The Riddles' Murders (WAS: The only one he ever feared?

[ginnysthe1]

No: HPFGUIDX 117546


JP wrote:
> I think that the Office focuses on underage magic, use of Muggle 
artifacts to play practical jokes or to harm Muggles and such. <snip><

Then Kim (me) wrote:
> But then the deaths of three Riddles from Avada Kedavras would 
surely have been considered "harm to Muggles," as you say. <snip> In 
any case, AK (Avada Kedavra) is also an Unforgiveable Curse and it 
wouldn't matter if the wizard who performed it was "of age" -- 
performing AK, Crucio, or Imperius curses is supposed to land you in 
Azkaban. <snip>

Juli replied:
> I completely agree with JP, Harry received 2 letters from Mafalda 
Hopkirk because he did underage magic. I don't think her department 
tracks all magic, even unforgivable curses, they just track underage 
magic. They would have learned that Arthur uses magic on his Ford 
Anglia, they never knew it could fly until Ron & Harry used it to get 
from King's cross to Hogwarts, so this propably means the only magic 
the MoM tracks is underage magic. ... By the way, wizards come of age 
at 17, so if LV was 17 when he killed his dad and grandparents, 
nobody would have noticed, unless like DD they read the muggle's 
newspaper and the autopsy report (nothing wrong except the fact they 
were dead) which I doubt.<

Katrina had written (in a different post, same thread):
> <snip> What LV fears about DD is what he knows. I've heard it 
postulated that when TR dropped "off the radar screen" after he 
finished at Hogwarts, it was because of the triple AK murder in 
[Little Hangleton] <

Then Debbie replied to Katrina:
> I don't believe that Tom Riddle disappeared *because* he was 
fleeing the scene of his parents' murders. Rather, he decided to 
leave to seek out what Dumbledore calls "the very worst of our kind" 
who could instruct him in the Dark Arts, but before he left he 
stopped off in Little Hangleton for the revenge murder of his 
parents. ... <

Then bboyminn responded:
> Unless I read it wrong, I think Tom murdered his parents in the 
summer between his 6th and 7th year at Hogwarts. Since he came back 
to school, it doesn't seem like anyone made any connnection to Tom 
and the death of the Riddles. ...  Once he graduated, he sought out 
the Dark Arts as a source of power that other, weaker, people were 
unwilling to tap. <snip> I think Tom was in the process of 
transforming himself into Voldemort, the self-proclaimed most 
powerful wizard in the world, champion of the pureblood cause, and 
the next supreme evil overlord of the universe. A wizard so powerful 
and ruthless that all would fear to speak his name. ...  I often 
wondered if Tom collected the inheritance on his parents estate, and 
used that money to finance his transformation?<

Then Carol responded:
>You're right that the murder was committed about a year before he 
left to seek out Dark wizards though my impression is that he was 
pursuing immortality through transformations rather than seeking 
power or championing the pureblood cause. ... The Muggles didn't know 
about him (only Frank Bryce saw him leaving the scene of the crime 
and no one believed him). I very much doubt that he collected his 
inheritance or he would immediately have aroused his suspicions: he 
benefited from the crime, so he would automatically be a suspect, and 
he fit the description of the mysterious teenage boy. ... Dumbledore 
says that he knew about the crime because he reads the Muggle 
newspapers, but no one else in the WW was apparently aware of it. Why 
Dumbledore didn't report his suspicions to the authorities, I
don't know. Certainly a Priori Incantatem on Tom's wand would have
shown three AKs and proved him guilty. Possibly DD thought the MoM
would concern itself with the deaths of three Muggles. Also I don't
think that area was monitored; Tom's mother, the only witch we know of
in the area, was long dead, and Tom himself had lived in an orphanage,
quite possibly in London and certainly not in Little Hangleton because
no one there knew of his existence (his father had evidently placed
him somewhere out of sight, out of mind). From what we've seen, the
MoM mostly monitors underage wizards in Muggle areas and even that
practice seems to be recent; Lily Potter was evidently able to
transfigure rats into teacups without getting into trouble, and Tom's
youth was long before hers. I agree with Steve that the security
around Privet Drive is particularly acute; nothing of the sort would
have been needed in Little Hangleton in 1944 or thereabouts. Also the
MoM's security, when it *is* in place, can apparently determine what
kind of spell was performed (e.g., a hover charm at 4 Privet Drive in
CoS). Surely if Little Hangleton were under the MoM's radar,
they would have detected three Avada Kedavras, and since the dead
Muggles were Tom Riddle's parents, he would have been the immediate
and only suspect?  ...  I think he committed the murders, suspected 
by nobody (except Frank Bryce and Dumbledore), returned to school, 
and left on his quest for Transformation without a knut to his name, 
quite possibly leaving everything but his wand and the clothes on his 
back to one of the friends who already called him Lord Voldemort, the 
future father of Lucius Malfoy, who had in his keeping Tom's school 
diary and perhaps a few other artifacts that he passed down to his 
son.  [signed] Carol, challenging anyone to come up with a longer 
sentence than her last one<

Kim here:
I'm definitely seeing the sense now in what you (everyone) are 
saying.  As Carol points out though, it's very strange for DD to have 
kept it secret if he did suspect Tom Riddle of such foul play. 
Dumbledore's the "greatest wizard in the world" according to the 
opinion of many (myself included ;o)), but his behavior is so 
inexplicable at times.  Maybe he's getting too old (such as in the 
way Harry describes him at the end of OotP) and that advanced age 
affects his behavior, but 50 years ago when young TR killed his 
father and grandparents, DD was still a youthful 100, wasn't he?  So 
what guided his decision to keep it to himself if he did indeed 
suspect the student Tom Riddle of killing 3 Muggles in Little 
Hangleton?  Sometimes DD reminds me of Emperor Claudius (in the 
PBS/BBC series "I, Claudius" -- correct me if this quote wasn't in 
the book, which I've never read) when he said, "Let all the poisons 
that lurk in the mud hatch out..."

But also this reminds me of a different thread (can't remember what 
it was titled) where we discussed the possibility of DD having heard 
a prophecy about the birth of Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort years ago, in 
the same way that he'd been the one to hear the prophecy about the 
coming of the vanquisher of Voldemort. Maybe he thought he couldn't 
interfere in the unfolding of that earlier prophecy either.

And I'll toss out this last question:  who do you think taught young 
Tom Riddle how to perform an Avada Kedavra?  

Alas, so many interesting questions and hypotheses, so little time 
before we find out the answers ... ;o) (round-nose today on account 
of allergies)

Cheers,
Kim (who'll be working on Carol's challenge in the posts ahead)