I'm really sorry if this has been raised brfore but i couldnt find it.
In HBP when Dumbledore and Harry are in the cave and DD is drinking the potion Dumbledore starts saying things like "Im sorry i wont do it again please make it stop" (im not quoting its just something similar to that) was that just him rambling trying to get the pain of the potion to stop or did he really make a big mistake at some point and if he did how will it affect the 7th book? I really would like to know what everyone thinks because i have no idea
what was he rambling about?
was it important?

Interesting observation. I really don't know. Perhaps he did make a mistake that will be important in the 7th book. It is also possible that the potion made him relive something that happened to him in the past that was either really bad or was a big mistake that he either feels really bad about or hasn't realized until that point that it was a mistake. I don't know. This is an interesting thought. Maybe it will be important. It's possible. It is also possible that he was just rambling because of the potion.

It is quite possible that he is reliving a mistake he made but is it possible that it was somone elses mistake or horrible memory that is causing DD pain . for this I see only two possibilities for people.

1)Snape-he has had a horrible childhood and if he is working for Lv it would make sense for him to make the potion(what ever it is)

2)LV-because it is his Horcrux that he is guardingand he offten works alone

Maybe he somehow feels responsible for someones death. maybe sirius,he might feel that if he had been more straightfoward with harry in OOTP and told him that voldemort might lure him to the ministry, rather then be afraid to speak to harry, sirius wouldnt have had to go save him and would still be alive. Another thought is that maybe he feels responsible for the way tom riddle turned out.

these lines are taken from an interview shortly after the release of hbp

"ES: What would Dumbledore see(in the mirror of erised)?
JKR: I can't answer that.
ES: What would Dumbledore's boggart be?
JKR: I can't answer that either, but for theories you should read six again. There you go"

thought this may help a bit.what do you think?

From this last response we think of two things, what does he see in the mirror and what is his boggort? Anyways, back on topic, I don't think that he is even Dumbledore. My opinion was that it was either Aberforth or even Snape after taking a Polyjuice Potion.

~Filius~

Just get over it. DD wouldnt put harry into a situation like that, unless he was there to potect him.

Hmmm...well i simply just believed that he was in a horrible amount of pain and because of his pain he thought that he had done something to make him have to suffer that pain.

Ah. I too have been wondering what DD was seeing when he took the potion/poison...or whatever.

Was he perhaps seeing a trauma of his past? Or something that Voldy has done recently? Something to do with the prophecy?

hmm.....

I think that Dd's ramblings had something to do with what happened to Amy Benson and and Dennis Bishop. Perhaps the potion would make the drinker feel and relive what they went through, afterall his ramblings seemed 'childlike'. And if Voldy had to drink the potion it would propably be pleasing to him to hear how they pleaded and so forth.

Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort had several protections on the site. Perhaps the poison made Dumbledore feel guilty for nothing. That's a likely scenario.

Well, we are never really made aware of what the potion that he drank actually is, are we? Even if we were, we would need a fairly detailed explanation of it's effects before we could really say what his ramblings meant. Even still, guessing, I think the one of the effects of the potion, besides terrible pain, is (and this sounds kinda muddled, so bear with me) the ability for the poisoner to make the poisonee sorry for offending the poisioner, with possible memory effects too. So in other words, LV, having put the potion in the basin had put fear of him in the basin with it. SO when Dumbledore drank the poison, he was sorry that he had wronged LV, and probably thought LV was personally causing him the pain at that moment. I really have no way to back up the memory part, but it seems to me, that if it could be done, LV would want a poison that made the drinker insanely sorry that he was where he was, attempting to do what he was doing, and if, by some stretch of the imagination, he got away, to not remember where he was or what the Horcrux is. (perhaps just remember the pain)
I could be very off base with this theory. I know that LV thought that nobody knew about his horcruxes, and then if someone were, on an offhand chance able to found out about them, he thought there was no way that anyone was smart enough to find them. So, I am not sure what it really was, but it seemed more likely to be that Dumbledore was afraid of his punisher (LV) not something in his past. THis would fit in with something that Dumbledore said in HBP as well. I don't have the book in front of me, so forgive me that this will be a bit off:
Voldemort would not use a potion that would kill you immediately. He would want to keep you alive until he was able to get to you to find out how you knew about the horcrux and got there. Or something to that effect.
So if the potion made you fear LEV, because he was putting you in all of that pain, naturally, when he got there, you would be much more willing to comply with him. J

Oh this is an excellent thread!

