[HPforGrownups] Uncle Tom?

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 166898

Oooohhhh... good point!!
JKR must be laughing her head off. Every time somebody asked her if there might be a possibility that one of Lily's parents were perhaps Squibs or something, just so they could link Lily to the Wizarding World, JKR has answered that the Evanses and the Dursleys are totally, one-hundred percent Muggle. But nobody (until you just now) has ever thought to connect Lily, Petunia and Harry to the WW by Voldemort's Muggle father.

One fly in the ointment, though. Tom Riddle Sr. came from a rich, landowning family. The Evanses and the Dursleys are patently middle-class. But they could be a impoverished sideshoot off the family, of course. Besides, it would be more logical that Voldemort inherited his Parseltongue ability from his mother's side (descendants of Slytherin himself after all, who was known for his Parseltongue) than from his Muggle father. If he inherited such an ability it must be a magic mutation and for such a mutation to strike twice within the same family must imo be very much a coincidence (but I'm not a geneticist or a statisticist). 
Also, I must admit that the whole 'you are a great wizard Harry because it's all in your Blood' idea gets a bit on my nerve since we've had sanctimonuously hammered home by the whole of fandom that the 'blood-purists' in the WW and their ideas that 'breeding outside of the talented genepool weakens the talent' is Wrong, Racist and whoever utters it would be just short of being the lovechild of Adolf Hitler and Satan. To suddenly suggest that Harry and Lily owe their powers to some blood-connection to Voldemort (it's all down to breeding, it's In His Blood, etc, etc) would suggest that the bloodpurists might have a point after all <grin>

Still, I love the idea that Tom Riddle Sr. had lots of cousins and they had lots of children and suddenly Voldemort has loads of Muggle family he doesn't know (or care) about and there might be students in Hogwart who are blissfully unaware that they are related to the Dark Lord himself. Mwahah!

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