I feel like “non-wizard” is a really clumsy way to lump a Basilisk and a Muggle into one category, but it was all I could come up with.
Well, now I have to reread Quirrell’s description of the monastery incident and see if it makes sense as an allegory for the Chamber of Secrets. I’ll vote you up or down when I get back.
Okay, apparently it was too obscure. To clarify, my interpretation is that Tom Riddle went to that monastery, learned martial arts and how to (pretend to) lose, and once he was done, put on the glowing-red-eyes schtick and killed everybody (except his one friend) to prevent anyone else from learning what he had. He wasn’t foolish to want that story spread by the one survivor—he wanted to be underestimated, to make people think he was murderously impatient when he was coldly calculating.
Rule Twelve is more general than just “kill Slytherin’s Monster,” it applies to all sources of power.
(The account is about halfway through Chapter 19, btw.)
Well, now I have to reread Quirrell’s description of the monastery incident and see if it makes sense as an allegory for the Chamber of Secrets. I’ll vote you up or down when I get back.
Okay, apparently it was too obscure. To clarify, my interpretation is that Tom Riddle went to that monastery, learned martial arts and how to (pretend to) lose, and once he was done, put on the glowing-red-eyes schtick and killed everybody (except his one friend) to prevent anyone else from learning what he had. He wasn’t foolish to want that story spread by the one survivor—he wanted to be underestimated, to make people think he was murderously impatient when he was coldly calculating.
Rule Twelve is more general than just “kill Slytherin’s Monster,” it applies to all sources of power.
(The account is about halfway through Chapter 19, btw.)
OK, you were simultaneously describing, with the same text in that one paragraph, two different episodes in Tom Riddle’s life. Now I get it!
Well, that was the idea, anyway.
It was a good idea! I just didn’t get it.