Very random HP thought

[conuly]

When Tom Riddle was an angsty adolescent he realized he could twist his name up into a ridiculous cool and badass anagram. He then proceeded to use his new anagram-name for the rest of his life. Fair enough, that's how Crescent Dragonwagon ended up with her name, and that may be the only thing those two have in common. (And what she says about it is "decisions you make early in your life look different as you mature.")

Around the same time Tom was playing around with letters, he came up with his grand plan of serial killing for fun and profit. This was sometime in the late 1940s, and when he "died" for the first time in 1981 he'd been at it for over 30 years. Thirty years, hewing slavishly to his childhood plans.

There is something intensely pathetic about that.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Tom Riddle had zero social skills and is the epitome of someone who peaked in High School, only with magic and not football.

Come to think of it, the Potter-verse would've been a very different place if he'd been more interested in Quiddich.

[moon_custafer]

There’s also Dr. Loki Skylizard, who apparently was eight or nine when his parents offered him a chance to pick out a new name (they were an immigrant family and I suspect were hoping he’d go for something safely Anglo, but props to them for letting him make his choice). Now he has an army of surgical robots: https://www.mesotheliomahelp.org/doctors/loki-skylizard-md-fccp/

[conuly]

I mean, he had some social skills, he was able to get people to join his fascist movement.

And yes, it would've been.

[conuly]

With a name like that, you can do almost anything.

[redbird]

Thanks for the update, I last heard of Dr. Skylizard before he got the robot army.

[adrian_turtle]

There are people who spend 30, even 60, years, doing what they decided to do in adolescence. One of my mom's friends knew, when he was a teenager, that he was going to do math and love this girl that he'd met in junior high. It's kind of surprising that he's a professor emeritus of math, celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary, but I don't think it's pathetic. But that's because Mike started with a better plan than Tom did. Even "I'm going to be a soldier, and kill whoever I'm told to kill," is a less appalling plan than Tom's.

(ETA: I would not be surprised if Greta Thunberg stuck to her adolescent plans. Unusual, but not pathetic.)

The weird thing about the Harry Potter world is that EVERYONE grows up to spend a career doing something they learned as teenagers. Everyone marries somebody they met when they're teenagers. People do that in our world (just like there are people who always wear the same color), but it's unusual, not universal.

[conuly]

I bet this professor friend changed his plans at least a little in between deciding on his love of mathematics and graduating college, or at least was open to doing so if the situation changed.

[siliconshaman]

He was a good orator, not so sure if that counts as social skills. Basically, he was like a wizarding world version of Hitler.

[wint3rpear]

Ol' Voldy, what a priceless gem we Slytherins hatched up eh? *chuckles*