His regretness was probably because of Snape , maybe he was trayig to apologize with Harry coz DD didn't believe him and he has figured out the Snape's bad intentions.. or it's an error that Jo didn't put in the book and she's gonna write it on the last (waa don't wanna think about it )

Or he said that words coz of LV... but I couldn't say why

I wondered if the regret he was feeling was a regret for not better protecting Lily and James, or if he might be reliving the events before James and Lily died, and the I'm sorry is as much for Harry as for them. It's also possible that DD is reliving some horrible memory, as Harry relives his mother's death in the presence of the dementors.

I don't believe the theories that it was not DD in the cave. The regret is his own. It wouldn't be the 2 kids who were tortured in there, because why then would he be saying I'm sorry. LV was never sorry.

Dumbledore starts out his pleading with "I don't want...don't make me..." (HBP, p534). However, his eyes are closed as he says this and he looks like he is "dreaming a horrible dream."

When he moans, "don't make me," Dumbledore seems to refer to his own past actions, not his wish to stop drinking potion. Continuing, he pleads, "It's all my fault...I know I did it wrong...I'll never, never again"(p535). Surely drinking potion is not Dumbledore's fault nor did he do something he did wrong. He is reacting to something he alone sees.

He seems to either be imagining or reliving a horrible experience, one involving his witness of the injuries or deaths of other people.

"Don't hurt them...hurt me, instead" Dumbledore actually begs. Were people tortured in front of Dumbledore? He does scream, "not that, I'll do anything." Whatever Dumbledore saw made him wish for death and he actually yells, "KILL ME!" (p536).

Dumbledore acts child-like as he's speaking (Harry thinks he is "like a child dying of thirst," on p536). Could this point to Dumbledore seeing people harmed when he was young, just as baby Harry witnessed his parents' deaths? We know little about Dumbledore's family and yet, JKR said, "Dumbledore's family would be a profitable line of inquiry," in her Mugglenet/TLC interview.

samsmom, you said:
.

Could you explain more about why you would rule out this description indicating that he is experiencing things that the kids went through in the cave? That explanation makes a lot of sense, since LV would take great pleasure in tormenting other people with the proud torments of his childhood, especially given that this little scenario takes place in that very cave.

But I am intrigued by your idea that these ramblings may refer to DD family matters; maybe he has been cast into a memory of some similar childhood torment to the kind suffered by the kids in the cave....maybe his own family history is part of what tunes DD in to Tom's nature from the beginning, such that he coupled Tom's invitation to Hogwarts with a warning on his past behavior and a threat via the burning wardrobe.

Good idea!

Being too new to this forum to have read every thread out there since the release of HBP, I apologize in advance if this has already been nixed.

What if Dumbledore's ramblings were his mental reenactment of James and Lily's death by LV that night? What if he was there telling LV to kill him instead of the Potters?

I can't say for sure what he Dumbledore saw in the cave, but I think snivellusfan is thinking correctly about what we can gleen from the cave. I think the cave is definitely what JKR was referring to when she said that book 6 would give us a clue as to what Dumbledore's boggart would be.

Whether what Dumbledore saw was real or imagined, it seems to me that this experience means that Dumbledore's greatest fear is being powerless to prevent the torture and death of innocent people, especially children. It's the motivation for most of his actions.

I believe what Dumbledore saw was probably either a made up scene where a spell was put on Dumbledore, or his behaviour was real and what he saw was a bad memory.

