vitruvians:100 Historical Figures in the Wizarding World - 36-37/100Merope Gaunt & Tom Riddle Sr
vitruvians:100 Historical Figures in the Wizarding World - 36-37/100Merope Gaunt & Tom Riddle Sr. After being left alone in the Gaunt family hovel, Merope bewitched the Muggle boy she had a crush on, Tom Riddle. But he would return to the village some months later muttering about being ‘hoodwinked’ and ‘taken in’ by the local tramp’s daughter.Quite how Merope tricked the handsome and wealthy Muggle boy into wedlock is unclear but Dumbledore suspects a love potion rather than the Imperius Curse. How and why Riddle Sr escaped Merope’s enchantment and left her destitute and pregnant is also unclear.Another of Dumbledore’s highly plausible theories is that Merope was so in love with Riddle that she couldn’t bear to enslave him with magic long-term, and hoped he would learn to return her feelings.Evidently this didn’t happen and Riddle returned to his family home without ever troubling himself to discover what become of her – to his cost 16 years later, when their son murdered him and the rest of the Riddle family. -- source link