his anger - at the time of the argument, anyway. Now, one can work oneself up... Especially overnight... And where a normal child may just have seethed in bed or cried into their pillow, Tom had problems. Yeeess. However, at this point, his fits were (to tell from the one other case of such an afflicted child) not quite as psychotic as they would be later, and so he settled for killing Billy's rabbit to teach Billy a lesson rather than breaking Billy's mind. (Note also that this method of killing didn't actually require magic - methinks he was more restrained about using magic back then, too. The compelling would come into play with getting Billy's rabbit to come along with him and whenever anyone wandered out to see what all the scraping was. "Go back to bed and forget about this! ...Especially the stepladder!" :P Or something along those lines...)
When Tom "came to" - in other words, his magic ran out/calmed down and his "strange and dangerous" mood faded -, the deed was already done. In my fanon, the magical 'exhaustion' would have lasted for quite a bit - especially when Tom was younger - and so when Mrs. Cole asked him, she would have found a boy frantically denying that he'd done any such thing, and his words might have held just a smidgen of "added persuasiveness" - not that it would have quite been intentional, but there all the same. Sane!Tom would have been horrified at what he'd done, and of course denied it. If pressed in that state- say, by someone he cared about or respected [not that he HAD any such person in reality] -, he probably would have changed "I didn't do it" to "I didn't mean to do it". However, "strange and dangerous" Tom would have gone violently defensive and, indeed, violent on the magical level - not out of any sense of guilt, but to ward off an assault. (NOTE: I don't mean it in the "POOR WOOBIE" sense, but in the "cornered, feral animal" sense. Go for their jugulars before they can go for yours.)
Then, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop. I have no idea whether this one was the result of some way in which they had slighted him in the past (and which he now remembered as his magic grew wilder and more vicious) or just something they had done that fateful day. In any case, he SOMEHOW managed to get them and himself into that cave (although I'm really confused as to how - magic or no, I wish JKR had just told us WHAT route that cave was accessible by!) and then, where no one could find them, had some fun. In retrospect, I wonder if, long ago, they had done something that made Tom try to utterly suppress his magic. (Let me clarify one thing: Even if they did, they didn't deserve what they got any more than Dudley deserved to get his arm broken by the Queen of the Psychotic Sues, i.e. Rose Potter.) It would explain why Tom loved that spot so much that he decided to put a Horcrux there. Nothing like revenge, ay? Their actions drove them out of his head, and now he gets to drive them out of theirs? *shudders* If this was the case, he could even have been set off by something else, but decided this was the perfect time to get sweet revenge. Ugh. Poor kids.
And these, of course, are only the incidents Mrs. Cole tells Dumbledore about - she implies there are others. However, these are probably the most notable, most vicious incidents - after all, the only fits of Ariana's that we know about in any detail beyond the general are the ones where she killed her mother and (in my fanon) ended up accidentally offing herself, yet we KNOW she had FAR more than those two.
Now, back to when Dumbledore enters. Sane!Tom knows what he's done, and he knows something's wrong with him... but though he honestly feels terrible remorse, something had to make him try to shut off his magic in the first place, and though it may not have taken the exact same form as it did with Ariana, it was probably the most traumatizing thing he'd ever experienced, and he probably fears a repeat, except even worse now that something IS wrong with him. Hence, he panics and loses control of his magic - very quickly, as he's VERY spooked - and Sane!Tom slides into Strange-and-Dangerous!Tom.
After his typical tactic fails - as Tom may have raw talent on his side, but Dumbledore has training -, "strange and dangerous" Tom Riddle is... wary. He retreats and regroups, waiting for Dumbledore to show weakness so he can get Dumbledore to dance to his tune. He doesn't get it - indeed, he ends up showing weakness himself.
At any rate, Tom defends himself, sounding rather wild as he does so. And by "wild", I don't mean "frantic", I mean "A bit mad". Can't really support this so much as point to the overall tone of his speech. He's really not sounding manipulative here. In fact, when he's not hiding behind his "innocent, charming boy" persona, on the non-magical level, Tom isn't all that manipulative at all from what we SEE in canon. Even when he's talking to Slughorn, he's creeping the HELL out of Slughorn, and Slughorn is obviously going against his better judgment. Dare I say he's getting a bit of prodding to keep talking? :P He. Is. Really. NOT. A smooth. Manipulator. Oh, he thinks he is, but in reality? *dies laughing* Nooooooooooooooooo.
