Was Tom Riddle a "Bad Seed?" (SPOILERS for book, play and movie _Bad Seed_)

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 58975

Back in the middle '50s, there was a small controversy about William March's
book _The Bad Seed._  It was the first of the "evil child" genre---I could
make a case that without it, _The Exorcist,_ _The Omen_ and _The Good Son_
wouldn't have had as easy a time seeing the light of day.

Cutting to the chase, the main character in the book, a little girl named
Rhoda Penmark, is very like what we've seen of Tom Riddle.  She's almost
_too_ perfect...neat, quiet, ladylike, and very respectful of her elders,
who mostly all adore her.  However, under it all she's what I would call a
sociopath.  What she wants, she'll go after, and she has no inhibitions
other than Don't Get Caught.  And she's more than smart enough to know that
almost no adults will suspect her, thanks to her sweet, ladylike exterior.

The book's controversial side was not just that a child could be evil, but
the idea brought up in the book that (what we'd call) sociopathy was
heritable; a Big Revelation (SPOILER HO!) is that the girl's grandmother,
who died when her daughter, Rhoda's mother-to-be, was very small, was a
serial killer of the "Black Widow" variety.

Now---what do we _know_ about Tom Riddle's ancestry?  His mum was a witch,
and _he says_ that his dad abandoned her for that.  But not all witches are
nice, not at all---for every Molly Weasley, you've got a Rita Skeeter or a
lady-in-the-penseive-scene.  What if TR Senior left his wife for darned good
reasons, like, maybe, he found out she had Plans for him and his family's
money, plans that involved them all taking a long, long dirt nap?  It would
be incredibly easy for a witch to commit murder and not have either the
Muggle or magical authorities notice that anything was wrong, and back in TR
Sr.'s day, it would have been even easier, what with the state of forensic
medicine being what it was then.

Or, for that matter---what makes us think that the "bad seed" inheritance,
if that's what we're dealing with, couldn't have come from the _Muggle_ side
of TR's ancestry?  TR's family weren't apparently too popular with the
neighbours, and there seems to have been very little mourning for them when
they were unexpectedly found dead.  (Of course, this would also have been at
the height or end of WWII, and a case could be made that people were already
inured to sudden death, but still...)

I'd like to see Harry finally figuring out that "knowledge is power," and
"To know one's enemy and know oneself is to win a thousand victories and
never be defeated," and either burrow into whatever information's available
about the Riddles and TR's mum, or delegate studious Hermione to Do What She
Does Best.  Or, for that matter, ask Professor Dumbledore and others who
were with TR at Hogwarts---in the book _The Bad Seed,_ there were warning
signs even early on that Rhoda Penmark was not quite what she seemed to be,
although they were ignored.