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[psychic_serpent]

No: HPFGUIDX 56606

> Katy wrote:
> > I was confused about this section when i first read it also. But 
> >Tom Riddle is actually the one who killed them all. The set of 
> >parents killed were actually Tom's GRANDparents. And the son who 
> > was killed was Tom's Muggle father. Hope that helps :)

"luv_lotr2" <luv_lotr2 at y...> wrote: 
> Thanks!  But, where did you read that?  Does it come in a later 
> chapter?
 
No, it's all right there in the first two pages of GoF.  First, it 
was supposed to have happened fifty years earlier.  Fifty years 
before Harry was ending his third year it was 1944 or possibly 1945, 
depending on whether 'fifty years' is exact or a rough figure.  Tom 
M. Riddle was a rather young man at that time.  The bodies were 
discovered by a maid "on a fine summer's morning," so Tom M. Riddle 
probably wasn't in school at the time, very conveniently.  We find 
out also that "Elderly Mr and Mrs Riddle had been rich, snobbish and 
rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been even more so."  

We know from CoS that the Tom Riddle who became Voldemort was born 
of a witch mother who died when he was an infant, leading him to be 
raised in a Muggle orphanage.  His father repudiated his mother when 
he learned she was a witch, so the 'elderly' Mr and Mrs Riddle 
cannot be Tom Marvolo Riddle's parents, they must be his 
grandparents, and their 'grown-up' son--a term more likely to be 
used for someone well beyond the age of seventeen or eighteen--is 
his father.  (Given the way his father behaved toward his mother, I 
think that some of the less-savory elements of Tom M. Riddle's 
character probably come from his dad, not the Slytherin-derived side 
of the family, but I digress.)  

On the day of the murders, Frank Bryce told the police that "the 
only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles' 
deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale."  
This is clearly young Tom Riddle, murderer of his Muggle relatives. 
(The police think Frank made him up.)

The Other Mrs. Weasley wrote:
> > Was he just petrified along with his parents?  Anyone have any 
> > insight to this? 

It is highly unlikely that the Riddles were petrified, IMO.  
Dumbledore was able to determine that the petrified students who had 
seen reflections of the basilisk were still alive.  It is far more 
likely that they were all killed with Avada Kedavra.  The Riddles 
are described as being in'perfect health--apart from the fact that 
they were all dead.'  And the maid had said, 'Lying there with their 
eyes wide open!  Cold as ice!'  After Cedric is killed with Avada 
Kedavra, 'Harry stared into Cedric's face, at his open grey eyes, 
blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house.'  The 
open eyes seem to be pointing at the killing curse, not 
petrifaction.  (The description of the murders at the beginning 
seems to me to be foreshadowing for Cedric's murder, in fact.)  
Using the killing curse would be relatively simple for a young ever-
so-evil wizard like Riddle to pull off, while carting a basilisk to 
Little Hangleton would be unnecessary and unwieldy.

--Barb

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