Social Structure in the WW

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 152151

Tonks wrote:
><snip> 
> If Tom was in a Muggle orphanage, and his mother died at his birth, 
> how did anyone know that she was a witch?
> 
> He is a half-blood, not a Muggle born. But how did anyone know?  
> 
> The WW just seems to "know" which kids have the gift of magic so 
> that they can invite them to come to Hogwarts.  But if all of her 
> family is gone and she died at the birth of Tom, how did anyone know 
> that Tom's mother was a witch? And how did they know that she was in 
> the line of Slytherin?  <snip>

Carol responds:
I've never considered this question from quite this perspective. That
is, I've never considered that others might think Tom was a
Muggleborn. Certainly Tom himself assumed, from the moment he found
out he was a wizard, that one of his parents was magical. (He assumed
that it was his father, since his mother couldn't save herself from
death in childbirth.) 

Maybe the Sorting Hat knew that he was a Half-Blood? I don't think it
would have placed a Muggleborn in Slytherin under any circumstances
because of the prejudice such a child would have to endure from his
own House. I do think the Hat would have sensed the boy's affinity
with Salazar Slytherin, maybe even his descent from him. And Tom's
fellow Slytherins would have assumed, I think, that at least one of
his parents was magical simply because Muggle-borns aren't sorted into
Slytherin. And Tom himself would have kept his mouth shut about his
parentage until he had investigated it and found something to brag about.

As for learning that Slytherin was his ancestor, we know that Tom
found that out himself through research. Failing to find anything on
anyone named Riddle, he must have followed up on the one lead he had,
the name Marvolo. And while I don't think that Marvolo and his
children attended Hogwarts (I'm not even sure that they could read,
since they sent the MoM owl away), he might have found somewhere,
certainly before his fifth year when he released the Basilisk and
wrote the diary, that the last remaining descendants of Slytherin were
Marvolo Gaunt and his children. (Diary!Tom knows that his witch mother
married a Muggle and that his grandfather and mother were descended
from Slytherin.)

Certainly he would have found out very quickly, from his fellow
Slytherins, that Parseltongue was a rare gift that he shared with
Slytherin himself. So another route he might have taken would be to
consult the genealogical charts to determine whether he might be
descended from Salazar. And he would, I think, have found the name
Marvolo Gaunt, along with Merope and Morfin, there. (If the charts are
magically updated, he might even have found his own name at the bottom
of the chart.) And very quickly, perhaps in his first few days at
Hogwarts, he would have found out about the Chamber of Secrets,
openable only by the Heir of Slytherin. Putting the two things
together, his descent and his ability to speak Parseltongue, he would
have set out to find it and prove, if only to himself and his
followers, that he was the Heir of Slytherin. (That his followers knew
it and were duly impressed, is evident from Slughorn's memory. I
wonder if they knew whose ring he wore and how he had obtained it.)

By his fifth year, he had opened the Chamber (though only he and
possibly his gang of future DEs knew that he had done so). And the
following summer, in what JKR says was his sixteenth year but was
really his seventeenth (he was sixteen going on seventeen), he sought
out Marvolo Gaunt and instead found Morfin, who unwittingly gave him
information that led to the murder of Tom's Muggle father and
grandparents.

Anyway, I don't think that anyone, at least not any Slytherins,
assumed that Tom was a Muggleborn. Certainly he himself didn't. But
the merest hint or suspicion on anyone's part, or any shadow of doubt
on the part of his fellow Slytherins that he was the heir of their
House's founder, might have fueled his hatred of Muggleborns and have
been one reason why he unleashed the Basilisk on them.

Carol, who still thinks that Myrtle's death counts as Tom's first
murder because the Basilisk was his instrument (as a wand or knife is
an instrument) in contrast to Wormtail, who as a human being was an
agent, not an instrument, and could in theory have refused to kill
Cedric (which, IMO, makes them equally guilty of Cedric's murder)