I feel as though I have a pretty unique view of this topic. I'm an adoptee and about 13 years ago i met my birthmother. We've since become quite close, and I actually live with her right now. I used to really believe that nuture was everything. After all, it was all I'd experienced.

And certainly in a lot of ways I am a product of my environment. All the learned behaviors and conditioned responses that mark much of my personality are the direct results of how I was raised and the environment I was raised in. However, I was always a stranger in a strange land, a part of the landscape, but not of the landscape.

Having met my birthmother, I now see why. We not only look alike, but we share so many of the same personality traits, gestures, views of and ways of dealing with the world that it's almost uncanny sometimes.

So, I'd have to say that I think nature is like the frame of a house, and that nuture is what gives the house a particular look. Nature edges out nurture, but I don't think by a huge margin.

In the case of Harry and Tom, I'd say that they were very similar at their core, but that their experiences and how they were equipped to deal with their experiences were what put them on opposite sites of the good/evil binary.

Staci//Ravenclaw