So that's what he'd see if a boggart approched him? We haven't actualy seen Dumbledore take on a boggart, have we? I agree with Albus-wan, i thinks that's a likely candidate for his boggart.

But the potion (Whatever it was) was obviously causing him pain, right? After a while, he wanted to die! Maybe that was forshadowing his death in the next chapter?

But i defiently believe it was a memory he saw, or else just the effects of the potion.

whatever he was undergoing it was painful . maybe he was seeing something horrible which was going to happen in future? or it coud be something that had happened in the past? it can be anything.

It was the wording that made me rule out the torture of the children. If DD was reliving the children being tortured by Riddle in the cave, why would he say "It's all my fault...I know I did it wrong...I'll never, never again"(p535). If it were the children, it would be more of the "I don't want...don't make me...". The children did nothing wrong to say that "it's all my fault."

I think that JKR's comment about Dumbledore's family being "a profitable line of inquiry," in her Mugglenet/TLC interview could make sense here. If he is reliving the worst memory of his past (as the dementors force you to do,) he could come up with exactly the words he has.

It's also possible that DD is reliving Lily and James's deaths, but his voice sounds child like, so I think that he is reliving something earlier. I think that perhaps you are right, pumpkinjuice, and his family background affords him insight into LV that others do not have, and that's why he can see through Tom at Hogwart's when other teachers can't.

Who ever made the potion knew it would take two people so the rambling is probable to try and get the person force feeding it to his friend partner or who ever to stop it remeber harry felt horrible doing it if he wasnt so loyal to dumbeldore he probable would have stop so i think the rambling was a side effect to get the other person to stop

samsmom, I can see your thinking here:

but isn't it fairly common for children who are being abused somehow to be made to think that they have done something wrong such that they are being tormented? I could imagine Tom berating one of the kids for something "wrong" they allegedly did according to some sick bullying rules he had.

But thinking more about the DD childhood thing, the terrible remorse over some kind of mistake would be an excellent explanation for DD's amazing hunger to know and understand--his life has in part been compensating for some terrible losses.....which is not to denigrate any of his accomplishments, but to say that there is pain behind them, pain which in part explains his willingness to be lonely in the name of what he tries to do/understand in his life.

Added the next day:
I was just thinking about Slughorn in another thread, and it occurred to me that the words DD babbles in the cave would fit in Slughorn's mouth. He did wrong in telling Tom about horcruxes, he feels remorse as we know and is ashamed; perhaps he DID tell Tom about the spell but Tom did a memory charm on him that took the full memory and put it in that potion, leaving him only with the tamer memory? Or perhaps Slughorn was revisited by LV for the horcrux spell, and was made to watch as LV killed someone else to make a horcrux?
OMG--could Slughorn have been, for any reason, at the Potters that night? He did love Lily.....hmmm....something to chew on.

I dont think thats corrects because the boat would only hold one person remember?
Harry only got away with it becuase he wasnt of age. And the only reason that made a difference was because Voldemort underestimated younger wizards. I guess i could be wrong you did make me wonder for a bit untill i remembered

I was just driving and listening to Goblet on cd, and a scene came up that I'd forgotten--Harry goes to tell DD about his dream (the time in his office when he first discovers the pensieve), and in the dream Pettigrew is under the cruciatis curse--LV is using it on him. These words in DD's ramblings would fit well in Wormtail's mouth, referring to something LV made him watch/do.

Or, the other person in Goblet who expresses regret with the words "my fault" is Barty Crouch Sr. Given the imperius curse stuff, and the consequences, these ramblings would fit really well in his mouth.

Just some more possibilities for people to discuss.

I don't think you needed even to use the boat.

