My shocking idea - the case for Tom Riddle

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 72973

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sofdog_2000" Please do 
> post your ideas about what drove Tom Riddle to evil and his 
pursuit 
> of power (or email me). I've been musing on this a lot lately. It 
> seems critical to the story (or even to a separate Tom-centric 
novel) 
> to know what drove Voldemort over the edge - and at such a young 
age. 
> If Voldemort is Harry's dark opposite, coming from similar 
> circumstances as they do, then we need a fuller understanding of 
his 
> descent than simply "he cannot understand love."

My theory is that the killing of the Riddles was the first step on 
Tom's descent into darkness.  The more I think about Tom Riddle, the 
more I start to doubt what I *think* I know about him.  It all 
sounds like a very standard tale: the pregnant mother abandoned by 
the magic-hating father, the young boy brought up in an orphanage, 
the search for revenge years later.  But upon closer inspection, the 
story doesn't hold together in this form.  First of all, almost all 
of this story comes from Tom/Voldemort himself.  But the question 
then arises: How does he know this?  How could he have learned the 
details of this story?  It's such a plausible one, I tend to forget 
how such a story would usually be learned: from the embittered, 
abandoned mother.  But that didn't happen in Tom's case: his mother 
died when he was born.  So he didn't hear it from her.  Next, he was 
brought up in a MUGGLE orphanage; how could he have learned these 
details there?  His wizard heritage would have been unknown.  They 
might have been able to tell him the name of his mother, but not 
that she was a witch - she would have hidden that information, if 
only to protect her son.  So I believe that he found out about his 
wizarding side the same way Harry did - when he received his letter 
from Hogwarts in his eleventh year.  At this point, the parallels 
between Tom and Harry start to get quite startling.  How much does 
Harry know about his parents at the comparable age?  Very little - 
and he's living with people who at least knew them.  Tom would have 
started with even less information.  And yet, in just a few years, 
he knows enough about his background to be able to tell Harry the 
circumstances of his birth and the motive for his father's 
abandonment of him.  

His words in GoF were, "but I vowed to find him...I revenged myself 
upon him, that fool who gave me his name...Tom Riddle."  He doesn't 
say, "I vowed to find him IN ORDER to revenge myself on him"; the 
way it's written, they are two separate ideas, and I think they were 
two separate incidents.  I think Tom Riddle had ALWAYS dreamed of 
finding his father, because, like Harry, he was a boy who longed for 
a family.  As soon as he discovered where his father was, he did 
what Harry would have done - he went to find him.  Just as Harry had 
a partially fantasized view of his parents, and was disillusioned in 
OotP, I think that Tom had unrealistic hopes about the father he 
would meet.  I'm sure he was angry, and the first words out of his 
mouth were, "Why did you abandon us?  Why did you let me rot in an 
orphanage all those years?"  But I think he still hoped that he 
would find a family and a home.  But it all went terribly wrong.  It 
was during that interview, I believe, that Tom found out the 
horrible truth - that his father hated magic, hated his mother, and 
hated HIM because of it.  Where else would he have learned that, if 
not from his father's lips?  Who else could have known?  Tom Riddle 
Sr. would not have advertised to the world that he'd been in love 
with a witch and had a child by her.  I think that that interview 
started with Tom hoping to find a father, and ended with him killing 
the three Riddles, and it began his rage against Muggles, and his 
journey into darkness.

Wanda