GoF CH 1-3 post DH look/ Owner of the Riddle house

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181747

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214"
> <dumbledore11214@> wrote:
> 
> > I am saying that maybe Tom put Voldie in the will, that's all.
> 
> 
> It seems to me that if LV really wanted the Riddle house, the fact
> that he was not in the will wouldn't have stopped him from owning it.
> He was a wizard - he could have pulled something a la DD "convincing"
> Mrs. Cole. I think it wouldn't have been very difficult for him to
> locate the will and change it. He just didn't want this Muggle
house, IMO.
> 
> 
> zanooda
>
Carol responds:

First, it's extremely unlikely that Tom Sr. put Tom Jr., whom he
wholly neglected and whose existence he ignored, in the will. Had he
done so, it wouldn't have been bought and then sold by two families
and then finally bought by a rich Muggle (taking the narrator at his
or her word, for "tax purposes." The only question is what happens to
a house when the person to whom it's willed, in this case, Tom Sr., is
killed along with the current owners, in this case, his parents. Tom
Sr. wasn't the current owner and could not have willed it to anyone,
even if he had anyone he wanted to will it to--certainly not Merope's
child, whom he essentially disowned.

Second, while I agree with zanooda that Voldemort could have found a
way to own the house without revealing himself as a Riddle, a name he
had rejected, not to mention making himself a murder suspect (Frank
Bryce had already described him to the Muggle police, and if it were
known that Tom Sr. had a teenage son that he'd placed in an orphanage,
surely there would have been an investigation). But, IMO, Tom as a
teenager and Voldemort as what passes for an adult man wanted nothing
to do with the Riddle House (except, later, to use it as a hideout
because it was conveniently close to the graveyard where a key
ingredient of the Resurrection Potion, Bone of the Father, happened to
be). Had it meant anything to him, he would have hidden a Horcrux
there--much safer, really, than entrusting it to one of his Death
Eaters. After all, he hid one at the Gaunts' hovel--but that place,
despite its filth and the poverty of its former inhabitants, reflected
his Pureblood heritage whereas the Riddle House was the home of his
despised and hated Muggle father, whom he murdered for revenge (not to
create a Horcrux though he later used the murder, and Morfin's ring,
for that purpose).

At any rate, I don't see how or why Voldemort could or would own the
Riddle House, either through inheritance or by somehow buying the place