Sorry to say this but can you not use levicorpus & put someone under the Imperius curse to drink it while LV just grabs the locket? Or even a house-bound elf??? House elves are supposed to do your command so LV can even use one and it wouldn't even way nearly as much as harry??? Then there's apparation... you can look at the small isle and just apparate there, right?? Then there's still the idea that LV can just make Wormtail drink it under the crucius curse?? Can't the potion also be the reverse of Ephoria ( the potion Harry made in this six book that makes you happy and sing)??

I don't think you needed even to use the boat.

Sorry to say this but can you not use levicorpus & put someone under the Imperius curse to drink it while LV just grabs the locket? Or even a house-bound elf??? House elves are supposed to do your command so LV can even use one and it wouldn't even way nearly as much as harry??? Then there's apparation... you can look at the small isle and just apparate there, right?? Then there's still the idea that LV can just make Wormtail drink it under the crucius curse?? Can't the potion also be the reverse of Ephoria ( the potion Harry made in this six book that makes you happy and sing)??

k i was just skimming throuhg and i read what u said about a house elf being able to fit on the boat because it would weigh much less then harry. But correction, in HBP Dumbledore tells harry tht the boat doesn't weigh by actual weight, it weighs by the amount of magic one carries. I would have to disagree with u saying LV could bring a house elf across with him because remember tht house elves have an incredible amount of power, theyre just disallowed to use it. Now picture Lord Voldemort, the most powerful wizard of their time besides Dumbledore. Wouldn't u think the boat would already be overloaded? Then u add a house elf...i think the boat would break don't you? lol

SBlack, I was thinking the same thing--elves are very powerful in their own right.
But maybe for the same reason that LV made a mistake regarding underage (but potentially powerful) wizards, maybe he failed to account for how to weigh the magic of elves? If LV doenst even think straight about people, he surely doesnt think straight about elves, who in his experience are things to use and hoodwink (Hokey).

Why would a wizard and another person or a house elf have to ride the boat over in the first place? What if the first wizard went in the boat, the other wizard/elf stayed on the shore? Once the first wizard was to the island (re: destination), couldn't the second just apparate there?

Was apparation unable to work in the cave? I don't recall that being mentioned. I recall only that DD said one must use the boat to follow the trail. Well, only one has to use the right path, couldn't the second use magic?

I have to ponder whether Dumbledore knew two wizards were going to be needed to get the locket from the cave.

If he did, he had already been inside and knew what he was up against, yet he did not. He worked his way through the cave looking for lingering signs of magic.

If he did not, then taking Harry was a learning lesson on how difficult finding/getting the horocruxes will be. I subscribe to this theory.

Dumbledore does not know where the other four horocruxes are, he's only found two; Harry found the diary.

Voldemort made the scenario in the cave. It stands to reason that either Voldemort made the potion or one of his Death Eaters did. Tom Riddle did not kill the boy and girl in the cave, allegedly he tortured them. Voldemort used the cave because it held sentimental meaning for him, plus being hard to find and practically unknown to those who might persue him.

Draught of the Living Dead puts a person in a death like stuppor/sleep. I do not recall anywhere that it says the drinker relives painful memories. So, I then have to presume that the potion in the basin was like a pensieve and Voldemort put a memory of his into the potion, or one of his victims...such as the torture murder of Tom Riddle, Sr. Wasn't he remarried with kids by the time that Voldemort found him? Could not the words uttered by Dumbledore have come from Tom Riddle, Sr.'s mouth? He abandoned Merope after she stopped using the love potion, he knew she was pregnant. TR Sr. had another family to protect by the time Voldemort came around to exact revenge.

.

Well, I'm pretty sure he didnt have kids--LV killed Tom, his new wife, and Tom's parents (LV grandparents).

