Tom Riddle Sr - Blog Posts

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Tom Riddle & His Name

Alright this one’s going to get disturbing very quickly. WARNING: Pureblood inbreeding shenanigans. 

This isn’t going to be another post explaining why Tom hated his name because it’s a muggle name or because it’s common. I think that’s part of it, but I haven’t seen anyway address this angle:

Tom hated his name because of his mother. 

Alright, so at some point someone in Hogwarts likely tried to slip Tom a love potion. Let’s say, in his Seventh year. It doesn’t work, Dumbledore finds out and mentions this one study about how those conceived under a love potion are immune to its effects...and also incapable of love. (I think that last part is bs but that’s a different post). 

In his last year at Hogwarts, Tom is already aware that his mother was a witch and his father was the muggle. He’s already pinned the blame on his father for leaving, and placed his mother into the role of victim. He saw his father as having the power, and his mother as being weak. His father, the strong Slytherin-like Muggle who conned the weak witch Merope into sleeping with him. 

But this changes things. 

All of a sudden his mother is the one in the role of the abuser, and his father in the role of victim. It’s his Slytherin, Pureblood Mother who forced his oblivious Muggle Father into marrying her. 

She kidnapped and raped Tom’s father, and then when he escaped, and Tom was born, she named her son after her victim. 

And what were her first, and last, words for her son? She hoped, “that her son would turn out to look like his father.” 

Alright here’s where shit gets real.

What were the Gaunt’s known for again? Rampant and extreme inbreeding and incest. Cousins marrying cousins, sisters marrying brothers, etc. 

So mothers marrying sons? I do not find that hard to believe for this family.

When you replace “father” with “victim” the ickiness really shines through. So here’s Merope giving her child the name of her victim (and her father, who abused her, now those implications I like even less, if that’s possible) and the first thing she does is express a wish that he’ll look like her victim. What the Fuck.

So here’s the very real possibility that Merope could be thinking about grooming her small child into becoming her replacement Tom Riddle 2.0 husband, or at the very least a Tom Riddle that was dependent on her, had no other choice but to love her, and could not run away because there was nowhere to run. 

Tom probably pieced this together, promptly threw up, and very aggressively doubled down on his new chosen name.  

 TL:DR

canon Merope Gaunt would not have been a good mother, no matter what Dumbledore believed, and Tom dodged a bullet on that front.