(EDIT for clarification: Well, actually, there's Hepzibah Smith and Morfin Gaunt. But I'll note that, with Morfin, he's rather tense, and the first thing he does after getting all he needs out of Morfin is compelling him to "forget" the memory of the event and "remember" that he killed Tom Senior. He reads, in my memory of events, more like he's keeping himself barely under control than that he's fully in control, and that some of his 'control' is derived from him being too interested to be pissed off. And when he's dealing with Smith, he's just making the rounds of being behind his "charming boy" persona (admittedly a bit faded after the creation of the Horcrux and many years) - and is acting somewhat like he's thinking "Not another day of dealing with this woman" - until he notices the locket and the cup. "But," you say, "This really doesn't seem like the boy you're portraying..." Wait up, okay? I have to reveal exactly what Dumbledore was DOING when he interacted with Tom. THEN everything will make sense.)
Tom's reaction to being told he has magic is to show joy that 'makes his face less human' or something. I forget the exact wording. But he's quite happy about it. Well, he's in one of his "strange and dangerous" moods. He's going to be wildly excited about anything that makes him better, more special, and he's especially going to be interested in how to use this to fulfill his... impulses, let us say. Eh. I'm not exactly sure how to phrase it, but I get the characterization.
Anyway, at this point, Dumbledore is... quieter and asks him what he can do. Pre-DH, everyone thought he was reacting solely to this creepy little madman (madboy?) - and considered the way he acted towards Tom later (once he knew what Tom was like) to be utterly batshit. Post-DH, we know about Ariana. And most crucially of all, we know Dumbledore knows about Ariana (well, duh. XD). He's not just seeing this psychotic eleven-year-old wizard. He's remembering a psychotic witch who died young.
Tom replies (the following text is is taken from hbpspork) that "he can make things move without touching them, and that he can compel animals to do what he wants. Then we get the kicker:
I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.""
Ooooooo-kay. Well, his talent seems to be in "compelling" (in a sense, "making things move without touching them" is... compelling inanimate objects, I guess? :P;;), and he can hurt people who "annoy" him.
Strange and dangerous, all right. And Tom is obviously missing more than a few screws. He brags about his magical abilities - particularly the one that allows him to hurt things. (Frankly, he's really talking more to himself or some imagined, cowering audience at this point than to anyone actually present.) Methinks Dumbledore is getting chills up and down his spine - this behavior is ringing a bell. (And while we have no DIRECT evidence for Ariana acting anything like this, Aberforth's "strange and dangerous" comment about his beloved sister implies that there was more to her behavior than just sheer rage. The phrasing is rather unnerving - what did she do to merit that? Surely "and at times she was prone to wild rages" or something would match the fanon [namely, that her rages were all there were to the madness] better than "and at times she was strange and dangerous"?)
So what does he do?
He attempts to simultaneously impress and intimidate Tom by pseudo-setting the wardrobe on fire. Now, some have asked what the FUCK Dumbledore was thinking, and said this is somewhat OOC for Dumbledore. Absolutely right. But let's jump back to Dumbledore's past (ah, how I LOVE the Dumbledore backstory! :D).
Albus didn't deal with Ariana if he could avoid it - that's pretty clear. I think his mother let him, after a point - his time was better expended being taught how to keep people's attention off his family and (later) studying and corresponding with the greatest minds of his day so that he could act as a diversion. ("Didn't that Kendra use to have a daughter?" "What Kendra?" "Kendra Dumbledore-" "Dumbledore? As in Albus Dumbledore?" And then the conversation would turn to Albus, Kendra's mystery daughter forgotten. Not to mention that Albus could always turn the conversation back to himself - *dies laughing at the thought* - if his family came up. I... err, that sounded unintentionally hilarious. *laughs*) And besides, Aberforth was far better at dealing with Ariana, and Kendra herself could, if worst came to worst, cope with Ariana, of course. So Albus wasn't needed until Kendra died, and even then, he resented it and probably made a hash of it. (Methinks Albus became quite adept at Transfiguring whatever he could into something he could use as a barrier between himself and his sister until she either ran out of energy or Aberforth came home.) So he wouldn't use his strategy for handling Ariana on Tom because - guess what? He didn't HAVE a strategy!
So who did? Who would teach a mad, "strange and dangerous" child even MORE ways to use magic? Especially if said child could use that specific spell to HURT? And who the fuck would get it into their head to try to impress and intimidate a child who has full well demonstrated their capacity for wild viciousness?
