Tom Riddle's Origins (was No Sex, Please)

[grannybat84112]

No: HPFGUIDX 84026

Geoff Bannister pondered:

> Tom tells us that his father 
> abandoned her when he discovered the WW connection, which 
> implies at that time she was already pregnant. ...As Grannybat 
> has suggested, was she physically unable to go back? ...Perhaps the 
> mother had a bad pregnancy and was ill? ...
> Perhaps, his father injured her physically. 

That was the first thought to cross my mind: He beat her black and 
blue when she was nearing the end of her term and then kicked her 
literally into the streets. But I just can't picture any functioning 
witch with a sliver of backbone-–particularly not a woman of a proud 
Slytherin family directly descended from Salazar himself–-suffering 
that kind of abuse without fighting back. She'd have zapped her 
husband into a toad at the very least. Nothing the narrator or the 
characters say in the opening chapter of GoF leads me to believe that 
Riddle's father had suffered years earlier from a confrontation with 
his cast-off wife.

Perhaps he had destroyed her wand?

If she was physically weakened by a bad pregnancy, was she so ill 
that she was unable to use St. Mungo's medical resources? Or even 
visit an apothecary in Diagon Alley? Couldn't she have sent an owl, 
or even a Muggle servant, to request a house call?

And what role did Tom Riddle's paternal grandparents play in this 
episode? Surely they wouldn't allow the beating/abandonment of the 
woman who was carrying their (presumed only) grandchild, especially 
if she were ill... unless the secret of the mother's Magical powers 
was exposed to them, too, in a very spectacular, undeniable way.

The more I think about this situation, the uglier the implications 
are.  

Grannybat