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. 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 (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 Lord Voldemort.
Thomas Riddle (c. 1880-1942) The last Riddle Family patriarch. Married Mary (of unknown family). Father of Tom Riddle.
Mary Riddle (maiden name unknown) (c. 1883-1942) Married to Thomas Riddle. Mother of Tom Riddle.
Tom Riddle Senior (c. 1903-1942) Joined the family by marriage to Merope. Father of Voldemort (Voldemort's mother named him Tom after his father).
Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort (1926-present) Last surviving member; infamous Dark wizard and leader of the Death Eaters.

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)

Marvolo Gaunt
Harry Potter character
Gender	Male
Hair colour	Unknown colour (short, scrubby)
Eye colour	Brown
Parentage	Pure-blood
Film portrayer	Unknown
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 three 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 squire, 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 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 inbred into their own family. The continuous 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 resembles 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. The matter, then, is incomprehensible.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Demise of the House of Gaunt
2 Tom Riddle Sr.
3 Derivation of Names
4 References

[edit] Demise of the House of Gaunt

Merope Gaunt
Harry Potter character
Gender	Female
Hair colour	Unknown ("lank and dull")
Eye colour	Unknown ("stared in opposite directions")
Parentage	Pure-blood
Film portrayer	Unknown
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 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 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, the dark-haired, and handsome squire's son. 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 she was pregnant with another man's child, thus Tom returning, claiming to be "hoodwinked".

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.

Morfin Gaunt
Harry Potter character
Gender	Male
Eye colour	Dark, small, misaligned
Parentage	Pure-blood
Film portrayer	Unknown
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, Voldemort went to Little Hangleton to seek out his family and his birthright. Voldemort never told Morfin his identity, though Morfin thought that he did look a lot like the Muggle who married his sister. He did not realise that Voldemort was actually his nephew. They had a short conversation as Morfin explained how Riddle had left Merope and returned to his own home. The story enraged Voldemort, who immobilised his uncle with the spell STUPEFY and took his wand. He went to the squire's manor 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 of the neighbouring town of Great Hangleton arrested the Riddle's gardener, a war veteran named Frank Bryce, who claimed that he saw a pale-faced, dark-haired boy enter the Riddle House in the night. Nobody else saw the boy, and people were convinced that Bryce was lying and had killed the Riddles. However, when the autopsy revealed that although the victims were dead their bodies had not been harmed or poisoned in any way, the baffled Great Hangleton police were forced to release Bryce on lack of evidence. (Many years later, a recuperating Voldemort returned to his father's house. When old Frank Bryce saw a light in the abandoned manor he hobbled inside to investigate and Voldemort murdered him.)

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 was taken to the Ministry as a suspect, proudly claimed that he had killed the Riddles and was sent to Azkaban. When, after the disappearance of Voldemort with two priceless treasures, Albus Dumbledore began tracking down his past, he visited Morfin in Azkaban to gain information about Voldemort. He successfully extracted Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, and realised that Voldemort had altered his uncle’s memories so that Morfin believed he had committed the Riddle murders. In this way Voldemort 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 passing.

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] Tom Riddle Sr.

Tom had a privileged, comfortable upbringing, as would be expected for someone of the landed gentry. The Riddles were the most prominent residents of the Little Hangleton area, owning large tracts of land, a large house, and living the life of the prosperous turn of the century British middle classes. Tom certainly indulged in the typical pursuits of the upper-middle classes in the first half of the twentieth century, socialising with attractive women on his social level, riding horses, and enjoying his status in the town. However, the Riddles were notoriously unpopular among the Little Hangleton villagers, as they were snobbish and rude (although Tom mixed with them sufficiently to be aware of village gossip concerning the Gaunts).

Tom Riddle Sr
Harry Potter character
Gender	Male
Hair colour	Black
Eye colour	Dark
School	Unknown(Muggle School)
Parentage	Muggle
Film portrayer	None yet
First appearance	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In addition to being rich, he was handsome, frequently going for horseback rides with a young lady named Cecilia (presumably his girlfriend), rides which took him by a small, dirty cottage in a copse of trees by the side of the road. This small parcel of land was the only part of that area that the Riddles did not own. The cottage belonged to Marvolo Gaunt and his children. While The Riddles (and, it can be assumed, everyone else in the area) scorned the Gaunts, young Merope made efforts to get as close to Tom as she could, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Morfin Gaunt noticed his sister's affection for Tom Riddle, and took the opportunity to hex Tom as he rode by, covering him in hives. This was the trigger to a sequence of events that led to the Gaunt men being sentenced to imprisonment in Azkaban.

As told by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone she was able to make her move for Tom Riddle. She offered Tom a drink laced with a love potion as he rode by one day, without his attractive companion. She then presumably convinced him to marry her, and they eloped, causing a great scandal in Little Hangleton. Within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion; she either believed that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. Merope was wrong, as Tom quickly abandoned his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. He never sought out his former wife or his young son.

Under English law, Riddle could in theory have had the marriage annulled, as he himself did not give valid and conscious consent to it. Even if he wished to take this undignified course of action, he would probably be unable to proceed, since the only non-magical reason he could give before the Courts would be that he had been temporarily suffering from insanity. He could not, by the law at that time, have obtained a divorce, since to do so would have required him to prove that Merope had been unfaithful (and no reason has been given to even think that she was); ironically, she had ample grounds for divorce, since he had deserted her and refused to return to her (but, given that she wanted him back, it is unlikely that she would have taken such measures - were she even aware of the British Legal System).

Possibly, the experience coarsened Riddle's character. At the time of the Gaunt men’s arrest, he appeared to be confident and self-assured but not arrogant and snobbish as he was described as having become by the time of his death. Not knowing of Merope's fate, he would be unable to consider himself free to remarry.

Along with his parents, Tom Riddle Sr. was killed by the Avada Kedavra curse in 1942 by his son Tom Marvolo Riddle, who framed Morfin Gaunt for the crime. The non-magical community was puzzled and shocked by the seemingly causeless deaths, and gardener Frank Bryce was suspected of the murders. However, since the killing curse, "Avada Kedavra", leaves no sign of damage on its victims, there was no evidence of foul play, and due to the lack of evidence, Bryce was released and went on to live at the old Riddle estate until his death in 1994 at the hands of Lord Voldemort himself.

[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' (ie '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), 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.