Ahem. Three people certainly had contact with insane!Ariana (other than Percival, who doesn't count due to his being hauled off to Azkaban early on), and I think we've established they wouldn't do this. (Aberforth and Kendra wouldn't be encouraging her strange-and-dangerousness, and Albus would be too busy trying to get out of dealing with her.) HOWEVER! A fourth might have had contact with Ariana. A fourth who was wild and dangerous on his own, had the sheer innate nastiness to perform Cruciatus, and was raised going to a school where Dark Arts - those terrible, rather unspecified things - were not only allowed, but taught. Good old Gellert Grindelwald.
Wonderful! This theory is also giving me back-up for my fanon that Grindelwald knew Ariana a hell of a lot better than "That damn girl who rushed in when I was dueling Albus and Aberforth"! *grins* Ahem. Well, Grindelwald would have seen a girl with the occasional mood that could full well empathize with - powerful, wild, and insane - and who, on top of that, had been ruined by Muggles. And who better than he, a fellow powerful, wild, "mad" (according to those damned tattletales who just didn't understand his brilliance - he should have hit them with a few more Cruciatuses to get the truth through their thick heads) wizard who also happened to be brilliant and well-educated, to 'fix' her? And, being a Durmstrangite, he decided that the best thing for her to see to understand why magic was so wonderful, why she should respect him, and why he was so impressive himself was him performing some fancy magic. Possibly of the nasty sort, but we don't know. (And besides, the first time he ended up meeting her probably ended up with him on the receiving end of one of Ariana's rages. Given that he wasn't supposed to hurt his boyfriend's sister - and he probably liked her style, anyway -, he would have treated her like a younger Durmstrang student, i.e. intimidate her into stopping the attack. And being an Evil Overlord in training, he would have wanted to impress any younger such student... followers are always good, after all...)
Albus hung around Gellert a great deal that summer, and they shared their plans and ideas, and so even if he wasn't present the first time to see Gellert's attempt to handle Ariana, Gellert would have hauled him in to show him just how effective it was. And it sure as hell would have impressed Albus. Ariana cowed? Ariana impressed? Ariana in a (reasonably) good mood towards someone, and not just anyone, but a (relative) stranger? And she certainly would have been more there than usual (as she would have been still "strange and dangerous" instead of having "a sort of vacant sweetness"). Of course, Gellert himself could charm Albus, and so if he could wax poetic on how this strategy might end up fixing Ariana and making her independently functional (which Gellert would fully believe... his standard for "functional" including himself as it would...), well... gee, what more could Albus ask for? Verily, a boyfriend from heaven. :P And "strange and dangerous" Ariana would be quite happy with this - someone who respected her enough to see her as worthy of impressing and liked her (like calls to like, after all) and, on top of all that, hated Muggles? HOORAY! (Although it would have taken a bit of Gellert-administered therapy to finally convince the "sweet and scared" more-sane Ariana that no, the problem hadn't been with her all those years ago, it had been with the Muggles.) So all would have been great (except from Aberforth's perspective... more on why once we get to Tom in the magical world). Certainly (from Albus's POV) better than Aberforth and his mother's method, which, while it kept her manageable (and so much for that, his mother had been killed trying to deal with Ariana the classic way), didn't help. But Gellert's trying to tutor Ariana worked.
(In particular, once he got past the "introductory" stage, methinks Grindelwald attempted to coach her on going with her magic and its whims and such... but that's for personal fanon. Hmm. I was just amusingly reminded of the episode of Winnie the Pooh - oh, hush, I was seven or eight! - where Eeyore wants to be "popular", so Tigger [who views himself as "popular"] teaches Eeyore how to be like him. ...The problem being that Eeyore out-Tiggers Tigger, and Tigger begins to think this was a very bad idea. Out-Grindelwalding Grindelwald, anyone? :) )
And Albus, being an idiot (which, canonically, he is), didn't consider even after Grindelwald had shown exactly what nasty tendencies he had and Ariana was dead that perhaps Grindelwald's method had been developed both by and for use of a very different man than Albus Dumbledore, and for more than merely making a mad child functional. Yeeeessss. For making that child loyal, too.
