Voldemort and his Mom

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 48371

Cheryl asks;

>>I just thought of something. How does he know this? She died soon after he 
was born, only living long enough to name him-at least according to him. So, 
how does he know all this stuff? Who told him? How did he know he was the 
last descendent of Slytherin?<<

Bingo. That IS the $64,000 question. Or one of them. because he sure the hell 
didn't get that information from the orphanage!

Either; Somebody with reason to take an interest in the Heir of Slytherin, 
even if the boy was a half-blood, "got" to him when he showed up at Hogwarts. 
(Enter the "Professor Grendlwald" theory.) Or; he made it up himself as a 
classic adolescent wish fulfilment/cuckoo tale (i.e., "my parents aren't my 
*real* parents. *I'm* royalty!") and ended up convincing himself that it was 
true. That Dumbledore concedes that his mother had indeed been the last known 
decendent of Salizar Slytherin suggests that the first is the more likely.

Tom Riddle may hve been a ticking time-bomb by the time he hit Hogwarts, but 
he was still human, and, more to the point, he was a Muggle-raised child with 
*no* knowlege of the WW. To have become the monster-in-training he had become 
by the age of 16, he must have had some kind of help.

-JOdel