The House of Gaunt

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The House of Gaunt is a fictional family of wizards and witches in the Harry Potter series of books and films by J.K. Rowling.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Listed below are the names of the last members of the now extinct family:

Marvolo Gaunt (? – c. 1927) The last Gaunt Family patriarch. His wife is unknown: it is likely that she died prior to the arrest of the Gaunt men.
Morfin Gaunt (c. 1900s – c. 1950) Son of Marvolo Gaunt and the brother of Merope.
Merope Riddle (née Gaunt) (c. 1907 – December 31, 1926) Daughter of Marvolo and mother of Tom Marvolo Riddle. She married Tom Riddle Sr.
Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort (December 31, 1926 – present) Last surviving member; infamous Dark wizard and leader of the Death Eaters. Distaff heir of the family; son of Merope and Tom Riddle Sr.

The Gaunts are recorded as being descended from Salazar Slytherin, one of the founders of Hogwarts School and also renowned as one of the most prominent European Wizarding families; Parseltongue appears to be a particular family trait.

Salazar Slytherin

Thomas Riddle

Mary Riddle

Marvolo Gaunt

Tom Riddle Sr

Merope Gaunt

Morfin Gaunt

Tom Marvolo Riddle
(Lord Voldemort)

Harry Potter character
Marvolo Gaunt
Gender	Male
Hair colour	Unknown colour (short, scrubby)
Eye colour	Brown
Parentage	Pure-blood
First appearance	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

A once proud, wealthy and influential wizarding family, the Gaunts were reduced to poverty by their own reckless mismanagement of their considerable wealth, and to borderline insanity by inbreeding.

At the time of Merope and Morfin Gaunt, the last known members of the ancient clan were living in a miserable, dirty little cottage near the village of Little Hangleton. Most of the land in the area was owned by the local landowner, Riddle, who lived with his wife and his son Tom in the Riddle House. However, it is probable that the stone hut in which the last Gaunts lived was not the family home of the Gaunts.

The Gaunt Family was ruled by the patriarch Marvolo Gaunt, who lived with his son Morfin and daughter Merope (his wife was not present, and her absence unexplained). He treated both of his children with contempt and viciousness, but reserved his bitterest scorn for his daughter Merope. Merope showed little aptitude for magic, but this was attributed by Albus Dumbledore to her complete domination and mental torture by her father. The family would frequently converse between themselves using parseltongue, the language of snakes. The ability to do this was inherited from Salazar Slytherin (apparently their earliest traceable ancestor), and it seems that it was common among the Gaunts to have this rare ability. Indeed, Morfin, the most visibly mentally unstable of them all, is never shown speaking in any language other than Parseltongue, even to outsiders, and it's possible he couldn't speak English. The Gaunts were fanatical believers in blood purity and therefore as a rule married only their cousins and other pure blood wizards. They were not only concerned with maintaining their pure blood, but even more concerned with maintaining their Slytherin lineage - this perhaps explains why they married into their own family. The continuous cousin-marriage (leading to inbreeding) and what appears to have been severe isolation led to a diminished family of very disturbed and antisocial individuals.

The importance of the Gaunt family is through their last living descendant, Lord Voldemort. Marvolo Gaunt (who actually resembled Slytherin) never knew his grandson, but the bitterness he expressed in his treatment of his own children led indirectly to Voldemort's broken childhood and his later revenge against them. The family story is told in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

It is unknown if Marvolo and his children attended Hogwarts. To legally possess wands, they would be required to have passed at least one OWL exam, and thus be an 'Ordinary Wizard' - given Marvolo's pronounced dislike of Ministry bureaucracy, it is unlikely that, had he and his children been taught at home, he would have gone out of his way to get the children tested, or paid any attention to Ministry demands for them to be tested or to submit their wands. One might note that Merope had learnt to make a love potion — a Sixth Year potion — and was capable of skilfully making it. However, the sheer squalidness of the Gaunt household suggests that they were unaware of basic household charms, or at least were not sufficiently interested in cleanliness to use them. The question, then, of the Gaunts' education is unresolved.

