Order Only: The Letter

[alt_hermione]

We reconstructed the letter, we think. Draco and Mr Snape and a little help from Sirius. Anything in brackets was something we decided from context, but there are places we just couldn't make out what it said.

Father,

I don't know if [you'll] ever come back, but if you do, I [will] be gone. I [made] a mistake and tried to make Tom (?) love me. But he'll never love [me] the way I love him. I [ ] him about the baby and he [laughed]. LAUGHED. I thought if I [shifted the] (Mr Snape thinks it's lifted) spell, he would remember something of the way [we fell] (? (Sirius thinks it's felt.). But it wasn't [right?]. He doesn't love me.

But you never loved me, either.

You've always wanted the [Grant] line to continue. It will, but it won't be pure. If it's a boy, I'm naming him [Tom Marvolo], to honour our ancestors, but all I'll tell him is about a [muggle] father who had [grateful], and [king], and [winsome]. And he's going to know love.

Don't try to find me. Not that you will.

Mercre (still not sure about that?)

We're still working on it but that's at least enough to figure out what the letter was about. I've never heard of anyone named Mercre, though. Maybe it was Mercure? But that doesn't make any better sense.

Comments

[alt_draco]

And if you can't tell, we've decided that "Mercre" is Voldemort's mother, and that the other Tom is his muggle father, who he's named for. Sounds to us like she decided to enchant him into loving her.

I still wonder if the tell him about a muggle father who had is actually tell him about a muggle father who was. There are definitely three letters in the word but only the letter "a" in the middle is fully legible.

[alt_hermione]

Yes, and Draco figured out that it had to be 'Tom Marvolo'.

Oh, I think you're right. But then 'grateful' and 'king' and 'winsome' don't make much sense.... OH! KIND.

Hang on, I think....Draco, where's the original?

[alt_draco]

I think you left it next to that massive potions book you got for your birthday.

"Grateful" is definitely wrong. He LAUGHED at her, after all. But then why would she think him kind?

[alt_hermione]

Found it.

No, it's not a 'G' it's an 'H', I think. If the stem of the r is part of that.... handsome? And the one we thought was -some was the -ful.... wonderful. Handsome and kind and wonderful, maybe.

Must have been while he was under the love potion.

[alt_draco]

And that's how she preferred to remember him, enchanted and enthralled.

Well she does have one thing in common with her son: unscrupulous actions in the face of being denied what she wants.

[alt_evelyn]

How very sad. She was surrounded by people who didn't love her.

[alt_hydra]

I don't find it a bit sad. Not for her, anyway. She enchanted a muggle to fall in love with her against his will.

It's not any different from rape.

[alt_evelyn]

Oh.

Yes.

I suppose I was mostly thinking about how she hadn't felt loved by her father, so she must not have known what it was really like.

But you're right.

What she did was awful, regardless.

[alt_sally_anne]

'Was graceful'? Could that be it?

[alt_pansy]

Ooooh. Yes. I could see that.

[alt_daphne]

How fascinating.

And if I'm understanding Draco, this letter was written by the Lord Protector's mother (who was a witch) to her father (the Lord Protector's grandfather!), more or less disclosing that she was pregnant with a muggle's child. So, it sounds as if her family wouldn't have approved, but she didn't care that the father-to-be was a muggle and loved him anyway? Only enchanting a muggle to love you hardly denotes respect, does it?

It's so strange to think of where Voldemort might have come from, and to picture him as a baby. Who was loved by his mother. What happened to her, I wonder?

[alt_hydra]

Well he told me that he didn't grow up with any parents and came from an orphanage, but that it didn't matter because Hogwarts was his real home.

I mean, that's what Tom told me in the diary. He said it to cheer me up, because I was feeling sorry for myself about Mummy. I don't think he was lying, either. He didn't always lie.

[alt_hermione]

Hydra, did he ever tell you which orphanage? Or where it was?

Or did you ever see anything that might give us a clue? I think by retracing his life we'll have our best chances to find where he's hidden these horcrux things.

[alt_hydra]

He said he grew up in London in the time between the wars.

The two great wars the muggles had, I suppose? I don't know the name of the orphanage, though.

[alt_ron]

Voldemort probably ate her as soon as he was born. Came out with vicious fangs and killed her on the spot.

I mean, that seems like the sort of baby he'd be, doesn't it?

You're right. It's hard to imagine him a baby.

