Oh HBP, I miss you.

[valis2]

I gave my copy of HBP to my mom in late July of last year.

I have not seen it since.

Number of readings: 1.
Date of said reading: July 16th, 2005.

Can someone help me with three questions, because I can't remember stuff:

1) How old is Tom Riddle when Dumbledore first visits him in the orphanage? If it's while he's an infant, how old is Tom when Ddore visits him next?

2) The cave incident...do they say how old he is when this occurs? And are the two children killed, or just scared? Any particulars?

3) He has "souvenirs", I think, or things he's stolen. What are they?

This will be big help. Thank you in advance. Yes, it's for bad poetry.

ETA: A GIANT THANK YOU to cantabile!! You are awesome.

She must really want to read bad poetry!

Comments

[cantabile.livejournal.com]

Answer to question 3 first: Riddle took off the lid and tipped the contents onto his bed without looking at them. Harry, who had expected something much more exciting, saw a mess of small, everyday objects: a yo-yo, a silver thimble, and a tarnished mouth organ among them. Once free of the box, they stopped quivering and lay quite still upon the thin blankets.

Back with the others in a minute or two!

[cantabile.livejournal.com]

1 now. Dumbledore appears to have met Tom for the first time jsut a short while before he leaves for Hogwarts, so when he was well over 11. It's interesting that Tom didn't get a letter. I suppose that tells us they are not automatically generated by some weird magical "computer"! There must have been a conscious decision not to send him one. At the meeting Dumbledore gives him some money, his list of necessities to be bought in Diagon Alley (and offers to accompany him there to help, bu tis refused) and a train ticket for the Hogwarts Express.

[cantabile.livejournal.com]

The cave now - another interesting one!

I'll copy a few bits for this one, I think:

Mrs Cole when talking to Dumbles at the orphange prior to Dumbles talking to Tom: "But I'm jiggered if I know how he got up there to do it. All I know is he and Billy had argued the day before. And then" — Mrs. Cole took another swig of gin, slopping a little over her chin this time — "on the summer outing — we take them out, you know, once a year, to the countryside or to the seaside — well, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never quite right afterwards, and all we ever got out of them was that they'd gone into a cave with Tom Riddle. He swore they'd just gone exploring, but something happened in there, I'm sure of it. And, well, there have been a lot of things, funny things. . . ."

Dumbles telling Harry about the cave where the "horcrux" was: 'I am not sure which it is - though I think we can rule out the snake - but I believe it to be hidden in a cave on the coast many miles from here, a cave I have been trying to locate for a very long time: the cave in which Tom Riddle once terrorised two children from his orphanage on their annual trip; you remember?'

I thought there was another section, where Dumbles and HArry are in the cave and HArry exclaims that they took the children to such a place as their annual outing. If it's helpful for you to have that, I will look further for it.

Hope this all helps!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Thank you so incredibly much!!! This helps, tremendously.

[cantabile.livejournal.com]

Haha! I shall look forward to the "bad" poetry tremendously now.

It so happens I've been listening to HBP in the car for the last two weeks as I needed some detail regarding how much Minerva knew about Tom from times gone past for my eternally long young!Minerva fic that has been rumbling on for far too long. I listened to the orphanage bit while stuck in traffic on Friday, so knew just where to find it.

Happy poetry writing.

Oh, and you're very welcome!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

That's awesome! I love LJ.

Bad poetry should be completed today, I think. Most of it is already in my head, I think. *rummages around*

[cantabile.livejournal.com]

Found it! And here it is in all its wholesome glory:

Harry could smell salt and hear rushing waves; a light, chilly breeze ruffled his hair as he looked out at moonlit sea and star-strewn sky. He was standing upon a high outcrop of dark rock, water foaming and churning below him. He glanced over his shoulder. A towering cliff stood behind them, a sheer drop, black and faceless. A few large chunks of rock, such as the one upon which Harry and Dumbledore were standing, looked as though they had broken away from the cliff face at some point in the past. It was a bleak, harsh view, the sea and the rock unrelieved by any tree or sweep of grass or sand.

"What do you think?" asked Dumbledore. He might have been asking Harry's opinion on whether it was a good site for a picnic.

"They brought the kids from the orphanage here?" asked Harry, who could not imagine a less cozy spot for a day trip.

"Not here, precisely," said Dumbledore. "There is a village of sorts about halfway along the cliffs behind us. I believe the orphans were taken there for a little sea air and a view of the waves. No, I think it was only ever Tom Riddle and his youthful victims who visited this spot. No Muggle could reach this rock unless they were uncommonly good mountaineers, and boats cannot approach the cliffs, the waters around them are too dangerous. I imagine that Riddle climbed down; magic would have served better than ropes. And he brought two small children with him, probably for the pleasure of terrorizing them. I think the journey alone would have done it, don't you?"