Hmmm....could those be Tom Sr's words....Did LV make Tom Sr. kill his parents? He would have boasted about that in the graveyard but didnt, so I dont think he is referring to that in the "I dont want....dont make me...." part. Plus they were all killed with AK, so Sr. couldnt have done it. So what would those words mean in his mouth? Did Tom make him hurt his parents before killing them all?
However, I could see him saying "I know I did wrong". I doubt Tom would have killed him without a conversation and a bit of torture, so I suspect Tom told him who he was--or maybe didnt have to since he loooked so much like him. So Sr. may have said he knew he did wrong in abandoning Merope and his child (did he know she was pregnant? I forget...).
Interesting possibility. My current money is on the words belonging to Slughorn, but I might change my mind!

hmmm...it think it is important and its a good thing you brought it up. i think he was referring to voldemort and snape killing lily and james....it kind of was his fault, in my opinion.
or maybe its something more...

I think that possible, it was some sort of potion that made you relive a scene either of your own experiences/made out of the potions creaters head.

Or mabye voldemort made him relive the time he took the kids into the cave. That would make some sence. Seeing as the potion/horocrux hidiing place is in that cave. Maybe it's like; you have to re-live the pain and fear that those kid did in order to have it. And Voldemort can drink it because he doesn't care. AND ALSO, death eaters as well...since they all have cold hearts. And IF RAB is Sirius's brother, he was a death eater. And could ahve dranken it all by himself. Hmm...so much mroe questions than I started out with...

<3

I think that what Dumbledore was experiencing when he drank the potion was probably a very bad memory that he had from when he was a child. JK said in an interview that his family, boggart and what he saw in the mirror of erised is very important. Perhaps something happened to his parents and he was reliving that awful moment?

That was what i wanted to say about the creators head i just couldnt think how to put it. I mainly think it was something that DD had done wrong instead though

i think this potion has kind of the same effect than the dementors, only instead of reviving the most terrible moments of your life, it revives all the things you did wrong and your guilt, making it even more powerful and present in you... only a guess

That's exactly what I think. The fact that Dumbledore says "don't hurt them.. hurt me instead.." - firstly, because although I'm sure Dumbledore would sacrifice himself for a lot of people, I'm especially sure he would sacrifice himself for children. Secondly, the word Dumbledore uses is "them"... not "him", or "her" - suggesting there's at least two people being hurt.

We know that Tom Riddle took those kids to the cave and did something horrible to them; I think the potion enabled Dumbledore to see what that horrid thing was, but that in his vision he was powerless to stop it. I can imagine a scenario like that would provoke such a powerful reaction from Dumbledore.

While we're on the subject.. as far as I can remember, the cave incident with Tom Riddle and the other children happened not long before Dumbledore visits the orphanage and first meets Tom in person. Is there anything to suggest, though, that Dumbledore had not observed Tom from afar, before that first official meeting? This is just pure speculation.. but I wonder if Dumbledore was in the Cave when Tom tortured those children? I can't put my finger on why he wouldn't have stopped it (maybe he was somehow powerless to, or perhaps he arrived too late to stop it) - but perhaps it then became a source of enormous regret for him, thus the horrid experience he relives when he takes the potion is actually his own memory of that incident. Something else which backs up this idea is the fact that when Harry and Dumbledore enter the cave at the end of HBP, Dumbledore seems freakishly familiar with the surroundings... and so I have a sneaking feeling that he'd been there before.

For each hour of time you have give the time turner =one turn= to go go back. At least the time turner Hermione had for muggles studies worked thus.

I suppose it is possible there are "larger" ones for which each turn equates to a greater period of time.

Should Dumbledore have gone back in time to witness Tom's behavior with the kids in the cave, he would not have interfered: it is the great rule in using time turners.

If he had interfered, Tom would have known Dumbledore when he showed up at the orphanage to collect him for Hogwarts.

OK, building on the theory: These are Slughorn's memories of watching the Potters die.

Since I now believe Slughorn to have told Tom HOW to make a horcrux, I think that the remorse expressed in these ramblings is Slughorn begging LV to kill HIM to make the horcrux, not the Potters and their child. It is possible that LV made Sluggie watch these events not in person but some other way.....that would account for why there is no evidence of this in Harry's dementor memories of the events that night. Unless Sluggie did a memory charm on the baby to eliminate any trace of himself in the scene.

