What do you like about Gaunt?
Hey Anon buddy, sorry this took so long, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it justice, since the Gaunts aren’t exactly the kind of family most people would root for, but some fans, like me, absolutely love them.
Anon, this will likely be a long read, so grab a drink.
A lot of their appeal comes from being outcasts in the wizarding world, carrying a fearsome reputation. They likely knew magic that other wizards didn’t, and they stand as a cautionary tale of what can happen to a prominent family when things go horribly wrong.
I will list some phrases that come to my mind when I think of the Gaunts.
For those in the fandom who love Draco Malfoy or the Black family, the Gaunts make these families seem downright normal and civilized.
They keep snakes in their homes, as shown with Morfin Gaunt, and it’s quite possible that earlier Gaunts also kept them as pets. The Gaunts are unafraid of the Dark Arts and are very familiar with them. In Hogwarts Legacy, cut lines found on YouTube show Hogwarts students asking your MC about Ominis Gaunt, and they seem a bit intimidated by him, even though Ominis is a sweetheart once you know him.
I’ve outlined the Gaunts’ timeline below, but they’re an incredibly old family. But who were they in the beginning?
I break their history into a few eras.
First, the Pre-Peverell-Gaunts, who were of such high standing they could marry into the Peverell family. Then, the Peverell-born Gaunts, Two strong bloodlines in one. They had the powers the Peverell's carried, but also whatever the Gaunts could do, these children also carried. What did their magic look like?
The children born into this era must of had the best of all worlds, until... The Post-Slytherin Gaunts, now gifted with Parceltounge, but in return tasked with guarding the Chamber of Secrets. So many questions to ask about these: For example was the information hidden from them until the marriage. The Chamber of Secrets being the price the Gaunts had to pay in return for the gift of Parceltounge. How did they react to the knowlage that Muggle Borns would all die by their hands? How quickly did they descend into darkness and follow Slytherin's teachings.
They once had wealth and influence in the past, and in their prime, they could have easily made the Malfoys and Blacks seem poor by comparison. I’ve always headcanonned that 'The Riddle House' was originally the Gaunts’ ancestral home, they lost it when their fortune finally ran out. I imagine the Gaunts were feared and respected both equally by wizard kind. They would step into a room and all eyes would be on them, both by wizards who respected and admired them, and by those who feared them. That's long lost now though, they didn't hold such power in the last few generations, look at how Ominis Gaunt is always alone in Hogwarts Legacy, nobody wants to be friends with him and they are scared of him, even though at this point he's been at Hogwarts for 5 years.
This isn't about loosing the money, but loosing their souls (Not in the Dementor sense of things). The Gaunts before Slytherin had just been Cadmus Peverell's decendents. He was the brother who created the Resurrection Stone, to bring back echoes of lost loved ones. Harry Potter himself said he would pick the stone above all else when asked which Hallow he would have wanted. Dumbledore too wanted the stone. It was a device made from love and heartbreak (Imagine Grindlewald's face if he ever learned it was useless to him). Now think of the Gaunts, they had kept this stone safe, they were his decendents, the stone is a peaceful Hallow, it serves no offensive magic, even the cloak can be used in darker ways if you think about it, but not the stone... And these same people were now being asked to guard something that would kill a lot of children... The Gaunts had their own Anakin Skywalker storyline.
The Gaunts in Hogwarts Legacy all got a certain Dark Education long before they got their Hogwarts letter. This isnt just true to Hogwarts Legacy, I will talk about Corvinus Gaunt down the page, but he was just a teenager and the way he was raised meant he was happy to kill his own classmates at Hogwarts.
It’s my headcanon that if there are still Gaunts out there, and I hope they are some, because it means Ominis survived and lived after Tom Riddle's era, they’ll never be welcomed back into the Wizarding World. The Gaunt name has suffered too much damage, even without all the ties to Tom Riddle. Their history was written about in The Cursed Child, and whether or not we accept that as canon, there’s a book called Marvolo: The Truth - likely written by Harry, Hermione, or both - and it's a tell-all about Voldemort’s wizarding family. Even without the book, the Chamber of Secrets is undeniably real now. Everyone knows it existed, how it was opened, and why all the experts missed it - you had to be a Parselmouth.
By now, there would be countless books on the subject, all pointing to the Gaunts, because it’s their sin, not Tom Riddle’s.
Sure, Voldy opened it, but there wouldn’t even be a Chamber if generations of Gaunts had spoken up. They were the ones who stayed silent, hiding the truth and keeping it buried for years. They could have sent an anonymous owl to Hogwarts, explaining where the Chamber was, how to open it, and what was inside. They could have used Imperio to make another wizard write the letter... but they stayed quiet
- even Ominis, if he knew.
During the Harry Potter era, the Gaunts were completely isolated from the world. Though still remembered in the Wizarding World and listed among the Sacred 28 Pure-Blood families in the 1920s, no one had seen a Gaunt in public for decades - likely not since the 1880s or 1890s, when Marvolo would have been at school (based on the books and his school years).
Much of the Gaunt family’s history has been lost to time, as they are an ancient family, just like the Potters. Both the Potter and Gaunt families trace their roots back to the legendary Peverell brothers. In the Wizarding World’s timeline, it goes something like this.
990 CE: Hogwarts is built (Chamber of Secrets says its about 1,000 years ago, in 1992)
13th Century (1200 CE) The Peverells make their Hallows, either the daughter of Cadmus Peverell or his granddaughter marries a Gaunt. The Peverell name is dropped. The Gaunt offspring (A male) then marries a female Slytherin. The Slytherin name dies out.
We don't have offical word from JK Rowling on the exact dates, or who married who for this family line to be made, but we do know the Gaunts from Harry Potter 6 are from both the Peverells and Slytherin bloodlines.