But because Albus honestly didn't want to be around Ariana 2.0 more than he absolutely had to, he didn't think of this, and so he didn't try to cozy up to Tom. (I maintain Gellert wouldn't have done this as an intentionally cunning thing, but rather do it as an appropriately chivalrous and noble thing. And besides, it's always a wonderful experience to see someone's face light up as they finally comprehend the glorious greater good that you've laid out for them... and that you are capable enough to champion. Gryffindor fanaticism can look like Slytherin cunning, but it doesn't spring from the same motives. ""This is a worthy and great cause" AND "I am brave and bold and chivalrous and generally awesome enough to champion this cause"" is NOT equivalent to "This is a worthy and great cause BECAUSE I am brave and bold and chivalrous and generally awesome enough to champion it", nor does it IMPLY the latter. [Well, as the latter implies it, "not equivalent to" and "not imply" are the same in this case, but this is rhetoric, not Logic. :P]) If he had, Dumbledore would probably have ended up as "The Only One He Ever Worshipped" instead of "The Only One He Ever Feared". :P As is... he made a MASSIVE error by using this tactic to get Tom under control. MASSIVE. Well, it wasn't JUST that. It was his seeing Tom (correctly) as Ariana 2.0 and... you'll get the long-promised answer VERY soon.
Back at the orphanage, Dumbledore intimidates Tom some more and tries to teach him the error of his ways. And, you fool, you're doing NOTHING to endear yourself to him! *facepalm* You think he would have learned from Ariana that when you're dealing with a kid with magically-induced-madness and wildness, the one who can get said kid under control are their favorites. Oy. ...Wait, I'm the one who just pointed out he didn't pay much attention to Ariana if he could avoid it. *laughs in embarrassment* So, Dumbledore's not setting himself up as a god to Tom, he's setting himself up as a devil. His Slytherin traits all flew out the window when he started flashing back to his mad sister, all right.
And this - THIS! - is what explains his seemingly baffling lines to Tom, namely (taken from hbpspork, hence the odd color):
You have - inadvertently, I am sure - been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school.
[...]
All new wizards must accept that, in entering our world, they abide by our laws.
Everyone thought "inadvertently" made no sense, as Dumbledore had JUST been told Tom knew perfectly well what he was doing - by Tom himself, no less. But NOW, in light of Ariana's... issues..., it makes SENSE! Dumbledore knows he has been talking with the boy in one of his "strange and dangerous" moods, and so is speaking for Tom's benefit when he's back to normal! "Inadvertently" refers to his inability to keep himself from having a fit! It all makes sense!
Dumbledore also shows that he really didn't pay attention to Ariana and hasn't thought about her in retrospect, in that he acts like just telling Tom to be good will - now that he's impressed Tom - make him be good. Oh, Dumbles. You fucking MORON. XDDDD;; NOW I think we see Albus's method of dealing with Ariana. No WONDER he didn't like dealing with her.
Albus: Ariana, be good!
Ariana: *GIGGLING HYSTERICALLY* You think you can tell me to be good, Alby? Do you? DO YOU? Hah! You can't tell me what to do! NO ONE tells me what to do!
Albus: *draws himself up to his full height* I shall not tolerate this!
Ariana: *after laughing hysterically, attacks him*
Albus: ...You aren't supposed to do that! D: *dodges behind furniture*
:P
And Tom, while impressed, is still in a odd mood, and so the conversation progresses. 'I haven't got any money.' 'Fine, money. Want an escort?' Tom's not interested, because even if he's calmer now that he's been cowed, he's still independent and not interested in restraints. And he doesn't like other people having his name, because gawddammit he KNOWS he's different and special and such. :P
Dumbledore's commentary on this to Harry is, I must say baldly, a cover-up. HE knows EXACTLY what was going on with young Tom Riddle, but refuses to admit to it. Instead, he paints a portrait of that being Tom's natural state (!), and frankly bullshits about it. He KNOWS what Harry saw was unusual - hell, he knows even HARRY knows it would be unusual - and yet just hastily covers it up as "Oh, well, Tom was special that way" [obviously paraphrased]. Methinks that if Harry had watched present-day!Dumbledore's behavior while in that memory, Dumbledore would have been mumbling "Lalala, I'm not leeeeeestening..." Indeed, if Dumbledore wasn't trying to show Harry Tom's psychology, I suspect he might have said "Tom was a sickly boy, and never left the orphanage (except to go to Hogwarts) on account of his poor health..." XD
But back to TOM. Dumbledore saw him as Ariana 2.0. What did he do?
