Merope (Was: Dumbledore's Plan/Deaths in DH/Catharsis)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177547

Robert wrote:
>  
> I wouldn't say she was unskilled or uneducated. She knew how to use
a wand and she could read and think for herself. She was able to make
a darn good love potion to use on Tom, Sr. <snip>

Carol responds:

That's a problem for me. How did Merope learn to read or make a love
potion? There are no books in the house and Marvolo sends owls bearing
messages away, suggesting that he can't read the messages. There's no
indication that Merope or Morfin ever attended Hogwarts, much less the
Muggle school in the village, which would have taught them to read, or
that Marvolo (not the type to read them fairytales, as Harry says in
DH) would homeschool them. If Merope could read, she could get a job
to support herself after Tom Sr. supported her. As it is, she's so
desperate that she sells her one valuable possession to keep herself
alive, and so naive and ignorant that she gladly accepts only ten
galleons for it.

I imagine that Merope knew a spell or two because she had heard
Marvolo using them, but her concocting a love potion or even knowing
that love potions exist considering who her father is just seems
implausible to me.

Robert:
The baby was born healthy, so Merope was able to eat. She wasn't
starving.  She was wearing rags so she could use what money she had
for shelter and to eat and keep the baby healthy.

Carol responds:
But what money did she have? Tom Sr. probably tokk everything he had
(Muggle money, anyway) with him when he deserted her, and Marvolo
certainly didn't have any. She's filthy, she's wearing rags, she's
lost her magic (which couldn't have conjured food, anyway), she's
desperate enough to sell the locket. she must have lived by stealing
scraps from rubbish bins, keeping herself alive just long enough to
give birth. If Tom was born "healthy," it was probably her remaining
magic and his own that kept him alive.
> 
Robert:
> She had no husband, no family to fall back on, especially after
selling the Slytherin locket which her father and brother held more
dear to them than her, but she was giving her child what she
considered to be a good start. He was left in a well run orphanage
which she must have known had a good reputation for  caring for it's
charges. She went there intending to leave him  whether she  lived or
died. She could have gone to St Mungo's after all and been taken 
> care  of by the magical world, but no, she chose to give birth at a
Muggle ORPHANAGE.

Carol responds:
Maybe she didn't know about St. Mungo's or maybe she couldn't
Apparate, either because she'd never learned or because she'd lost the
strength to do so. I think she gave birth in a Muggle orphanage
because she knew she was going to die and because she had rejected
magic. The Muggles would take care of him as she herself--poor,
ignorant, sick, neglected--could not. Maybe she dimly hoped that Tom
Sr. would come looking for his child though how he would have known
where to look, I don't know.
>  
Robert:
> Merope gave up way back when Riddle, Sr. showed no concern for their
 child. Whether she walked away or gave up and let herself die, she
was giving  her child a chance without the mother who made so many bad
choices she felt she wasn't good enough for him or her to know.
>  
> There is nothing twisted about it. 

Carol responds:

I agree that there's nothing twisted about Merope's actions. She kept
herself alive long enough to give birth to her child; made sure that
he had people to take care of him since she couldn't and his father
wouldn't; gave her son a name reflecting his identity as both wizard
and Muggle, with a clue to his ancestry on both sides; and expressed
hope that he would look like his father, whom she loved though he did
not love her. Had Tom Sr. stayed with her, she would never have given
up hope, magic, and life itself. I understand her actions and have
nothing but pity for her. I just don't understand how an uneducated,
abused, and neglected girl (she was only eighteen when she gave Tom
Sr. the potion) could have learned to make a love potion or where she
would have found the recipe with no books in the house.

Carol, trying and failing to imagine Merope (or Morfin) at Hogwarts