Riddle family

The Riddle Family is a fictional family of muggles in the Harry Potter series of books and films by J.K. Rowling. Listed below are the names of the most recent members:

• Thomas Riddle (c. 1880-1942) The last Riddle Family patriarch. Married Mary (of unknown family). Father of Tom Riddle.
• Mary Riddle (maiden name unknown) (c. 1883-1942) Married to Thomas Riddle. Mother of Tom Riddle.
• Tom Riddle Senior (c. 1903-1942) Married Merope Gaunt. Father of Tom Marvolo Riddle.
• Tom Marvolo Riddle (1926-present) Last surviving member.

The Riddles were a family of privileged and well off gentry in the fictitious village of Little Hangleton. The most prominent residents there, they owned large tracts of land and a fine manor house, that overlooked a cemetery and a church. They were, however, notoriously unpopular among the Little Hangleton villagers, as they were snobbish and rude. Though Tom, the son of the family, mixed with them sufficiently to be aware of village gossip concerning the Gaunts, a local - secretly magical - family.Template:HP4 Template:Spoiler

Thomas and Mary Riddle

'Old Mr and Mrs Riddle' were the parents of Tom Riddle Sr, and the grandparents of Tom Marvolo Riddle. They owned over half of the valley in which the town of Little Hangleton lay, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in the Riddle House, a large house with fine gardens, and were extremely disliked due to their snobbish attitudes. Their son Tom lived with them for most of his life; all three were murdered by Tom Marvolo Riddle, Mr and Mrs Riddle's grandson, in 1942.

Tom Marvolo Riddle's grandparents were only mentioned (and there very briefly) in two books: 'The Goblet of Fire' and 'The Halfblood Prince'. The names of the "old" Riddles were not given in the books. The names "Thomas" and "Mary" are derived from the film version of 'The Goblet of Fire', in which they are named as Thomas and Mary Riddle on the gravestone of Tom Riddle Sr, their son. There is no indication that this was based on information from JK Rowling, and accordingly is not canonical; nonetheless, it has been tentatively accepted, due to lack of contradictory information, and the ambiguous nature and veracity of information derived from the films.

Tom Riddle Senior

Tom had a privileged, comfortable upbringing, as would be expected for someone of the landed gentry. He certainly indulged in the typical pursuits of the upper-middle classes in the first half of the twentieth century, socialising with attractive women on his social level, riding horses, and enjoying his status in the town. Template:HP Character Foreign In addition to being rich, he was handsome, frequently going for horseback rides with a young lady named Cecilia (presumably his girlfriend), rides which took him by a small, dirty cottage in a copse of trees by the side of the road. This small parcel of land was the only part of that area that the Riddles did not own. The cottage belonged to Marvolo Gaunt and his children. While the Riddles (and, it can be assumed, everyone else in the area) scorned the Gaunts, young Merope made efforts to get as close to Tom as she could, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Morfin Gaunt noticed his sister's affection for Tom Riddle, and took the opportunity to hex Tom as he rode by, covering him in hives. This was the trigger to a sequence of events that led to the Gaunt men being sentenced to imprisonment in Azkaban.

As told by Albus Dumbledore, once Merope was alone she was able to make her move for Tom Riddle. She offered Tom a drink laced with a love potion as he rode by one day, without his attractive companion. He accordingly became infatuated with her, and they chose to elope, causing a great scandal in Little Hangleton. Within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion; she either believed that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. Merope was wrong, as Tom quickly abandoned his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Village gossip claimed that Merope's child had been fathered by another man, and that Riddle had considered himself 'hoodwinked' when he discovered this. He never sought out his former wife or his young son.

Possibly, the experience coarsened Riddle's character. At the time of the Gaunt men’s arrest, he appeared to be confident and self-assured but not arrogant and snobbish as he was described as having become by the time of his death. Not knowing of Merope's fate, he would be unable to consider himself free to remarry.

