Merope (wasLily the popular girl)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 168087

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Leslie Brooks
<clyomuseofhistory at ...> wrote:
>
> Nikkalmati:
> > I have always thought it unfair, even appalling, to blame Merope
for her own death or to conclude (as DD says LV has done) that she
didn't love her son.  Yes, she did die in childbirth - or so shortly
thereafter as to make no difference. It happens even today in the RW
to young and healthy women. I can't imagine she didn't want to live.
<snip>
> 
> I wanted this to be my first post, and I completely agree.  It isn't
fair to blame Merope at all.  I could never imagine being in her
situation at all.  Her father and brother were overbearing and abusive
to her.  Her magic was probably drained and understandably so.  As for
her love for the baby, I think she did or she wouldn't (at least I
think so) have had the will to live.  
> 
> Leslie
>
Carol:
Just a sidenote here, as I agree with both posters. Merope's last act
was an act of love, giving her son a name that would tie him to the
men she loved most, though neither loved her: her father and her
husband. She could have allowed him to be nameless or to have a name
bestowed on him by the orphanage a la Oliver Twist, but instead she
gave him a name that linked him to both his Muggle and his Wizarding
heritage so that some day he could find out who he was. (No fault of
hers what he did with that knowledge!) And maybe she hoped that the
orphanage could care for him better than she could, weak and knutless
as she was (the ten galleons couldn't have lasted very long). Even if
she hadn't lost her powers, magic can't conjure food and shelter,
evidently.

Carol, wishing that someone had rescued Merope from her abusive home,
but then we'd have no story