I think this is the best explanation for the level of remorse that Slughorn has despite his own actual memory (I think his real memory of these events has been charmed over, or stolen for the basin) not being really all that bad (so what, he confirmed that horcruxes involve killing).

The words in the ramblings seem to indicate that the person speaking knows that SOMEONE has to be killed, and is offering him or herself in the place of the ones who ARE being killed. This would completely fit Slughorn's role in the books, having discussed the connection of killing and horcruxes with Tom.

If he did witness the events in person, which I think is more likely (Lily was his favorite, and we know he likes to have lots of contact with former students) Slughorn probably destroyed the house in order to erase any evidence of his participation or presence there, and whatever might have been left of the bodies, charmed Harry, and left him safely atop the pile. He then may have apparated to DD with the valuable Cloak (which may have been how he was able to visit), told him of the events, and went into retirement. The coincidence of his retirement with the death of the Potters can be no accident. If LV was gone, he had little to fear--unless he knew all about the horcruxes and so knew he had plenty to fear.

I actually meant to suggest that Dumbledore was there originally, not that he had gone back in time to see what happened. I wondered if perhaps (for reasons unknown) he decided to survey Tom from afar before he went to the orphanage to meet him, if you get what I'm saying. I'm not saying he interfered. Just that perhaps he saw what happened (whether deliberately or inadvertently).

But yes.. I like this time-travel theory as well.

yea, i tihnk the potion made dumby feel really guilty and sad and tortured.
.....no........ it is possible that he did do somthin wrong and horrible and just gut wrenching to somebody he liked or even possibly loved...

The words I am fixing on in the ramblings lately are "I know I did wrong".....these words are an interesting and very immature-sounding construction. More like the kind of thing a kid or young teen would say than an adult, or at least an immature adult or an unsophisticated one.

One of the immature adults we meet in the books is Tom's mother, Merope. It would be fascinating for LV to have put something from his mother into the potion, but I cannot imagine how it would be possible. Unless it was something his mother uttered during her labor with him, that Mrs Coles or someone remembered, and LV somehow extracted the memory from them and put it in there. Merope came to know she had done wrong by putting Tom Riddle under the love-potion. She's one of the characters whose change of behavior seems to be based on conscience, as DD interprets it. He seems to think the same of Snape. However, the other words DD says dont fit her.

It's possible the potion is full of lots of different people's tortured memories.

I think there are a lot of really interesting theories here, especially the ones abotu Dumbledore reliving someone elses memories--creepy!

But I always thought that, like Manon1993 said, the potion was sort of a liquid form of the dementors--making you focus on all your horrible memories, all the darkest, most regretful things. Except, perhaps this potion makes you imagine all that could happen instead of what already has. When Dumbledore says something like "Not them, don't hurt them," I always assumed he was talking about the students at his school. Dumbledore has always tried to protect them above anything else. Perhaps he was thinking of how Myrtle was killied, or how Ron and Katie Bell almost died b/c he didn't stop Malfoy. Perhaps he was thinking of other students who he felt he had failed. Maybe he was even imagining his worst nightmare---that someone would try to hurt the children because of something he had done--which would explain why he would say "hurt me" or "KILL ME". But basically, I think whatever Dumbledore is thinking--it's directly tied to his worst fears.

Let's assume RAB is Regulus. We know Regulus quit LV, realizing like Draco that he just had "gotten in too far" as JKR said.

That means that Regulus, having had to replace this potion, may have done so from his own memories/conscience. These ramblings do sound like the unfolding of a conscience that is torn apart by what it has done. I can't think of anything in the ramblings that would not fit the conscience of a DE who had come to recognize the evil of what he was involved in. JKR has said that since he was a DE, Snape has seen things....meaning horrible things. So, we may assume, has Regulus.

So this could be a liquid form of conscience, Regulus's guilty DE conscience.

