You're thinking of the movie.

 

Not at all, though perhaps my point was poorly explained. What I was trying to say is that I don't see the logic in saying that Voldemort is going to play the showman and conduct a faux duel with Harry to "save face" with his Death Eaters and then say that he is going to play the whole thing as Harry just vanishing.

If Voldemort cares enough to save face with his "peons" then he would care doubly so when it came to the rest of the wizarding world and would dump the body right in front of Dumbledore and everyone at the Triwizard tournament as proof of his superiority.

 

My interpretation of the whole Triwizard Tournament thing was that it was basically for shits and giggles: Voldemort knew he could just grab Harry and run, but that'd be boring. Beneath him. So he comes up with a convoluted plan that he knows he can pull off because he's fucking Voldemort. He's that good.

And you know what? He does pull it off, and it would have worked perfectly if it weren't for Priori Incantatum (something he couldn't have known about) and the reverse Portkey back to Hogwarts.

So he was pretty much having some fun and testing himself at the same time. It's an interesting interpretation, I think, that turns Voldemort from looking incompetent (for not doing it an easier way) into arrogance and possibly brilliance for actually pulling it off.

 

And, still, incompetence for not using the much simpler and more foolproof plan of "stick the body in a bag and run". You don't get to be a successful villain by giving your enemies so many chances to ruin your plans.

 

Canon seems to say otherwise.

It doesn't matter whether his methods should work or not. We know they do - the entire community, apart from the only man Voldemort ever feared, is afraid to use his name.

Ten years after his death.

 

The way I see it, it's not so much saving face as it is healing his incredibly huge and badly injured pride.

 

An awesome!Voldemort is something everyone wants, but that is not something canon gives us. I have a hard time believing canon!Voldemort would risk his rebirth just to be a showman.

A one-on-one with Harry could have been arranged at any other time of the year. The whole triwizard deal was a huge plot-hole no matter what excuse you try and come up with.

Also, Harry's blood was the most important ingredient of the ritual. Blood of the enemy. Harry is the enemy here. If I recall correctly Voldemort says, "The boy is everything." or some such thing.

 

That just means that the other side is even more incompetent.

 

If I remember correctly, Voldemort explicitly said that the blood of pretty much any of his many enemies would work, but he wanted Harry's because of some sort of sense of irony.

I don't think that's a plot hole - that term gets thrown around so often it has lost all its meaning. It's just a person acting in a rather unwise manner due to his character flaws. Voldemort had his pride pretty injured before and wanted to rebuild it. He stated he found some sense of irony in facing Harry one-on-one and mentioned(if I recall correctly) that he thought Dumbledore would make that too hard outside of the tournament.

Was his fear of Dumbledore irrational? Was his desire to risk everything--while simultaneously believing he could not fail--to get a symbolic sort of revenge against Harry? Yeah, probably. Pretty irrational if you ask me. But the thing is - people are often pretty irrational. It's not a plot hole if people aren't acting like robots. Voldemort's character has been built on this twisted view of reality he has, and his fear of Dumbledore has been explained pretty well in canon in that it makes sense for someone to be illogical in that specific manner.

That's one of my biggest pet peeves about canon complaints(not directed at you, by the way, just in general). Sometimes people act like unless people act 100% logically then they are written badly, even though that's really, really not how people usually behave. It's almost like people complaining about that kind of thing want something like Meth--TIMEOUT. That's like the Godwin's law of fanfiction discussion.

Also, sorry if this post comes off confrontational because that's really not my intention.

 

Voldemort's horcruxes robbed him of sanity or is this just fanon?

Or maybe he wanted to send back Harry's body when entire Europe is watching the final task closely. There are many reason why Voldemort waited till the end.

 

In case you are asking me, I'm speaking of neither. I'm not saying he was Joker-insane, just that he had his twisted view of reality he created where the only person that mattered was himself, because he couldn't bring himself to love/empathize with anyone. Because of this, he basically only cared about himself, his plans, and the things that were a threat to him(Dumbledore, Death, etc).

That's pretty much what the books say his mindset was. I don't think you need to be magically driven insane to go off the deep end. It's not a particularly insane interpretation of what the book tells us about him. Plus, spending 10 years as a deformed spirit type thing with no human contact is going to be bad for anyone's mental health.

Let me sum up my argument:

-Voldemort's actions weren't the most practical. In fact, they were kind of dumb.

-However, they made perfect sense for his character and the story because humans aren't always perfectly logical. They make their decisions based on their flaws just as much as they do on their qualities. It was very-well in character for him to do what he did and his motivations make sense for the kind of person he was.

 

That's make a great launch point for a FF, but it doesn't fit the slow build up of Voldemort being quiet and subtly gaining followers and strength.

And that brings up another point: if Voldemort's idea was to build quietly, then what would he have done with Harry's body? Maybe he sends it back to cause confusion and spread dissent, but I'd think that'd still be too big of a risk.

The other option there, is that hiding and slowly building up power over time was a secondary choice when Harry wasn't killed. Possible? Maybe, but then his planning is a joke if the number of Death Eaters at his side during his re-birth was the extent of his forces.