Along with his parents, Tom Riddle Sr was killed by the Avada Kedavra curse in 1942 by his son Tom Marvolo Riddle, who framed Morfin Gaunt for the crime. The non-magical community was puzzled and shocked by the seemingly causeless deaths. The muggle police of the neighbouring town of Great Hangleton arrested the Riddle's gardener, a war veteran named Frank Bryce, who claimed that he saw a pale-faced, dark-haired boy enter the Riddle House in the night. Nobody else saw the boy, and people were convinced that Bryce was lying and had killed the Riddles. However, when the autopsy revealed that although the victims were dead their bodies had not been harmed or poisoned in any way, the baffled Great Hangleton police were forced to release Bryce on lack of evidence. He went on to live at the old Riddle estate until his death in 1994 at the hands of Lord Voldemort.

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Tom Marvolo Riddle

Birth and adolescence

Tom Marvolo Riddle was born on New Year's Eve 1926 to Tom Riddle Sr and Merope Gaunt. Through his mother, he is the last descendant of the famous ancient wizard Salazar Slytherin. Through his father, he is a descendant of the Riddles of Little Hangleton, a muggle family. His mother, Merope, had used some magical means to persuade the elder Riddle to marry her. Later on, she and her unborn child were abandoned by Riddle.

One New Year's Eve night, Merope wandered into an orphanage in London when she suspected she was about to enter labour. After giving birth, Merope asked the matron to name her son Tom, after his father, and Marvolo, after his maternal grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt, and died within the hour.

Riddle was raised at the orphanage. From an early age, he showed great magical abilities-- primarily psychokinesis-- and extraordinary insensitivity. At school, he was very gifted and showed a great thirst for knowledge, and he was previously known as a bully who tortured other children in his orphanage largely for fun.

It was Dumbledore's duty to visit Riddle when he reached the age of 11 and invite him to study at Hogwarts. By that time he already showed great potential as a magic-user; he could move things with his thought, make animals do his bidding, speak with snakes, cause people pain, and, in his own words, "make bad things happen to people who annoy[ed him]." However, he also displayed cruelty, a disregard for others, a need for absolute and total control and a lack of moral judgement.

In his first meeting with Dumbledore, Riddle was seen to be a sharply intelligent and calculating boy with a cold, smoothly expressionless face intended to prevent others guessing what he was thinking. He was sure that he was born to be different, and detested his name "Tom", which he deemed to be too common. He also demonstrated a hunger for power when Dumbledore proved that magic was real to him, by setting his wardrobe on fire and then extinguishing the flames, without any harm done.

His magic wand was made of yew, a wood associated with death and rebirth, which has innate destructive workings and is well suited for use in transfiguration. It is 13½ inches long and has the feather of a phoenix at its core. The wand's maker, Mr Ollivander, got this feather from Dumbledore's pet Phoenix, Fawkes. Fawkes gave just one other feather to be used in a wand, and ironically this wand "chose" to belong to Harry Potter.

Riddle attended Hogwarts from 1938 to 1945 and was sorted into Slytherin house. He was a gifted student, and became a staff favourite. He was made a Prefect and eventually the Head Boy. However, Dumbledore never forgot the enjoyment in cruelty that Riddle had confessed to him on their first meeting, and never fully trusted him. During holidays he was obliged to return to the orphanage, which he hated. He quickly gathered a group of followers, particularly fellow Slytherin students, whom he referred to as "friends", but for whom he is said to have felt little or no compassion. Many of these people, and later on, their sons, were to become what he termed Death Eaters; he is shown to have at least a two generation influence over the Avery and Lestrange families. Riddle and his friends started their trouble-making while at Hogwarts; Dumbledore states that during the time they were at school, a series of incidents occurred to which the answers where never satisfactorily linked. It was around this time that Riddle began using the name "Lord Voldemort" among his followers; "I am Lord Voldemort" is an anagram of his full name, Tom Marvolo Riddle (see name and anagram).

