Merope's Death

[Eric Oppen]

Reading about Tom Riddle's background, a question occurred to me.

Basically, it's like this:  How do we _know_ that Merope Gaunt Riddle wasn't
murdered?

How long was she able to keep filling TR, Sr. up with love potions?  If her
idyll had lasted a while, it could well be that her rotten father and/or
brother had gotten back out of Azkaban...and once they were out, the first
thing they'd do would be to track down their escaped slave.  They would
_not_ be amused to find that she'd had a "mud-veined Muggle"'s child, now
would they?  Between their attitudes and their precarious-at-best hold on
sanity, I could see either Marvolo or Morfin, or both of them, killing
Merope for having "disgraced the Gaunt family" by her actions.

We know that Muggles can't diagnose the Avada Kedavra curse correctly.  If
Merope was already weak and ill (and, probably, suffering from severe
post-partum depression and emotional anguish) all it would have taken would
be for either Marvolo or Morfin to slip into the room where she was and cast
a quick A-K.  The Muggle medicos wouldn't know what had gone wrong, but
would ascribe Merope's death to her illnesses.  There were no wizards nearby
who would even have suspected the A-K.

Eric Oppen, longtime HP4GU fixture, newcomer to the_old_crowd.