[HPforGrownups] Re: Tom Riddle's backstory

[EnsTren at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 70414

In a message dated 7/14/2003 10:45:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
ratalman at yahoo.com writes:

> Why was Tom Riddle raised in a muggle orphanage, if he had a 
> witch mother?  Aren't there orphanages in the wizarding world?  
> To me, it would have made more sense for him to have been 
> taken in by a wizard's orphanage, or the like, unless his mother 
> had already completely disavowed her magical connections.  
> Did she do that?  I had always thought that Tom's father 
> abandoned Tom's mother when he learned she was a witch.  
> Maybe he actually stuck around long enough for Tom to be born.  
> Where did she give birth?  
> 

I had a theory, which I never gave a title of it's own.  But my therory was 
that there is no such thing as Wizard orphanages.  (The why of this has to do 
with the idea that except in extrodinary circumstances (IE: adopting the boy 
who lived) wizard's don't adopt due to blood magic which can't be tied to an 
adoptee.  There is no ritual for children the way there is for marriage)

As for where?  some hospital, or maybe even the orphanage itself.

> And how did Tom receive his letter of acceptance to Hogwarts 
> while he was living in a muggle orphanage?  I should think that 
> that sort of thing would be very difficult to explain, having an owl 
> making a delivery to a public institution, and would necessitate 
> many muggles being let in on the secrets of the magical world.   
> Wouldn't there be lots of difficult questions asked by the folks in 
> charge of the orphanage?
> 

Look at it this way: you have a boy who will leave the orphanage for most of 
a year, and for the time he is away he will not cost you any money.

they would say he got a grant to go to an exclusive boarding school.

> How did he get the money needed to attend Hogwarts?  Did his 
> father provide funds for him?  Perhaps the mysterious 
> gentleman who paid the gardener for tending the Riddle estate 
> all those years is/was Tom's behind-the-scenes benefactor.  I've 
> wondered if that could have been someone in the Malfoy family..., 
> but now I'm not so sure.
> 

I think Hogwarts is patially funded by the ministry.  It costs money to go 
out of pocket, but for orphans and possibly muggle-borns nothing.  Also, I think 
it costs less  for each member of the family who works in the ministry.

> Many questions are percolating in my mind about all this!




Nemi
       --Black Dragon
       --Slasher and Yaoist
       --Utterly Psycotic


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