The summer before his fifth year at Hogwarts (or, as Dumbledore phrased it, in the summer of his sixteenth year), Riddle returned to Little Hangleton, hoping to meet his maternal grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt, and confirm that he was a descendant of the Gaunts, and, through them, Slytherin. Instead, he met his uncle Morfin, learning of his grandfather's death and his father's non-magical nature. He stole an heirloom ring from Morfin, and, upon learning that his father was still alive and had abandoned his mother, murdered him as well as his father's Muggle parents. He framed Morfin for the murders by modifying his memory so that Morfin believed he was the murderer. Morfin confessed this to the Ministry of Magic, and was eventually found responsible by trial. Frank Bryce, the Riddles' gardener, fell under suspicion from the muggle police, as the door to the Riddle House had not been forced and Bryce was the only person with keys to the house. The cause of death could not be determined, however, due to the fact that the Killing Curse leaves the victim lifeless with no signs of any struggle, wound, or medical problem, and Bryce was released, though he was regarded with suspicion by the other villagers until his death in 1994 at the hand of Voldemort. In this way, two men were blamed for the Riddle murders and Riddle kept the Gaunt's ring and returned to Hogwarts for his fifth year.

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An illustration of Tom Riddle reading just before his meeting with Albus Dumbledore.

During Riddle's fifth year at Hogwarts, in 1943, he opened the Chamber of Secrets, created by his ancestor Salazar Slytherin, which led to the death of a muggle-born student named Myrtle. Only Dumbledore ever suspected him,Template:HP2 as Riddle had exercised his considerable charm over most of the other staff, including Potions Master Horace Slughorn.Template:HP6 Instead, third-year student Rubeus Hagrid was framed for the incident by Riddle, and consequently expelled.

In his fifth to seventh years at Hogwarts he became even more obsessed with immortality. Some time in either his fifth year, or the first term of his sixth year, following one of Professor Slughorn's "Slug Club" meetings, parties to which Slughorn only invited popular and talented students, Riddle questioned Slughorn about Horcruxes. Riddle successfully fooled the professor into thinking that it was only for school work or for "further knowledge", and Slughorn explained why and how Horcruxes were created.

After Hogwarts

After completing his education, Riddle sought to become a teacher at Hogwarts; however, Dumbledore was averse to it, as he speculated that Riddle had ulterior motives in seeking the job. The Headmaster Armando Dippet had also turned Riddle down, but only because he had felt that the young man was not old enough.

Riddle therefore took a job at Borgin and Burkes, purveyors of dark magical objects. In the course of his work there, he came into contact with two relics of the Hogwarts founders. Salazar Slytherin's locket had once been an heirloom of the Gaunt family, but had been bought by Burke for a tiny sum of ten galleons when Merope Gaunt had been homeless and starving. It was sold to Hepzibah Smith. One day, when Riddle visited Hepzibah to make a request from Mr. Burke regarding a piece of goblin-made armor, Hepzibah showed Voldemort the locket, as well as her own family heirloom, a cup bearing the Hufflepuff badger which had once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff,Template:HP6 of whom Hepzibah was a distant descendant. Riddle, it is presumed, murdered Hepzibah two days later, after stealing the two artifacts. Again, he implanted a false memory so that someone else would admit her responsibility, this time Hepzibah’s house-elf, Hokey. Dumbledore later theorised that Riddle intended to use the relics to create Horcruxes, containers for portions of his soul which might protect him from death. Having stolen the artifacts, he left wizarding Britain, and was not heard of again for ten years - by which time, the identity of Tom Marvolo Riddle was no more.

Tom Riddle's Diary

In the autumn of 1992, Death Eater Lucius Malfoy secretly sent one of Voldemort's Horcruxes – the diary kept by the young Tom Marvolo Riddle, which Malfoy had been entrusted with shortly before the fall of Voldemort – into Hogwarts by passing it secretly into the possession of student Ginny Weasley. By means of this sinister diary, the memory of Riddle managed to manipulate Ginny into opening up her soul to him, allowing him to sporadically possess her and to open the Chamber of Secrets once again, nearly killing a number of students. Riddle then tried to drain Ginny's life-force to allow himself to regain physical form outside the diary. He was defeated, however, by Harry Potter, and the diary was destroyed, along with the Memory of Riddle. It is not known what would have happened had Ginny been consumed by this past version of Tom Riddle, but author J.K. Rowling has noted it would have strengthened the present-day Voldemort. It is unclear if Lucius Malfoy was aware that the diary was a Horcrux, or if he intended to facilitate the return of Lord Voldemort through its deployment- his principle aims were to get rid of a Dark item, have Dumbledore thrown out of Hogwarts, and discredit his enemy Arthur Weasley by planting it on his daughter (thereby ruining Weasley's reputation, and devastating Weasley through the loss of his daughter in the process).

