[HPforGrownups] Re: Tom's parents (was: JKR's best interview)

[lissbell at colfax.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 75402

Hi ninnamie,

ninnamie wrote:

> Harry/Ginny can't be Tom's parents!  LV has repeatedly tried to kill 
> them both, but he must be smart enough to realize that if he kills 
> them as children, he'll un-make himself and undo his entire existence.


Lissa responded:
Voldemort is a smart guy, yes, but there's no way he could know Harry 
and Ginny are his parents.  (I will grant that if he *did* know, he 
would never try to harm them.)  His mother died giving birth to him, so 
even if she remembered the truth--which I doubt she did--she couldn't 
have told him.  Little Tom was raised to believe Tom Riddle Sr the 
muggle was his father.  How could Tom Marvolo guess that his parents 
were born decades after he himself was born?  Realistically, he couldn't.

As you point out, killing his father *should* have undone Voldemort's 
entire existence.  I'm sure he would have died killing Harry--and that 
Harry probably would have died himself--at the beginning of book one if 
he hadn't taken extravagant magical precautions to defend himself 
against death.  Nonetheless, Tom was left in a bodiless state few people 
would refer to as true life.

The fact that LV has, as you note, repeatedly tried to kill both Harry 
and Ginny actually nicely parallels Tom Marvolo Riddle's established 
pattern of killing his parents--or those he believes to be parents. 
(Obviously, though, killing his mother as she gave birth to him was not 
willful.)

The whole situation has a gorgeous irony.  But I could be awfully wrong, 
and I do acknowledge that.

Take care :)
Lissa B