Tom Riddle's Birth (Re: JKR Chat "The Crucial ...")

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 92987

Dharma:
> JKR has said herself that the WW really is not that much different 
> than the Muggle World, so if that is true, then Tom Riddle has 
some 
> different challenges despite his similarities to Harry. Riddle is 
a 
> good candidate for some deeply anti-social behaviors, and deeply 
held 
> self-loathing. This does not make his choices acceptable, but 
there 
> are some differences that stand out to me between his life 
> circumstances and Harry's.
> 
> Both are orphans, but Harry at the very least had a year to form 
> attachments to his parents, and then, despite their abusiveness, 
time 
> to form attachments to the Dursley's. Tom Riddle does not seem to 
> have any of that available to him. 

Naama responded:
> I agree that the choice theme in itself would be better served if 
> Harry and Voldemort had identical beginnings. But, as Dharma 
pointed 
> out, their babyhood was very different, anyway. Harry was marked 
with 
> love psychologically, just by being raised for a year by loving 
> parents. Tom didn't get that - his father rejected him, and his 
> mother died at birth. He was raised at an orphanage which we know 
he 
> absolutely hated. I don't think that it's going too far to say 
that 
> he was psychologically marked with rejection/hatred. So, it seems 
> fitting to me that, in negative parallel to Harry, he would also 
be 
> *magically* marked with hatred. By this, I don't mean that he was 
> cursed. I see it as a *protective* charm his mother laid on him, 
> using the one source of power she had - hatred of his father. Like 
> Harry's love charm, it doesn't negate free will and choice on his 
> part.
 

Jen: JKR's comment on the chat indicates there are additional 
circumstances about Tom Riddle's birth that we haven't heard. 
Perhaps even *Tom* wasn't privvy to this information either? Diary!
Tom in COS and LV at the graveyard are the two instances where we 
get information about Tom's past. Assuming Tom was told much of his 
history at the Muggle orphanage, then pieced together his own 
version of events from digging around once he got to Hogwarts (where 
he discovered he was Heir of Slytherin), I'd say there's a lot of 
room for unintentional error and omission in his self-reported 
history. 

Could there have been events around his birth that led to Memory 
charms on the Muggle orphanage personnel? Did the mid-wife exclude 
certain pertinent facts? Were there inexplicable events that the 
Muggles chose to overlook, much like the Dursleys with Harry?

It's not that I reject the psychological model when examining 
Harry's and Tom's childhoods, I'm just curious if what we know about 
Tom is accurate.

Jen Reese