Order Only: Private Message to Professors Dumbledore and Sprout, and Madam Pomfrey, Draco, and Harry

[alt_hermione]

This might be a really strange question but do any of you happen to know how Voldemort came to know about Hogwarts and to become a student?

The thing is, we found the letter at the Gaunt place, near Little Hangleton, right, and it suggests rather strongly that his mother was from there. But Hydra remembers that the young Tom Riddle, the one in the diary, told her he grew up in a Muggle orphanage in London. (Old London, that is, before all the Muggles were made to sleep and everything.)

So, someone must have been sent from the school to tell him he was really a wizard and he could come and be a student, mustn't they? Only if it was Professor Flitwick then I know he's been dead for a long time, and if it's Professor Slughorn, he doesn't want to be found, so maybe it was someone else? Or maybe they told one of you about finding him?

Because we think the next place to look is where he was raised, you see. So if any of you know anything about that, it might help.

Comments

[alt_poppy]

Hogwarts sends owls to the homes of young witches or wizards who are to be admitted the next autumn. In the days when Muggleborns were among those entering each year, the letters went to their homes just the same. I should imagine the birds saw no barrier in delivering to an institution like an orphanage.

If the communication was not managed in the usual way in such a case, it would have been because of strictures imposed by the Statute of Secrecy. I can't speak to that possibility, but Albus could.

[alt_harry]

Sally-Anne says that her mum's parents were visited by Headmistress McGonagall. (Though she was Professor McGonagall at the time.)

So at least sometimes there were visitors.

[alt_albus]

Poppy is quite right that owls were the usual method but the orphanage complicated matters.

I was sent to speak to him, and arrange his attendance with Mrs Cole, who oversaw the orphanage.

I do not think you will find much there - it is a place he abhorred - but I will write up my notes for you, of what I remember.

[alt_hermione]

The thing is that the site we found in Little Hangleton had been blasted to the ground. So maybe he went back precisely because he hated the place so much, and if that's so, then he could have gone back to the orphanage for the same reason, to destroy it.

The big question is whether we'll learn or find anything by going there. I mean, that shack wasn't destroyed, just that old house (or what we were told was an old house). On the other hand, the cabin had obviously been ransacked. So maybe he did hide something there and someone else found it and stole it. (Which could make tracking down whatever it was really difficult.)

But we won't know that until we try, anyway.