Salazar Slytherin's descendants (Was Re: A strange silver instrument)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 86461

> "Kathryn Cawte" wrote:
> > 
> > What makes us think that the Heir has to be a descendent anyway. 
> Why can't
> > it be more a case of someone who embodies the characteristics that 
> that
> > House holds in highest esteem. 
> 
> kg:
> 
><snip> 
> 
> However, I suspect that Voldemort is both the Descendant and Chosen 
> Heir of Slytherin. We know that bloodlines are important to 
> Slytherin, and so it makes sense his chosen heir would be both 
> related to him and carry on his ideals. <snip>

Carol:
Slytherin didn't exactly choose his heir, since he had no way of
knowing who'd be alive five hundred or a thousand years later,
whenever the Heir appeared. I do aggree, though, that Riddle was both
his blood descendant and the heir to his "ideals."

Tom, whose mother was long dead and who had been raised in a Muggle
orphanage, could not have known when he entered Hogwarts as a child of
eleven that he was the Heir of Slytherin, but once he learned that he
and Salazar Slytherin were among the few wizards in history with the
gift of Parseltongue, he must have realized that he was a direct
descendant (presumably through his mother and her father Marvolo,
whose last name we're not given). When he also learned about the
Chamber of Secrets and Slytherin's "noble goal" of rooting out the
"mud bloods," he appointed himself as Heir, seeing it as both his
destiny and his duty. And since he clearly *was* the Heir he
recognized himself as being, he was able to open the Chamber and
launch himself on a noble career as multiple murderer and despot,
courtesy of Salazar's basilisk.

Carol