Voldy's mum

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 37386

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Dave Hardenbrook <DaveH47 at m...> 
wrote:
him!")  And was she a Slytherin?  (I say, "Not necessarily.")
> And why was Tom raised in a Muggle orphanage?  Is it at all 
possible that Mrs. R was "living as a Muggle" (perhaps to evade 
Grindelwald) much as we're now being told James and Lily 
were?

It's possible that Mrs. R was disinherited by her wizarding 
relatives. More likely she ran away and the Ministry lost track of 
her. Elopement, in fact, is mentioned as a possible reason that 
the Ministry can't find Bertha Jorkins. Perhaps she was not a 
British witch but a foreign one, whom Tom Sr. encountered on 
the Grand Tour. In that case, the Ministry might not know about 
her at all. 

She can't have had much family, or Tom would not be the only 
remaining descendant. It would seem that she had been living 
as a Muggle, or her husband would have found out sooner that 
she was a witch.

> 
> And will we ever get any clues as to how Tom got so evil so 
fast?

It's been theorized that Diary!Tom was a projection of its author's 
ideal self, and so was more powerful and more wicked than the 
original. However....

Tom experienced at least two drastic dislocations in his life: 
losing his mother and finding out that he was a wizard. There 
may have been others. Infants who were placed in orphanages 
in those days were given to foster mothers with whom they 
remained for several years, perhaps until age five or six. Then 
they were taken back to the orphanage. The foster mothers were 
allowed to visit sometimes but many did not. Many orphans have 
reported how traumatic this separation was. Tom would have 
experienced another dislocation on leaving Hogwarts (he seems 
to have reacted to this one by murdering his father and 
grandparents.)

Life in the orphanages was very regimented. Boys were 
generally prepared for a life in the military. Tom would have 
gotten an early grounding in the philosophy of Empire, along with 
being trained to march and drill.

He might have arrived at Hogwarts with dreams of conquest 
already planted in his head, along with the sort of  anger and 
helplessness that urges people to acts of collective madness, 
and a stunted ability to love. 


Pippin