However, since Snape may have helped Regulus concoct this replacement-potion (see the RAB thread), this could be Snape's conscience, especially since he is continuing to be a DE under DD's orders (we hope). His conscience would be ripping him apart.

We know that several pairs of people--whole families, actually--have been killed by the DE, so the reference in the ramblings to a plurality of people would fit that.

A thought just occurred to me--
The potion is bright green.
The AK curse is bright green.
Harry (and Lily's) eyes are bright green.

If the potion is some kind of liquid conscience, we could interpret the AK as the destructive force of a mutilated conscience, and Harry/Lily's eyes as the creative force of a clear conscience. Just a thought....

Had a thought this morning about the cave ramblings:

Some of us had conjectured that Snape may have had a role in producing that potion that DD wound up drinking. He could have had such a role in at least three possible ways:
1. He was the original potion-maker for the horcrux protection according to LV's wishes
2. He made the potion to replace the one that RAB drained to steal the real horcrux
3. He made the potion to replace the original one that DD had already drained on a previous visit (the cave visit with Harry being just a tutorial exercise)

What struck me this morning is that it is conceivable that the memories or conscience that DD experiences in that potion belong to Snape's father, Tobias. He has a "them" (Severus and Eileen) against whom he knew he "did wrong", and could conceivably been made to sacrifice himself in the end for the family he abused. Sacrifice to whom? LV or the DE.

Snape could be in this game to avenge his father's death or torture, or to show LV something else in regard to his father.

So maybe Snape poured his father's memories (or his memory of his father's last words) into the potion.

In the graveyard, LV talks about how the story will be that Harry Potter in the end begged for death and "I, being a merciful lord, obliged". Is this a reference to a prior begging for death? None of the other victims that we know about of LV have begged for their lives. Maybe Snape's dad did.

pumpkinjuice: how do you suspect Tobias died?

Dumbledore said Voldemort would look at the blood payment at cave's arch to be weakening to anyone entering it. You'd have to cut yourself, thus weakening yourself. The potion actually caused a full loss of mental control when consumed. First, physical weakening, second, mental weakening. Thirdly, the poison began to weaken Dumbledore's body over time. He was nearly on the floor by the time Snape actually killed him. Dumbledore did seem to believe the poison would eventually kill him, if left untreated, I believe he had faith in Snape that he could counteract the effects.

So, the protections on the locket were pretty good afterall, even though they could be penetrated.

Isn't it possible that Dumbledore's Ramblings were his worst fears?

A thought occurred to me last night:

When DD goes to meet Tom Riddle at the orphanage, Mrs Cole says that Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never the same after going to the cave with Tom. And Tom denies having done anything to them, and tells DD he can ask them himself.

We have been assuming that Tom did something awful to Amy and Dennis in the cave. But is that necessarily the case?

Is it possible that either:
1. Amy and Dennis did something to LV in the cave?
2. Someone ELSE did something to ALL of them in the cave, and these are young Tom Riddle's memories of watching the other two tortured and a few other things?

As to #1, on another website I've seen it speculated that Amy Benson was Amelia Bones, and that her murder was done by LV because of this. Interesting. Not necessary to the theory, but would be interesting. Same initials, eh? AB

As to #2, we know Grindlewald was still afoot, likely achieving peak power. This cave visit could have been something that taught Tom a bit about dark motives and about controlling people.

This would be an interesting twist on the words I quoted in my last post, about LV calling himself a merciful lord in obliging death to someone who begs for it. Interesting that the potion does make its drinker beg for death. Why would someone who fears/hates death concoct a potion that makes its drinker beg for death? Interesting....

As to Tobias: I don't know how he died, and don't have any theory. I am currently sort of struck by a possible parallel between Riddle/Merope and Tobias/Eileen. That would point to Snape killing Tobias, to complete the parallel, but that's wild guessing.

Well, if Mrs. Pince is actually Eileen in hiding, either Tobias is also in hiding or dead, I'd speculate.

