Merope Riddle

Merope Gaunt (1906-1926) is Lord Voldemort's mother. She is a Parselmouth and a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin.

The family all believe in the supremacy of pure-blood wizards, and have long practiced marrying only other pure-bloods. This resulted in an extremely in-bred family, apparently suffering from hereditary insanity as a result. Once rich and influential, the family is now reduced to poverty and live in a ruined cottage in Little Hangleton.

Terrorised by her father, Marvolo Gaunt, Merope exhibited little magical talent in her early years and was thought by Marvolo to be a Squib; however, this was not the case. When her father and her brother, Morfin, were taken to Azkaban prison for breaking Wizarding law, she created a love potion (most likely, but she could have place him under the imperius curse) and slipped some of it to Tom Riddle Sr., with whom she was secretly in love, causing him to become infatuated with her. They married soon afterward and Merope became pregnant. At some point, she decided to stop giving Riddle the love potion, hoping that he was truly in love with her at that point so he would stay. Unfortunately, Riddle left her then and went back to living with his parents.

After Riddle left, Merope went to London and sold the only valuable object she had &mdash; a locket of Slytherin's &mdash; to Caractacus Burke, because she was in desperate need of gold. On New Year's Eve, she arrived at an orphanage and gave birth to her son, Tom Marvolo Riddle, dying soon after.

Role in the Stories
Marvolo Gaunt lived with his son Morfin Gaunt and daughter Merope Gaunt. His son was in the habit of using magic in front of villagers, which brought him into conflict with the Ministry of Magic. Bob Ogden, head of magical law enforcement, visited the Gaunts to summon Morfin to a hearing, but the Gaunts resisted, forcibly ejecting Ogden from their cottage. He returned, but now arrested both Morfin and his father. Marvolo was sentenced to 6 months in Azkaban prison for assaulting the officers, but his son received a three year sentence.

Merope had been badly treated by her father and brother, and took the opportunity of their absence to escape. She had fallen in love with the son of the local squire, Tom Riddle, and now used magic to make him fall in love with her. They shortly married, and she became pregnant. Albus Dumbledore speculated that she then chose to stop giving the love potion to Tom, hoping that he would stay with her. Unfortunately he did not, and she ended up homeless, pregnant and penniless on the streets of London. Her only possession of any value was a family locket which had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin. She sold this to Caractacus Burke for a tiny fraction of its true worth. Finally, she ended up at an orphanage, where she gave birth to a son, shortly before she died. The boy was to be named Tom after his father, and Marvolo after his Grandfather. Tom Sr. returned to his family, apparently unaware that he had a child.

Marvolo returned to his home to discover it abandoned. He was enraged by his daughter defection and marriage to a Muggle. Either because of this, or simply because he was unable to care for himself, he died before his son was released from prison.

When Tom Jr. was a teenage student at Hogwarts he came to Little Hangleton to find his family. He met Morfin, who thought that this stranger reminded him of Merope's husband, but did not recognise him. He told Tom the story, infuriating Tom in the process. Tom went to the Riddles' home where he killed Tom Sr. and his parents, using the Avada Kedavra curse. He returned to Morfin and altered his memory, so that Morfin believed he himself had killed the Riddles. The Ministry of Magic investigated the crime, found Morfin who freely admitted to it, and sentenced him to life imprisonment in Azkaban. Voldemort took the family signet ring, bearing the Peverell crest, which he afterwards wore openly at Hogwarts.

The Riddles had a caretaker, Frank Bryce. The muggle police initially arrested him, but could find no cause of death for the Riddles, so were forced to release him. Many years later Voldemort returned to the house when he was attempting to restore his body. Bryce stumbled upon him after he saw lights in the empty house. For his long service to the family, he too was murdered by its last member, Voldemort.

Dumbledore discovered this story by speaking to Morfin in prison, and determined that his memory had been tampered with. Unfortunately Morfin was by then extremely weak and died before he could be released.

Voldemort used several objects to create Horcruxes, in his quest for eternal life. These are objects containing and safeguarding a portion of a person's soul. Three of these objects were the family ring, Slytherin's locket, and Tom Riddle's diary.