To the Extreme

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 164970

Ken wrote:
<snip>
> The words on the page say that Tom Riddle passed some of his power
to Harry. We all agree. So is it inconceivable that Merope passed (and
I agree not her powers directly) *something* to Lily's mother? I'd
have to say no, it is not inconceivable. We have canon proof that some
kinds of magical power can be passed between wizards. Perhaps only
Slytherin's heirs can do this, speculation on my part. The notion that
Merope might have passed *something magical* to Lily's mother is a
simple (but speculative, I agree) extension of that "known fact". Do
we have any evidence that these two people were ever in close
proximity. NO! The only thing we can say about that is that Merope was
in London and London is one place in England that many residents of
England will visit during their lifetimes. It is plausible that they
could have been near each other at some point.

Carol responds:
But the original poster was arguing that Merope deliberately passed
her powers to Lily. Once she realized that Merope died some
thirty-five years before Lily was born, she changed the speculation to
passing the powers to Lily's mother. You seem to agree that Merope
could not have passed her powers to Lily's mother because, as we know
from canon and interviews, Lily's mother was a Muggle. Had her mother
acquired powers from Merope, assuming that a Muggle can acquire
powers, she would have ceased to be a Muggle and become a witch. So,
however Lily may have acquired her powers (a genetic mutation?), it
was not through inheritance of her mother's powers.

You mentioned genetics (hair color). A gene for black hair is
dominant, so if Tom Riddle Sr. or James Potter passed on a gene for
black hair to his son (or hypothetical daughter), that son would have
black hair regardless of the mother's hair color (red, in Lily's case;
brown, IIRC, in Merope's). (I'm vastly oversimplifying, but my point
is that the black hair, the chief physical characteristic that
Teen!Tom and Harry have in common, comes from their fathers in both
cases.) So the tiny physical resemblance is no indication that they're
related on the mother's side. And besides, Tom Riddle is the last heir
of Salazar Slytherin (through his mother), and being related through
the Muggle Tom Sr. would be irrelevant. Physical resemblance is no
evidence of acquired powers, in any case. Lily's mother acquires
powers from Merope Gaunt Riddle, who has brown hair, and Harry's black
hair is somehow evidence of that connection? 

The powers that Harry acquired from Voldemort were acquired under very
special circumstances involving sacrificial love magic which caused an
AK to be deflected onto a wizard who could not be killed because his
soul was anchored to earth by Horcruxes. Merope Gaunt, who may have
lost her powers or simply stopped using them, died in childbirth. Her
own child was born with powers exponentially greater than hers, as if
Salazar Slytherin's own powers (other than Parseltongue) had skipped
fifty generations and accumulated in him. So if her powers went
anywhere, they must have gone into him, which would make much more
sense than giving them away to some unknown Muggle.

If JKR wanted us to suspect that Merope had given away her powers to a
Muggle girl (and Lily's mother must have been very young at the time),
the girl would have been mentioned. Instead, the only girl mentioned
is the future Mrs. Cole, a Muggle girl a little younger than Merope,
who was eighteen by DD's account when she married and might have been
nineteen when Tom was born. But the one girl we know to have been
present for the birth remained a Muggle and has no connection with Lily.

Carol, who can see no point in this particular bit of speculation even
if it could hold up to canonical scrutiny