Snape's mom was a witch and his dad was a muggle. We see that Snape lived in an abusive household at the hand of his apparent overbearing father. Obviously, we (and Harry) needed this perspective on Snape's life for some reason. Is it to gleen insight on why Snape is a nasty git? Is it to show that magical people can be oppressed by muggles? That being able to defend one's self by magic isn't always the road taken? What the heck is the message there?!

Snape knew dark magic when he came to school. Did he learn it from Eileen? Of course, he could have learned it on his own as a kid, but the amount of dark magic he knew upon arrival at Hogwarts, as per Sirius and Lupin, appears quite extensive for a kid. Thus, I would conclude he had assistance in getting that deep into dark magic.

Is it possible that he knows so much, because Eileen was somehow woven into Tom Riddle's life when they were both at Hogwarts together? Did Eileen learn from the flourishingly evil Tom and then marry Tobias when Tom didn't want her? Could we have some kind of lover's scorn with Eileen and Tom and Snape is the outcome of a hasty marriage after she was dumped?

HUGE speculation on my part. Wild conclusions and I'll own them, but could it be related?

Do we know that Eileen was there the same time as Riddle, or are you speculating? It could work, I was just wondering if there is confirmation of that.

It's an interesting possibility, that Snape knows Dark Arts because of the entanglement of his mother's life with Riddles. While other wizards knew Dark Arts (Blacks, e.g.), the connection of Snape/LV is real at least in Snape's adulthood, so it's interesting to speculate that it is real in Snape's mother's life too.

The other option is that young Snape learned from LV himself. Could Snape have fallen in with LV as a kid, somehow--like Tom had fallen in with whoever it was (Grindelwald?) who taught HIM dark arts stuff while he was at Hogwarts? Was Snape's anxiety over the DADA exam an attempt to impress his master?

I just relistened to the scene about Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop and the cave--Tom INSISTS that he didnt do anything to them and that DD can ask them himself. And he is agitated about it. I'm thinking that if he was lying, he'd be cooler and more manipulative. Which makes me think that indeed they did something to him in the cave, something humiliating.

That is an interesting perspective: I took the scene in the cave with the kids to show that Tom managed a good memory charm, when he didn't even know what it was! He was confident the kids would not contradict his story, because he altered their memory way before he went to Hogwarts...when he didn't know he was a wizard. Yet, your perspective is far more sinister...and certainly plausible.

No, I have not checked the dates for Eileen and Tom going to school together...I figured they did when Lupin told Harry to check the date of the APB and Harry found it to be fifty years old. Isn't that when Tom was at Hogwarts?

It sort of would fit to find there were two parallel love issues in play here: Eileen in love with Tom and he doesn't reciprocate - or she learns he is incapable and he turns her away; Snape in love with Lily and his anger when he calls her a mudblood turns her away, then she falls for and marries James, the hated enemy.

Regrettably, we are no closer to Dumbledore's Ramblings though. Maybe there is no significance at all? Yet, so many lines of text, they have to mean something.

Yeah, I think that does make sense....I didnt have a head for dates yesterday, lol. This strikes me as potentially huge. Eileen Prince goes to school with Voldemort. Snape has to have grown up saturated in the early mythology of Voldemort, for better or worse, whether his mother had in the end a positive or negative view of him. We can assume Eileen was a Slytherin, probably. So she would have known the whole crowd of the guys who visited Slughorn that night. Hmm.
Also that means Snape's mother went to school with Magonagall. I'll be disappointed if MM's school days come to no relevance in these stories.


Well, the point of my comment about the cave and Tom/Amy/Dennis was to suggest that the ramblings were in fact the words of Tom Riddle, rather than his victims. We still wouldnt know exactly what they reference, but the words indicating a moment of revenge taken on Tom by the other children would be interesting. Maybe I am taking pity on him, wanting to find incidents in his past that help explain what he is. But so what? Evil without an explanation has little to teach us. Evil with SOME explanation might be instructive about what turns humans bad.