Merope Riddle

Merope Gaunt is Lord Voldemort's mother. She is a Parselmouth and a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin.

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 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.