[HPforGrownups] Tom Riddle's Origins and Where Voldemort did his Killing

[Kriselda Jarnsaxa]

No: HPFGUIDX 57540

Lissa B recently mentioned:
>I don't think this is a contradiction.  Dumbledore doesn't say "only"
>remaining ancestor of Slytherin, he very carefully uses the word
>"last".  (In my theory, Tom Marvolo Riddle would be the last of Harry's
>family line.)

But when someone says "last remaining" - and Dumbledore does use the term 
*remaining* - that means that no other descendent (which at least the UK 
books have been corrected to read), well, remains.  Since Harry and Ginny 
are both alive, and since one of them would have to be a descendent of 
Slytherin for Riddle to be a descendent of Slytherin, Riddle can't be said 
to be the "last remaining".

I understand that you're making a distinction between "only", meaning sole, 
and "last" meaning "end of a sequence" here, but because of the word 
"remaining" that distinction, in my opinion, is moot. The qualifier 
"remaining" means that something is "what is left of a given set".  To say 
that something is the "last remaining" of a thing means explicitly that no 
other thing of that kind exists any longer, though other things of that 
kind used to. Essentially, "last remaining" and "only remaining" are 
interchangeable. The age of the things being "counted" doesn't matter, 
because while the term "last", by itself, can (and usually does) refer to 
the end of a series, when it is used in conjunction with "remaining" it 
makes it clear that none of the other items in that series are still around 
(otherwise, it would be termed "one of the last remaining").

  Had Dumbledore said that Riddle was the "last descendent" of Slytherin, I 
would agree that your interpretation was possible, but because he uses 
"remaining", I can't see it working that way.



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