Traits

Both men named Tom Riddle were notably handsome in their youth, enjoying hollow cheeks, patrician bones, dark eyes and black hair. The elder Riddle's appearance at the time of his death is unknown; that of his son degenerated as he sank into the Dark Arts. They also shared certain attitudes regarding class: both exhibited scornful attitudes towards those of lower status than themselves (the elder towards 'the old tramp' Marvolo Gaunt, the younger towards Muggles and non-Pureblood magicians). The younger also killed his father and grandparents partially through disgust at their lack of magical ability or knowledge.

Tom Marvolo Riddle has also been shown to dismiss information he considers unimportant. For example, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets he forgets that the tears of the phoenix have healing powers, leading him to dismiss Dumbledore's phoenix as 'a songbird' - much to his detriment.

There are some notable similarities between the Tom Marvolo Riddle and Harry Potter - for example, both were (effectively) orphans, raised in unhappy conditions with Muggles until they were admitted into Hogwarts. There are also some physical similarities: both have black hair, thin faces, and possess the ability to speak to snakes (although if Dumbledore has guessed right, Voldemort unwittingly gave this ability to Harry). Both felt more at home at Hogwarts than anywhere else in the world. In fact, Dumbledore once noted that Riddle probably had more profound feelings of attachment for Hogwarts than he ever had for anyone or anything. However, where Riddle was a calculating and manipulative boy, Harry is far more sincere and rash.

Superficially, the inability of the younger Riddle to empathise with others appears to be shared with his father (who abandoned his wife and unborn child). But this is unlikely to be the case. Tom Riddle Sr has been shown to care for the attractive girl he once rode with (Cecilia), and justified his abandonment of Merope through having been bewitched - moreover, abandonment may be a sign of callousness, but not necessarily of an inability to relate. Tom Marvolo Riddle, by contrast, has been clearly stated and shown by Rowling to be a sociopath, entirely incapable of relating to others, caring for them, or understanding their emotions. This condition is likely to stem from being raised in an institution (an orphanage), which meant that he never experienced parental love, no matter how well-meaning the staff and directors of that institution (who largely left him to himself whilst he was a baby, because he rarely cried); his knowledge, from an early age, that he was different to the other children would also have thrown up a barrier to forming relationships with them during that important period of his life.

It is difficult to know how much "nature" rather than "nurture" contributed to Riddle's personality. His maternal ancestors, the Gaunt family, were described by Dumbledore as having "a vein of instability and violence which flourished through the ages" Template:HBPdue to inbreeding. His paternal forebears, the Riddles, were noted in passing in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as being disliked in their home village of Little Hangleton for their arrogance and snobbery. However, Rowling once claimed that his motives and actions were his own and chosen; this would not be the case if he were simply doomed by his family.

Representation in film

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the memory of the former Hogwarts student, Tom Marvolo Riddle, is played by Christian Coulson.

Tom Riddle Sr is first mentioned in the Goblet of Fire book, where his murder is recounted; however, he is not actually seen. The story was not told in the film, though Riddle Sr was mentioned, and his grave shown.

Both the father and son appear in the Halfblood Prince novel: Harry and Dumbledore make visits into others' memories containing information of young Tom Marvolo Riddle, including a memory featuring the elder Riddle. The actor who played the young Riddle in Chamber of Secrets, Christian Coulson, has expressed a desire to reprise the role if called upon by producers. There are no indications as to the casting of Tom Riddle Sr, or of the eleven year old Tom Marvolo.