The more I'm thinking about this issue, the more I'm starting to agree that it's a big plothole.

 

I am pretty sure his idea was to announce his return, with the dead body of the boy-who-lived. But Harry survived, that scared Voldemort. And when the minister refused to acknowledge his existence he decided to wait and hear the prophecy completely before doing anything. If Harry died at the graveyard Voldemort had no reason to hide.

Got anything to back up that bold part?

No, you don't. Because it's wrong.

Voldemort needed Harry's blood to void Lily's protection.

"Now I can touch you."

I understand the difference between mistakes by author and those by characters. This is one of the former. Like I said before, the one-on-one was possible at any time before the tournament. Moody suggested Hagrid to show Harry the dragons. He could have nabbed Harry on his way back from the forest and took him to the graveyard. How exactly could Dumbledore have stopped this? Hell, he could have stunned Harry inside the castle, transfigured him into something small and then off to the graveyard.

Mistakes by characters are like Voldemort/Wormtail not destroying/deactivating the portkey when Harry arrived at the graveyard.

Irrational I can stomach. Dumbass I can't, which is what Voldemort is being here. Also, I don't know what his fear of Dumbledore has to do in this discussion. Did he stop fearing Dumbledore at the time of the third task?

People do that. Maybe I have done that sometimes too. But this is not one of those times.

 

No, it does change your voice in the books, see that quote up there about how Harry and Ron got Crabbe/Goyle's voices. It was the films that didn't change their voices.

 

No. It changes your voice according to CoS book, but not according to the CoS movie. As is shown from the quote I posted before.

ninjas, ninjas everywhere

 

Okay. Like I said, "If I remember correctly." I think Voldemort's smug speech just melted together in my mind.

Back up there - that's what I meant. Dumbledore couldn't have stopped him. The impression I always got from canon is that Dumbledore, by his own(admittedly dubious) admission didn't have the power to stop him. Maybe he was kidding, but that doesn't matter. The fact is that Voldemort was afraid that he could. The fact that he couldn't doesn't really factor in it.

What I'm saying is that Voldemort has been said to have been afraid of Dumbledore, and he thought that any time where Dumbledore could conceivably be there would be dangerous. His fear was irrational, but since Dumbledore represented his moral opposite, it was probably justified in-character.

Let me explain a bit here, because I think I didn't nearly mention enough examples here:

From that quote, it's clear that Voldemort thinks that Dumbledore is keeping watch on Harry day and night. You mentioned Moody being able to kidnap Harry at any time before - you are right, he could have. But from that above quote, Voldemort didn't think that. He was paranoid that the old headmaster somehow knew everywhere Harry went. It's not that it didn't occur to him to kidnap Harry earlier, just that he was goddamn paranoid that Dumbledore was somehow omniscient(up until he dueled him in Order of Phoenix and apparently got over his fear).

But if Harry went into the tournament, well, he couldn't stop him then, could he?

Now, how dumb that was? Very. Was that justified? Well, personally, I think so. Dumbledore was always the one guy that never trusted him in school, and the one who kept an eye on him after the Chamber of Secrets. He was--as far as we know--the only one that ever suspected Tom Riddle of being objectively evil while in Hogwarts and this rather pissed Voldemort off. His reputation of being an incredible wizard just made him even more uneasy.

Then Voldemort stayed ten years without human contact and nearly died again with the Quirrel thing, before staying alone for two more years. That's really a lot of things to destroy somebody's sanity. Someone who went through all of that because of "love" is bound to be a bit paranoid about his old nemesis(Dumbledore) since he's the personification of love.

He's being paranoid and at the same time he's going through a lot of risk because of his assumption that his plan cannot fail. That's costing him a lot, but I don't think it's unreasonable for him to act like that, considering the above.

Considering I specifically mentioned I wasn't directing that at you, don't expect me to disagree. This is at best a borderline case, so it's worth raising the question at least.

 

Dumbledore, the personification of love? Now that sounds like a good starting point for a fic.

 

Already been written. It's called The Office.

 

So, it is your assertion that the only reason Voldemort did not make his resurrection known to the world at large is because he didn't kill Harry, rather than because he'd planned to stay hidden right from the start, so he could rebuild his group without the Ministry breathing down his neck?

I'm just going to have to disagree. :|

The way I see it, Voldemort's plan was needlessly complicated and filled with opportunities for complete failure for the sole reason that JKR needed GoF to fit in with the pattern all the other books had established already: School year filled with frustrating minor foes, dangerous tasks, and circuitous plans, with Voldemort or his proxy showing up just before summer to try and off Harry.

And, he didn't reveal himself to the world because he needed time to rebuild his organization, not because he didn't beat Harry; he's a terrorist, not a fucking professional wrestler.

If his decision to keep to the shadows were last minute, I'd say it was because so few supporters showed up for his very merry unbirthday and he knew he'd need to regroup, not because Harry didn't cark it on schedule, like a good little boy.

In my mind, these are the simplest answers, and everything else is somewhere between fanon and epileptic trees for the tinfoil chapeau set.