What we know is this: the Gaunt family was already established. But who exactly were they, and why were they seen as an equal match for a Peverell daughter to marry? In the 13th century, marriage wasn’t about love but about social standing - “you had to be somebody to marry somebody.” Upper-class females would be debuted into society and then would have a set list of fellow upper-class suitors.
For somebody to take the hand of Cadmus Peverell's daughter or granddaughter, they had to be of the same social standing.
And that was the Gaunts at the time.
The offspring of this marriage was considered equal to Salazar Slytherin's female descendant, or perhaps (God have mercy) a Gaunt had already married into the Slytherin line long ago, and a Parselmouth Gaunt later married a Peverell Gaunt. With this family, anything goes!
Basically what we can take from this is the Gaunts were already a name in this early period of Wizarding history.
To read what we have for sure can be found on Pottermore
(Go to HarryPotter. com > JK Rowling Archive)
All the old Pottermore information is there, in the search type in Gaunt / The Gaunts / Gaunt Family. Not all of those articles that come up mention the Gaunts, but a lot do and it's a fair bit of reading, becasue they aren't what you'd normally look for if you were looking for the Gaunts. They are sort of slotted in, here and there, a bit information among the wider article.
Lucky I have done the reading, although there's likely even more to find on there. There's Fact Files and Features. Fact Files don't really give you anything, but the Features is were JK Rowling really went deep with her lore. These are the ones you want to be reading, there's a lot in them that never made it to the books or movies, but the Gaunt family history is writen here.
X - Just a recap on Merope, not really important.
X - Early history of the Gaunts (Gormlaith Gaunt) you can hear people still talking about her in Hogwarts Legacy when you visit the hamlets or Hogsmeade. This article shows the Gaunt family still had Slytherin's wand right up until 1627 when Ilvermorny. Depending when the female relative of Slytherin married a Gaunt and Slytherin's wand was passed to them, the Gaunt family could have carried his wand for at least 600 years.
X - My dearest Corvinus Gaunt, hiding the Chamber of Secrets. Have a read, I'll come back to him in a moment because he alone is a great topic for the Gaunt's mindsets.
The existence of the Chamber was known to Slytherin’s descendants and those with whom they chose to share the information. Thus the rumour stayed alive through the centuries.
...
Whispers that a monster lived in the depths of the castle were also prevalent for centuries. Again, this is because those who could hear and speak to it were not always as discreet as they might have been: the Gaunt family could not resist boasting of their knowledge. As nobody else could hear the creature sliding beneath floorboards or, latterly, through the plumbing, they did not have many believers, and none, until Riddle, dared unleash the monster on the castle.
If you've read my fanfic, ITSOFF, the Gaunts are always boasting about the Chamber of Secrets to the Blacks, to the point the Black family are sniggering behind their backs, because surrrre you have a secret chamber, Gaunt, and you will get rid of all the Mudbloods at Hogwarts. *Eye roll*.
There is clear evidence that the Chamber was opened more than once between the death of Slytherin and the entrance of Tom Riddle in the twentieth century. When first created, the Chamber was accessed through a concealed trapdoor and a series of magical tunnels. However, when Hogwarts’ plumbing became more elaborate in the eighteenth century, the entrance to the Chamber was threatened, being located on the site of a proposed bathroom. The presence in school at the time of a student called Corvinus Gaunt – direct descendant of Slytherin, and antecedent of Tom Riddle – explains how the simple trapdoor was secretly protected, so that those who knew how could still access the entrance to the Chamber even after newfangled plumbing had been placed on top of it.
This fact can chill your blood in two ways.
1. This teenager was so deeply shaped by the Gaunt family’s beliefs that he never hesitated to help them, concealing the Chamber so that one day all Muggle-borns could be killed. Think back to your school days and the people you knew - Corvinus must have known that opening the Chamber would mean the deaths of many fellow students. He probably sat beside some in class, maybe even learned from Muggle-born teachers. Yet, as both a student and a Gaunt, his loyalty was to the family secret, not to Hogwarts. He likely chatted with everyone, all the while knowing he carried the family’s dark legacy. We know from Deathly Hallows that there were rare Muggle-born Slytherins, and perhaps even his closest friend could have been one. He would have gladly opened the Chamber if asked - and that’s what draws me to him. What could he have experienced growing up to become so cold? Still, I imagine he might have seemed like Ominis on the outside, sweet even, having friends, getting good grades, he would have been like Harry, grabbing his favourite food at the table. Maybe he was even looked forward to the Halloween feast that night all the while quietly plotting how to hide the Chamber of Secrets and make his mother and father proud that their secret had not been found. He could have been 15, about to have his first ever kiss the moment he got back from hiding the chamber.
2. What exactly did he do to hide the Chamber? It makes you wonder about the kind of magic the Gaunts could do. This boy, somewhere between 11 and 18, spent his days learning Charms and Herbology, maybe he was in Care of Magical Creatures in the morning, learning how to care for a sick unicorn or something. Yet he already knew spells strong enough to hide the Chamber’s entrance, blend it perfectly with a sink, and place enchantments so powerful that any witch or wizard trying to fix the “broken” sink would still find nothing. There’s probably still protective magic there today, stopping the entrance from being destroyed if the bathroom was ever refurbished. Tom Riddle could even fly without a broom. Before Hogwarts, he was already performing incredible magic, likely thanks to his Gaunt bloodline. Ominis can make his wand almost seem alive, guiding him through the school. Isolt Sayre was only half a Gaunt, and she made an entire wizard school on her own. It's not what they can do, I think it's easier to ask what they cant do...
I hope this answers your ask perfectly <3
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