[alt_daphne]

Oh, now babies can't come out evil and vicious, Ron. Something makes them that way, either they're mistreated or have horrible adults around them. Not that it's any excuse, mind you, but there's always an explanation.

If Hydra's right and he grew up in an orphanage, well, that's not any sort of real home, is it?

[alt_sally_anne]

Megan Jones got raised by a horrid old lady and didn't have any sort of real home.

She didn't exactly turn out brilliantly but she's not the Lord Protector, either.

Hydra grew up with a real home but she had Bellatrix Lestrange as a mother. And she's brave and kind and decent.

I mean yeah, it's easier to grow up into a good person when you're being raised by good people but at some point you're not tragic, you're just awful.

[alt_daphne]

Certainly, but it's hard to determine where tragic ends and awful begins, isn't it? I mean, yes, I see that in the case of the Lord Protector he wouldn't have turned out decent no matter how he was raised, or by who, but he may have been far less dangerous, if things had been different.

But I suppose there's no point in speculating, since we'll never know.

[alt_alice]

Nicely done, both of you.

I wonder about that last name of Grant. It's not familiar, but then again, if the line truly ended with her, it wouldn't be. Bill, anything in the records that might corroborate things?

[alt_sally_anne]

My mum's first boyfriend had the last name Grant. But he was a muggle.

Are you sure it was Grant?

[alt_draco]

No, that's why it's still in brackets.

Five letters, starts with G, looks like G_ant, though the "a" might be an "o."

[alt_sally_anne]

Grant
Glant
Giant
Gnant
Guant
Goant
Ghant

Gaint
Gaunt

hmm

I really doubt it's Grant. I mean the more I think about it the more I'm sure I've run into wizards with that last name, too. Oh, you know what, there's a Grant on one of the trophies. It's not even all that old.

[alt_hermione]

WAIT.

[alt_hermione]

It's GAUNT.

I knew I'd seen it somewhere. There's a book in Sirius's father's study called Root and Branch: A Genealogical History of the Founders' Families and it mentions the Gaunts. 'A family that always claimed, but never sufficiently proved, its provenance as a branch of the Slytherin line. However, they are documented to have links to the Peverell family as early as the 1200s.'

Phineas Nigellus might know something about them, but he's sleeping. And he's ever so cross when someone wakes him up.

[alt_bill]

Yes, definitely Gaunt. Good one, Hermione.

I'll see what I can find in Records, although most everything related to the LP have been pulled.

[alt_sally_anne]

'Mercre' seems like it ought to be 'Mercy' -- that's a name sometimes, a very old fashioned one.

It would be a dead IRONIC one for Voldemort's mum. But could it be Mercy?

[alt_draco]

I'm almost positive it has six letters, though.

[alt_sally_anne]

Marcie
Margie
Mellie
Merrie
Monica

None of those really sound like a pureblood girl's name though.

[alt_sirius]

Mellie sounds more like a petname, and she doesn't seem the type whose father called her something affectionate.

Some particularly old, proud purebloods don't even like to shorten their children's names.

Let's see. Family members, namesakes, constellations, stars, famous wizards or witches, gods or goddesses, virtues.... Those are typical for pureblood given names.

[alt_hydra]

And flowers/plants, too. Narcissa, Pansy, Lavender.

For stars, I can think of Maia and Merope, of the Pleiades.

[alt_sirius]

Well, I think your aunt was named for the myth, but point taken.

[alt_hermione]

If what we thought was 'c' was really 'o', then the 'r' could be a 'p', easily. Merope. Merope Gaunt. Only it was M.R. so... Merope Riddle? Did they actually get married while she had him enchanted, do you think?

[alt_draco]

Possibly. Or else she was swoonily writing M.R. in hopes that they'd marry someday. You know, much the way Padma likely scribbled Padma Malfoy on her spare parchments in moments of girlish fantasy.

[alt_ron]

Oh, I'd pay for one of those parchments. Think how it'd make her squirm to know that might get sent off to one of the gossip mags... New Councilwitch Lusts for Outlaw Traitor.

[alt_pansy]

Hah! Secret Passions, Forbidden Romance, truly the stuff of legends.

[alt_luna]

Wasn't Merope of the Pleiades the one who is dimmer than the others? Because she hid her face in shame because she married a mortal lover?

Call it a hunch...but I'll bet that was her name.

[alt_sally_anne]

I mean, from a family that would claim to be descended from Salazar Slytherin, anyway!