[edit] Demise of the House of Gaunt

Harry Potter character
Merope Gaunt
Gender	Female
Hair colour	Unknown ("lank and dull")
Eye colour	Unknown ("stared in opposite directions")
Parentage	Pure-blood
First appearance	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Morfin Gaunt enjoyed using his magic against villagers, and this caused him to fall foul of the Ministry of Magic since performing magic in front of Muggles (and particularly using magic to harm Muggles) is considered a crime. Around 1925, Bob Ogden, Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad visited the Gaunt home to summon Morfin to a hearing at court, but instead found himself in a fight with Morfin and his father. He returned very soon with reinforcements, with the result that both Marvolo and Morfin were arrested. Marvolo spent six months in Azkaban for assaulting Ministry officials, and Morfin was sentenced to three years for assault of Ministry officials as well as his record of Muggle attacks.

The two Gaunt men did not treat Merope well, verbally abusing her often and calling her a Squib, a thief and a slut. Merope had nearly been strangled to death by her father after he learned she loved a Muggle, Tom Riddle Sr, the dark-haired and handsome son of the local landowner.

The imprisonment of her brother and father finally left Merope free to live her own life. More than likely by means of a love potion, Merope gained the love (or at least the romantic attention) of Tom Riddle. They married in December 1925 and she became pregnant within three months of the wedding. At that point she seems to have stopped administering the love potion because she grew tired of living a lie. Dumbledore believed that she hoped Tom would have really fallen in love with her, or even that he would stay for the sake of their unborn child. She was quite wrong, as he left her, going back to his home and rambling about having been "hoodwinked" (Dumbledore implies that Tom Riddle Sr knew he had been bewitched, but did not want the village to think he was mad). The gossip of Little Hangleton was that Merope had told Tom she was pregnant with his child, but was pregnant with another man's child, thus Tom returning, and claiming to be "hoodwinked" as a result.

Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. All she had with her at that time was a heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Slytherin and was an heirloom of her house. She sold it to Caractacus Burke for 10 Galleons, either not understanding its true value (the locket was priceless) or having simply ceased to care. By the time she was about to give birth she was again destitute. She stumbled her way to Stockwell Orphanage on New Year's Eve of 1926 and gave birth to a son. She told the matron, Mrs Cole, that her son would be named Tom after his father and Marvolo after her father, and that his last name would be Riddle. Merope died an hour after giving birth to Tom.

Harry Potter character
Morfin Gaunt
Gender	Male
Eye colour	Dark, small, misaligned
Parentage	Pure-blood
First appearance	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Marvolo Gaunt returned home to find his house thick with dust and a note from Merope explaining what she had done. Dumbledore speculated that either the shock of his daughter's desertion with a Muggle or his own inability to care for himself without help caused his early death. In any event, he was dead before his son Morfin was released from prison. His signet ring passed to Morfin as his son and the next (and last) head of the House of Gaunt.

In 1942, when he was a teenager and a student at Hogwarts, Tom Marvolo Riddle went to Little Hangleton to seek out his family and his birthright. He never told Morfin his identity, though Morfin thought that he did look a lot like the Muggle who married his (Morfin's) sister. Morfin did not realise that young Riddle was actually his own nephew. They had a short conversation as Morfin explained how the elder Riddle had left Merope and returned to his own home. The story enraged Tom, who immobilised his uncle with a stunning spell and took his wand. He went to the Riddle House in the evening and used the killing curse, Avada Kedavra, on his father and grandparents, thus destroying his immediate paternal family. He took Morfin's signet ring — the last heirloom possessed by the Gaunts — and afterwards wore it openly at Hogwarts.

The muggle police conducting the investigation into the murders at first blamed the Riddles' gardener, Frank Bryce, only to be forced through lack of evidence to release him. However, on investigation, the Ministry of Magic immediately knew that it was a wizard's murder, for the curse does not leave any sign of damage on the body (and the Ministry automatically detects and investigates use of curses in Muggle areas). Morfin, the obvious suspect, was taken to the Ministry for questioning, whereupon he proudly claimed that he had killed the Riddles; for this, he was sent to Azkaban. When, after the disappearance of young Riddle with two priceless treasures, Albus Dumbledore began tracking down his past, he visited Morfin in Azkaban to gain information about Riddle. He successfully extracted Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, and realised that Riddle had altered his uncle’s memories so that Morfin believed he had committed the Riddle murders. In this way Tom Marvolo escaped from the village undetected, while two men were blamed for his actions. Dumbledore tried to get Morfin released, but he died before the decision could be made. As he was the last male of his family, the ancient House of Gaunt became extinct with Morfin's death.

