Movies - The House of Gaunt

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	Movies - The House of Gaunt

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 Family patriarch
Morfin Gaunt (1900s-1970s) 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
Tom Riddle (c.1903-1943) Joined the family by marriage to Merope. Father of Voldemort (also named Tom Riddle )
Tom Marvolo Riddle aka Lord Voldemort
(1926-present) Last surviving member; infamous Dark wizard and terrorist

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 famous ancient European wizards.

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

At the time of Merope and Morfin Gaunt, the last three members of the ancient clan were living in a miserable, dirty little stone house 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 family was ruled by the patriarch Marvolo Gaunt, who lived with his son Morfin and daughter Merope. 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 their earliest ancestor Salazar Slytherin, and it seems that it was common among the Gaunts to have this rare ability. The Gaunts were fanatical believers in blood purity and therefore married only their cousins and other pure blood wizards (Except Merope). 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 ironic that the most famous members of the Slytherin-Gaunt clan are the first and last of them: the founder of the line, Salazar Slytherin, and, over a thousand years later, his last descendant Lord Voldemort.

The Demise of the House of Gaunt

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. In 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 with reinforcements very soon, with the result that both Gaunts were arrested. Marvolo spent six months in Azkaban for assaulting Ministry officials, but his son was sentenced to three years because of his other crimes.

The two Gaunt men did not treat Merope well, verbally abusing her often and calling her a Squib. Morfin referred to her as a thief and a slut. Merope had nearly been strangled to death by her father during the last assault before his arrest.

The imprisonment of her brother and father finally left Merope free to live her own life. Apparently by means of a love potion, Merope gained the love (or at least the romantic attention) of Tom Riddle, the dark-haired, 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).

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