Tommy Riddle's birth (was:Re: No Sex, Please, We're British)

[alshainofthenorth]

No: HPFGUIDX 83854

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jwcpgh" <jwcpgh at y...> wrote:

> Finding out about his parents: 
> 
> The suggestion elsewhere on this thread that he could have learned 
> about his mother and her family at school makes a lot of sense.  
> Goodness knows that in Harry's time there are plenty of gossips in 
> and around Hogwarts, and I assume the same was true in Tom's era.  
> As for his dad's side, we know that Tom went back to the orphanage 
> during the summers and school vacations (CoS p. 244 US) So I'm sure 
> he used every opportunity to sweet-talk his adult mentors there into 
> giving him information about his family.  And anything the adults 
> wouldn't tell him he could find out for himself-magic does have its 
> uses, doesn't it?

Alshain:
Bravissima! Tom, lad, art surely sharp enough to cut thyself.

Sorry to jump in, but reading your post I realised that this could be
another of the aspects where Harry differs from Tom Riddle, in his
lack of curiosity about his family that many have complained about.
Riddle is the one who actively (and prematurely) searches for
knowledge about his background (and how ironic would it be, to find
out that he might have been mistaken about his father), Harry accepts
it passively, letting it come to him. In lots of folk tales we get the
lesson that searching for knowledge you aren't mature enough to accept
has bad consequences (the wife of Bluebeard, for example). Does Harry
refrain from asking questions about his family because he
unconsciously knows that he might not be able to handle the answers?

Alshain