Dumbledore couldn't get people to oppose him properly even after he 'died' when he was a monster. I question how effective he would be if Tom wasn't as extreme.

 

Dumbledore is not nearly as politically powerful as people seem to think. It took nearly no effort for Fudge to completely neutralize him as a political entity. He mostly skates by on the respect he earned as basically Britain's Best Wizard and his personal skill at magic (which is great enough to let him basically do whatever he wants and you can't stop him because he's just plain better than you at using both magic and his brain.).

Dumbledore doesn't trust himself to wield the power that people want to give him. He's willing to step up if lives are on the line, and can be shockingly ruthless in pursuit of his goals, but he hates himself for that ruthlessness and that only furthers his self-doubt. So he avoids real power and sticks to apparently impartial or ceremonial positions that let him keep up with things without actually being responsible for anything except the school.

I really don't think Dumbledore would be much a problem for Riddle if he'd gone the politician route instead of the psychotic lich route. If he'd been subtle (like, say, the opposite of Lucius Malfoy), he could have accomplished a lot without much opposition.

 

In another forum I'm in, just this morning, there was actually a discussion on how if an Evil Overlord followed an Evil Overlord List, he would be more of a Benevolent Dictator than an Evil Overlord.

And in Voldemort's case, I don't think he was really interested in political power. He was more interested in Magic Power and Immortality. And even if that stuff didn't make him insane, he was certainly having serious issues before that.

 

The Dumbledore at the time was fresh from defeating Grindelwald and was greatly respected. They can't deny his opposition by calling him senile and past his glory days as they did during OotP not to mention that his Death Eaters would still be young and won't have the connections they did in Harry's time. The major reason why they didn't believe Dumbledore was because they were too afraid of Voldemort to face reality but Tom can't inspire such fear. The fact that Dumbledore doesn't have a lot of political power was shown in canon but he has more than enough to cause Riddle problems if he wants.

 

Not exactly this, but very close concept: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4321429/1/Yes-Minister (Oneshot)

 

Voldemort thought he was special and unique and that everyone should obey him because how great he was. In the orphanage he thought he was superior because he had magic. When Albus came to see him and told him about magic, Tom asked him about speaking with snakes to confirm just how special he was (Now that I think about it, Tom might have started to hate Dumbledore because he told him there was a school full of people like him). So Tom wouldn't want to be minister because he doesn't want to rule but to be obeyed. At most it would be only step one of his plan to make people worship him as some kind of god or absolute ruler.

 

Well JKR did state that if he looked in the Mirror of Erised, Voldemort would see himself as 'all-powerful and eternal', which basically means that he'd see himself as a god.

 

Not a question but . . .

The Almost Recommendable library has "Broken" with a broken link. However, I came across the story today. Here's a link for it, if anyone wants to update it.

http://www.notquiteroyal.net/achiasa/broken.html

 

How far do you think Oliver Wood could have made it in Professional Quidditch?

 

I think that all we know from canon is that Wood made it to Puddlemere United's reserve team.

 

We also know from Canon that Hogwarts is the only school of Magic in Britain and that there are at least 7 teams named in the books and 14 in Quiddich through out the Ages, so by that logic, every single person who plays for a house team is almost guaranteed a spot in a team.

 

Not necessarily. For example, the NHL is primarily a United States based league today. However, in the last 20 years, only fifteen to twenty percent of the players are from the US. Most are from Canada, though they have very few people population wise by comparison. Also, there are at least eight other nationalities with a significant number of players in the NHL.

This, also, is despite a number of professional hockey leagues in Europe. So, by extension, if there are 7 teams in the British league, and each team has enough players for two complete sides, that's 14 per team, and 98 total professional spots open. But most of those are already taken by the previous year's team. Let's say however, that a full ten percent of the players retire, quit, or are injured every year. That still leaves only ten spots open a year, to be filled by: (1) players that have graduated the previous year, (2) players that were cut the previous year, (3) players who were injured and are attempting a comeback, and (4) players from all over the world wanting to make it into the professional leagues and think they might be able to do it in England.

While there's professional leagues in some of the other countries, it is also true that just like baseball or hockey or basketball, players of all nationalities go to all different places to play the sport, so the last point is viable here as well. And moreover, since you can't determine the quality of professional Quidditch in Britain by the placement of the English team, because quality players would go back to play for the home country, it really can't be argued that no one would want to come to Britain to play Quidditch.

My guess then, is that it's pretty hard to make a Professional Quidditch team.

 

Hockey does not strike me as a very good example. While the USA has far more people than Canada, only recently have the number of hockey fans been similar, and oddly enough over the last decade the percentage of players from the US has steadily and nearly monotonically increased (from 14% to 23%).

MLB is probably a better comparison, as it's actually a sport that people in the US and other countries give a fuck about, is actually played in schools, and is clearly the premier league in the world (and so is able to attract the top foreign players). MLB has a touch under 30% foreign players at the moment. There's certainly nothing in the books that suggests that there's a significant number of foreign players playing on the British Quidditch teams (at the minimum, you'd expect some of the players mentioned to have non-British names).

10% annual turnover is significantly lower than RL professional sports see. For Baseball it's more like 15% (or over 20% if you count people getting injured who later return), and that's for a relatively low-injury sport (which may be a reasonable comparison assuming the violentness of Quidditch is offset by superior healing).

Of course, even there were 14 teams, every Quidditch player was from Hogwarts and no professional career lasted over a year, it would still be hard to get onto a professional Quidditch team because that's just how numbers work for JKR.

 

In real life we can't mend broken bones overnight, fall from great heights without injury or fly. Never once does anyone mention hurting their ligaments or tendons in the book and no one is ever out due to injury on the house teams. I'd suspect in real life part of the turnover rate is connected to injuries.

 

In the magical world this equates to limbs being irreparably severed/mulched or "Was subjected to a lingering curse during the off-season."

The Chudley Cannons would do so much better if their fans would attack the rival teams' players like the others do to them. Of course, they'd need more fans, or some really competent and vicious ones.

"Ron! How could you betray me to the Dark Lord?"

"He's gonna back the Cannons..."

 

Bellatrix Lestrange curses Voldemort in the back. As his organs liquify and as he feels his spirit reassuming a wraith-like form, he demands to know why.

"Potter's bought the Cannons -- he's threatened to disband the team if I didn't. Sorry, Master."

 

It was said that Killing Curse can't be blocked by magical barriers, but what about the Silver shield conjured by Voldemort during his battle with Dumbledore? Or something like water shield? Can AK break them?

 

I think the Silver shield was literal Silver. I'm assuming elements conjured by magic are ignored by the AK.

 

Yes, it was literally silver but it was conjured... So will AK kill the user if the shield was made of conjured metal?