Harry had a horrible upbringing, too, but did he torture other kids for fun? No, he just learned how to run really fast and avoid being punched.

However, if you look at Tom Riddle - who was well cared for, if not given as much love and attention as a child should have since there were so many of them at the orphanage - what do we see? We see a kid who collects harmonicas and other odds and ends from his victims when he is ELEVEN. At eleven years old, Harry was looking forward to not having to go to the same school as his cousin. Tom was a clever, sneaky liar who assumed Dumbledore was a doctor sent by Mrs. Cole to look at him, possibly take him away to a madhouse, and then promptly told Dumbledore that Mrs. Cole was the mad one who didn't like him and that he never touched any of the other kids or anyone's pets, and that she'd made it all up. He was a manipulative, clever, and downright disturbed child.

Possibly - but what kind of child enjoys hurting other kids like that?

It was Tom that was the problem, not the house he was in.

I agree, given the right circumstances, he might have turned out all right, but from the moment he was born he was doomed. As a child, he actively hurt the other children at the orphanage, to the point where two of them were never quite the same afterwards and everyone else was afraid of him. He kept trophies, too - at age eleven!

But he still could have been saved at Hogwarts - if the wizarding community had realized his home life was poor, and had a system in place for orphaned or unwanted magical children, and he'd been taken in by a family like the Weasleys. He could have been taught proper right and wrong, and perhaps he could have been saved.

Tom hunted for his father everywhere in that school for years, assuming that he was the magical one because he believed that had his mother been magical, she could have saved herself. He only looked for Marvolo once he'd been unable to find any Tom Riddle in any records, finding Marvolo Gaunt and his son Morfin. When he was fifteen, he went to see if Morfin was worth knowing, found a filthy, hairy wreck, and was told he looked like a Muggle down in the village that his mother had once run off with. At fifteen/sixteen, he killed his father and paternal grandparents, framed his uncle, and took his uncle's family ring as a trophy. He assumed, and was never told otherwise, that his father had only left his mother because he found out she was a witch - he did not know about the love potion.

He was obsessed with power at age eleven. That stayed throughout his life. He assumed, at age eleven, that dying made his mother weak and non-magical. He kept trophies of his victims, at age eleven. No matter where he was placed, he would likely have turned out evil, because he would have had classes with the Slytherins and been exposed to their ideologies.

Although, yes, he may have become a candy maker.

Well, he did enjoy torturing the other kids at the orphanage, didn't he? "I can make them hurt, if I want to." He got another boy's rabbit to hang itself from the rafters, and a couple of younger kids were so traumatized by him that they were, according to the orphanage head Mrs. Cole, "never quite the same after."

Perfect! His inability to feel love - caused by his father being under the influence of a love potion when he was conceived - can be managed if he was given proper care and therapy and taught how to deal with it!

Tom Riddle Sr. was under the effects of a love potion when Tom Marvolo Riddle was conceived. It is canon knowledge that when one parent is under the influence of a love potion at the time a child is conceived, that child will be unable to feel love of any kind. Tom Marvolo Riddle was born without any ability to love, or feel compassion for, any living thing.

The point is to write within the confines of the prompt, not substitute parts of it.

The point was, what would an author do if they're stuck reading their own book in a class, with the teacher reading way too much into it?

Child gET THAT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH! DROP THE GOBLIN! DROP IT NIGEL! My stars, you really are a strange boy. No please don't - and he ate it. Disgusting. You weird werecat you.

DeeDee. DeeDee no. I said NO! Well, there she goes, no stopping that fight.

Oops, now Li is involved - BOY IF YOU HELP HER IMMA MAKE YOUR LAST DEATH SEEM AS EASY AS A FLU SHOT NEXT TO WHAT'S COMING!

Well, nothing to do now except let you finish that fight. See, this is why I left you guys do deal with things on your own. You never listen to me. Absolutely pathetic.

Good luck, my babies. I'll check in on you soon. Let me know if one of you dies.