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by Elliotte Rusty Harold.
Original Post: What does Quirrellmort Want?
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In particular, I’m pretty sure Voldemort did not cast Avada Kedavra on Harry as a baby. More likely, he deliberately made Harry a Horcrux. Count the Horcruxes: there are six, one for each of the four elements that Harry enumerates, the Pioneer Plaque, and Harry makes six matching the number of deliberate Horcruxes in canon. This probably has something to do with the changed prophecy though I can’t figure out quite what. Also possible: since causality can run backwards in time in this universe, a major point which is emphasized several times, perhaps Voldemort Horcruxing Harry caused the prophecy to change as it did?
Harry has probably forgotten (been obliviated?) of the details of his Horcruxing. Also, although Quirrell is Voldemort, it’s possible that Quirrell/Voldemort is not Tom Riddle. Dumbledore and others in the Order of the Phoenix certainly seem to think that Voldemort is Riddle, but this version of Voldemort is smart enough to have set that up as a deliberate misdirection to protect himself. Remember in both canon and HPMor, “Voldemort” is different enough looking that he really could be anyone. And there’s always polyjuice.
And if this is so, what does Quirrell/Voldemort want? (Motivation is always the problem with cartoon supervillains: exactly why do they want to take over the world in the first place?) Best guess: Voldemort wants to protect the world from Muggle stupidity (nuclear weapons, etc.) and thinks the best way to do that is by taking over as a “benevolent” (in his mind) dictator.
And that opens up another possibility that explains a lot of things. Quirrell/Voldemort may not actually care whether he is personally that dictator as long as his ends are achieved. He may well be grooming Harry for that position. He certainly says as much, more than once. In fact, the more I think about this, the more this seems like the simplest hypothesis. This clearly explains why Quirrell/Voldemort spends so much effort making Harry a stronger wizard and general (which makes no sense if he intends to defeat Harry at a later date.) And it allows us to take almost everything he says at face value as his true beliefs, rather than inventing elaborate hypotheses to explain why he says and does what he does. Certainly Quirrell may lie, especially about matters of fact, but it’s a lot easier to argue convincingly for one’s true beliefs.
And now to take a rationalist step. To strengthen this hypothesis I need to look not for more evidence that confirms it; but evidence that denies it. In brief here’s the hypothesis:
Quirrell wants a wizard dictator, not necessarily himself, to take over the world.
Quirrell thinks he can make Harry that dictator.
There are other details (Quirrell is not Tom Riddle; Voldemort did not Avada Kedavra baby Harry) I could be wrong about without affecting this main point. And perhaps I’m jumping too far ahead in asserting that Quirrellmort is just as happy with a properly trained Harry as dictator as himself. Maybe he just wants Harry to be Vader to his Palpatine. Either way the basic thrust of the story is the same, and the ultimate conflict will come down to Quirrell’s magical fascism versus Harry’s expressed preference for democracy and human rights.
So, is there any evidence in the text that falsifies this hypothesis?
There is one gaping hole in my hypothesis, not so much evidence against it as something it can’t explain. If I’m right that Voldemort did not Avada Kedavra baby Harry, and instead did something else deliberate, then why did he abandon the first Wizarding War at that point? He seemed to be winning. Why didn’t he just finish taking over magical Britain? I can guess that maybe he wasn’t happy with how the plan was going, or maybe he never intended to take over as Voldemort, but rather as the young man who “took up his family’s seat in the Wizengamot, becoming among the most steadfast voices against You-Know-Who”. But this is all a stretch. There is not a lot of textual evidence for it that I can find.
I would really like to tie this all into Lily giving Petunia the potion of eagle’s splendour. In fact, you could tie it in either direction. The potion causes Voldemort to act differently from canon, or Voldemort being different causes Lily to give Petunia the potion. Alternatively, some fact yet to be revealed both causes Voldemort to act differently and causes Lily to help Petunia. However that may be asking too much. Yudkowsky has been explicit that he is not necessarily following the one single difference rule: “This is not a strict single-point-of-departure fic – there exists a primary point of departure, at some point in the past, but also other alterations.”
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