Well, he figured that not letting Ariana run amuck in the magical world had ended up a failure, and Tom had already somehow managed to stay in the Muggle world for eleven years without mangling the Statute of Secrecy up, down, and sideways, so he might as well expose Tom to the magical world and see what happened. Without touching the boy any more than he had to. Of course, Albus somehow failed to grasp that Tom's magic by its nature allowed him to keep word from getting out, but Albus was trying his best NOT to think in this situation...
So Ariana 2.0 trooped off into the Wizarding World. And verily, this was a worse screw-up than befriending Gellert Grindelwald and helping him with his tactics (propaganda-wise and also, possibly, military-wise), for Grindelwald might have risen anyway (although he could have also just fizzled out due to getting no concrit on his propaganda and lessons in Cunning 101). But Tom? Albus aided him TWICE when he could have been kept from rising. The first time was this. The second time... I think those of you more cynical about canon!Dumbledore may have already guessed.
Yes, he let a magically unstable boy into a school with such a great magical aura that it sabotages Muggle technology. BRILLIANT, DUMBLEDORE! (To be honest, he never gives the impression in King's Cross that he actually knew why Ariana was mad. And I think that was willful ignorance, considering that Aberforth knew, but Albus never was one to see what he didn't want to say...) And I think it goes without saying that this only made Tom's problems WORSE. MUCH worse. In fact, for a boy already struggling to hold back his magic, a place where he was REQUIRED to do magic SEVERAL TIMES DAILY... Very bad. By the time Tom GOT to Hogwarts, he may have already been sane again and regretting his decision, but he could hardly refuse the chance nice Mr. Dumbledore had given him... and maybe things would be better?
No. They weren't. And I think the nice, charming, intelligent, oh-so-brave Tom Riddle slipped away quite fast, and by the time Tom was first calling himself Lord Voldemort ("a few years before" he was 16, so... when he was 13), that Tom - the sane Tom, a boy who might have been "sweet and scared and harmless" - had gone forever, consumed by his own magic. And only the "strange and dangerous" Tom was left in his place. (I'd actually say that "Lord Voldemort" marked the transition. It's not a name a harmless Tom Riddle would have come up with, but definitely would have fit the tastes of "strange and dangerous" Tom Riddle, who no longer wanted to be the same boy who had been so helpless many years ago.)
...I'll take a minute to applaud JKR for having this hidden within the text. She still has the ability she had with PoA, but this was a tale spelled out over two books, and I think she wanted to let the readers find this for themselves. Thinking of HBP and DH as part of the same book indeed, JKR. ;) Smooth.
Back to the story. However, the teachers were used to nice, timid - but so brave!-, harmless Tom. And the strange and dangerous Tom Riddle had become better at aping him. People were charmed by that boy - especially his fits of wild brilliance! And if he was a bit odd when he was brilliant, well, who knows how the mind of a genius works? (Off-topic - I think Dumbledore packed the school with professors who were downright brilliant at their chosen fields [even if not necessarily the best professors - see Snape and Hagrid] so that they wouldn't be taken in by another Tom Riddle.) The strange and dangerous Tom Riddle liked playing people so that they did as he wished, got a savage enjoyment out of seeing them dance to his tune, whether because of magical compulsion or because of his fine acting. And he knew how to be that boy - even if he hated it now that he was strong and wild ALL the time. The image grew cracks as he grew older and farther and farther away from that boy, but...
Slughorn got to see it crack, and the experience left him troubled forever after. (Especially due to his giving Tom the knowledge he needed to start forming Horcruxes.) Dumbledore, I think, never quite realized that the sane Tom he had thought would prevail (if a bit wilder than he would have been otherwise) had gone.
Oooooooh. In fact, that Tom disappeared in his third year, which means his degeneration could have sped up in second year? Why? What started distracting Dumbledore five years before Tom graduated, i.e. in Tom's second year?
Grindelwald's rise.
BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-NGO! Yes! Yes! This explains it! Dumbledore was trying to keep a watch on Tom! I admit, I was too cynical about the old boy! He was trying to hold to his good intentions, he was trying to do a better job the second time around! *claps* Aaaaaaaaaah! Yes! *nods happily* Great. No wonder it took Tom a while to fade despite Hogwarts's environment. Dumbledore was... Yeeeeeesss. All RIGHT! This explains a lot!
(Holy crap, JKR still has the ability to layer things like this? Wow.)
