Tom Marvolo Riddle's mother / Ernie and Stan / Draco's mum

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 37399

Pippin wrote:

> It would seem that she had been living as a Muggle, or her husband
> would have found out sooner that she was a witch.

Barb wrote:

> After all, she kept from him that she was a witch until after they
> were married 
(snip)
> (Although I'm willing to guess that it was a matter of having 
> a "thing" that she wanted--the Riddles were wealthy, after all.)

I am very fond of thinking that Tom Riddle Sr, never was married to 
Tom Riddle Jr's mother. It *was* the 1920s. I imagine this young 
witch (I like to call her Miranda, or sometimes Mirella) sneering at 
her parents' Victorian ideas and mouthing off about authenticity and 
naturalness and true love... If Tom Riddle Sr was anywhere near as 
charming as his son, there was no need for money to be involved in 
her falling quite sincerely in love with him... Think how shocked she 
was when he explained to her that he definitely wasn't going to marry 
her just because he'd gotten her pregnant! She had to tell her 
parents that they'd been right after all...

I like to think young Tom was born at home, where of course his 
mother's parents knew what she had wanted to name her son. They had 
probably criticised her plan to give the child a name that made it 
clearly obvious that he was a bastard of the son of the Big House, 
but they carried out their daughter's wish because she was dead... 
Young Tom lived with his grandparents until they died when he was two 
or three, maybe four ... old enough to remember that they had told 
him that his father had deserted his mother for being a witch, 
because they were too Victorian to tell him he was illegitimate... I 
enjoy the irony of Voldemort's whole hatred of Muggles being based 
on a fiction: if only he had known the truth, he could have crusaded 
against premarital sex instead.

I also like to think that young Tom, whom I believe to have been BORN 
with strong magic and a bad attitude, killed his loving grandparents 
by uncontrolled magic and a toddler's temper tantrum...

Zoe Hooch wrote:

> I have wondered about the witches and wizards who don't go to 
> Hogwarts, such as Stan Shunpike or Ernie Prang on the Wizard bus. 

Lucy wrote:

> Where did you get the impression that they didn't go to wizard 
> school though?

Maybe they were in Hufflepuff and THAT is the source of Hufflepuff's 
bad reputation as 'a bunch of duffers'.

Or, in my latest theory of how 4 Houses * 7 years * 10 kids (5 boys 
and 5 girls) = 1000 students at Hogwarts, only the 250-300 most 
magical kids go to Hogwarts Castle and the other 750-700 go to one, 
two, or three other wizard schools, BUT those other wizard schools 
are considered to be mere CAMPUSes of Hogwarts, under the same Board 
of Governors and same Headmaster (altho' actually run, day by day, 
by their Deputy Headmasters).

Alina wrote:

> Besides, the boy has got a doting mother, just remember all the 
> sweets she sent him and the fact that she wanted him to go to 
> Hogwarts just to keep him closer to home. 

In the Potterverse, names have meaning. Her name, Narcissa, is not 
just a flower name, a very uncommon flower name, but also a reference 
to Narcissism. That makes it difficult for me to believe that she 
*really* dotes on her son, as opposed to play-acting the doting 
mother at moments when he is play-acting the perfect son. It's 
entirely possible that Narcissa didn't *really* veto sending him to 
Durmstrang: we only have Draco's word for that. He might just have 
been talking big to impress his friends. 

I agree that canon Draco (unlike dear fanon Draco) is a nasty piece 
of work, not merely bigotted and murderous, but cowardly, and he says 
things that aren't too bright, and not very witty either (except a 
couple of remarks about the Blast-Ended Skrewts). But I tried to 
believe that his parents loved him, I wanted to believe it, and I 
have just been unable to believe that they view as anything more than 
a rather unsatisfactory pet whom it might still be possible to 
chastise into improvement.