Voldemort used the family's heirloom possessions (he later obtained the gold locket) as two of his six horcruxes. The signet ring that was a horcrux was disarmed and was in Dumbledore's possession, but the locket is apparently still at large by the end of book 6, and the last person known to have had it was the mysterious R.A.B..

[edit] Derivation of Names

Merope is the fifth brightest star of the Pleiades, a cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus. According to myth, Merope was a minor goddess and nymph who fell in love with a mortal and later regretted her decision, and dimmed herself to hide her shame from her sisters. This corresponds closely to Merope's story. The name 'Merope' means 'Bee Mask' or 'Honey Like' (i.e. 'Eloquent' — profoundly unsuitable for Merope Gaunt). It is an interesting note that the pureblooded Black family tend to name their children after stars (especially when one considers that another mythological Merope was loved — and raped — by Orion), but though all the pureblood families are thought to be related, the Blacks are never mentioned in the Gaunt family history. However, we do not know anything about the Gaunts who existed after Salazar Slytherin and before Marvolo Gaunt, and it is highly possible that there were Black-Gaunt marriages at some period (as they were both old and wealthy families who favoured blood-purity), although not in either family's recent history.

"Morfin" is an alternate form of "Morfey", an old Anglo-Norman surname that means "ill-fated", or "ill-omened". The name thus has superficial (and misleading) similarities to the name "Malfoy."

"Gaunt" may have one (or both) of two meanings:

"Gaunt" can mean "emaciated and haggard; drawn" or "bleak and desolate; barren" (American Heritage Dictionary, [1]), which would certainly seem to describe the Gaunt family situation.
The "House of Gaunt" could also be a reference to John of Gaunt, a major noble in 14th c. England (and father of Henry IV). This interpretation could be consistent with Marvolo Gaunt's claim to have the family ring of the Peverells, a noble family attested from the time of the Norman invasion (indeed, believed to be descended from William the Conqueror himself). It is also notable that descriptions applied to earlier members of John of Gaunt's family, the Plantagenets of Anjou (as being ruthless, sly, intelligent, terrifying, capable of excellent strategy but capable of spoiling plans through their immense fury), could be applied to Lord Voldemort, the last scion of the magical Gaunt family. It is also interesting to note that the Plantagenets were reputed to be descended from the Devil via his daughter Melusine (who fits the Gaunt naming pattern) and a Count of Anjou: it would be an appropriate lineage for the family of the Dark Lord Voldemort.

"Gaunt" and "Gaunt House" are also respectively a name and chapter title in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, a satirical comedy of early 19th century English society. It is the title of Lord Steyne's sons (see Primogeniture) and "Gaunt House" is the chapter describing the Lord Steyne's residences and family relations.

The presence of royal Muggle lineage in the Gaunt bloodline would appear to contradict Marvolo's claims that the Gaunt line is pure-blood; however, Rowling has stated that there are no, and have never been, any truly pure-blood magical families. This makes the claim of being descended from the Peverells plausible, and the idea of being descended from John of Gaunt or the Plantagenets possible. It is also possible that in the Harry Potter universe, the Peverells were secretly wizards: one can hardly imagine Marvolo Gaunt boasting of Muggle heritage. The Gaunts seem to have had a very noble past history and lineage; whether this makes their corruption, decline, and ignominious ending tragic or deserved, is, however, a matter of personal opinion.

According to JK Rowling, Lord Voldemort is the last surviving descendant of Salazar Slytherin. This is extraordinarily unlikely to be the case: in a thousand years, the family would have spread itself enough to permeate most of the pure-blood families (even when the cousin-marriages of the Gaunts are considered), especially when the existence of illegitimacies is acknowledged. The Gaunt status probably rested on their being the last recognisable descendants of Salazar Slytherin. Rowling's statements are easy to explain however: when the 'extinctions' of noble families are talked of, distaff descents are rarely considered, and illegitimate descents even more rarely. In addition, one might consider the case of Harry Potter's family: Rowling has stated that he has no living relatives save the Dursleys, but not only is this logically absurd (he will have second, third, fourth cousins, etc), but Rowling herself may have demonstrated a relationship between Harry and the Black family, whereby at the time of Voldemort's fall, Harry still had a living great-uncle and great-aunt (although this possibility is still disputed, due to lack of confirmation and problems of various ages: see Black Family Tree). It is therefore entirely possible that in referring to Slytherin's descent, as in referring to Harry Potter's family, Rowling has simplified the matter, and thus misrepresented it.