But, anyway, as Dumbledore was distracted, he didn't realize Tom had gone. In fact, as the strange and dangerous Tom was getting better at aping his nicer self, Dumbledore probably thought Tom was a success story. Well, that showed Aberforth. He DID know how to handle Ariana 2.0. ...That's what he thought...
Sixth year should have been the giveaway. A student died. Tom didn't seem to show much remorse, and in fact was throwing Hagrid in the way.
...Or so we think. Frankly... I think Dumbledore could trust Tom to keep his mouth shut about something even in his strange and dangerous moods. The strange and dangerous Tom hated Dumbledore by that point - he had tried to intimidate him and never cozied up to him, and in fact had tried to curb his wild behavior in favor of a saner Tom. He would never confess to Dumbledore HELPING him.
And Dumbledore had to have helped Tom, either by turning a blind eye or by actively suggesting someone Tom could use as a scapegoat. After all, Dumbledore was a Parselmouth. JKR has confirmed he knew Parseltongue (and Mermish, and so on), and you either get that through a Dark ritual or by birth. (I don't think she's ever contradicted this.) And if he performed a Dark ritual, it had to be when he was young and not yet repulsed by all things Dark. So by the time Riddle had unleashed the basilisk, Dumbledore could hear the language of snakes perfectly well. And so he would know something had been awoken in Hogwarts that sure as hell was no spider. Given that it killed without marks (and, if he asked Moaning Myrtle, he would know that it killed instantaneously), he could figure out pretty fast that it was a basilisk. If he WANTED to. And even with the duel with Grindelwald on the horizon, he could figure it out. Hell, given that he knew Tom had problems and that Tom was a Parselmouth and that he specifically SUSPECTED TOM (as was seen canonically even by Tom), he really had an open-and-shut case if he WANTED to bring Tom down.
But no, a far older and stranger set of instincts than "Protect the students" rose up when Tom killed. "Cover it up." He probably had grown to see Tom as his second chance at Ariana, the chance to do what he should have down when he was younger. And he'd neglected Tom as he had Ariana - if he had only kept an eye on Tom like he was supposed to, Myrtle would not lie dead on the girls' bathroom's floor. So, as his mother had taught him, he covered for Tom. He didn't suggest that they bring in a Care of Magical Creatures expert who specialized in spiders or something - who would know that acromantulas did not kill like that-, he didn't reveal his suspicions about Tom, he didn't interrogate Tom, he didn't trace the source of the hissing - which he bloody well could have done, three TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS managed it! -, he didn't do ANY of the things he could have done. In particular, he didn't do any of the things he and he alone could have done. (Except convince Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper.)
In any case, he refused to take his second opportunity to bring Riddle down before the madman could rise to power. And he ended up truly regretting it.
Tom made his Horcrux. Yes, after all this was over. The diary Horcrux KNEW about all these events. It was not made at the instant of Moaning Myrtle's death. And this is when Riddle began to go from worse to worst. His mind was already in terrible shape. Then he ripped it. Oh ****. That's when the loss of his humanity became irreversible - he wasn't about to feel remorse! The strange and dangerous Riddle would never feel remorse! And so, the Wizarding World was supremely SCREWED.
==
[Anyway, all my notes of his characterization up to then are now moot. (I think he had only made that one Horcrux by the time he *met* Hepzibah Smith, though. He seems to have retained some of his personality, although he's a lot calmer and more emotionless... although the strain of acting "normal" shows. He wore a SUIT! Not dress robes, but a SUIT! XDDDDDDD)]
So that's enough of Tom. After Voldemort started making Horcruxes, even Dumbledore (now free of worrying about Grindelwald) realized that the Tom he had tried so hard to make a good boy was gone, and that he'd massively f'ed-up. I'm sure he was happy to see Tom go to Albania - and hoped he'd remain there in obscurity. Then... whooooops. Voldemort returned, and what did Dumbledore do when he was gaining power?
Well, what did he do when Grindelwald was on the rise? -_-;; And Lord Voldemort was his creature as much as anything. Voldemort was living proof of his failure. It hurt even worse than Grindelwald's rise that the boy he'd tried to raise right, the boy he'd seen as his second chance, had... well, all of HP fandom knows.
I'll skip over the Voldemort War and only note that Dumbledore harassing Snape about protecting Harry might have stemmed from Dumbledore's own disastrous experiences with the consequences of his own irresponsibility.
Heck, let me put the next part in another post. It's too batshit to belong in this one. :P