Marvolo Gaunt (cut character)

 MARVOLO GAUNT

Biographical information

Full Name

Marvolo Gaunt

Born

Before 1890s 

Died

Between December 1925 and 1928, Gaunt Shack, Yorkshire, England, Great Britain

Blood status

Pure-blood

Nationality

British

Physical information

Species

Human

Gender

Male

Height

Short

Hair colour

White

Eye colour

Bright brown

Family information

Children

• Morfin Gaunt † (eldest son) 
• Merope Gaunt-Riddle † (youngest daughter) 

Siblings

• Ominis Gaunt † (younger brother)

• Three unidentified brothers †

Parents

• Unnamed Mother †

• Unnamed Father †

In-laws

• Unnamed sister-in-law †

• Tom Riddle Senior † (son-in-law)

Grandchildren

Tom Marvolo Riddle † (grandson)

Great-Grandchildren

Delphini (great-granddaughter)

Ancestors

• Salazar Slytherin † (ancestor) 

• Cadmus Peverell † (ancestor)

Magical characteristics

Boggart

A vision of himself stripped of his magic, his heirlooms, and his status, reduced to the level of a Muggle (conceivably)

Wand

Unidentified

Patronus

Boar (conceivably)

Reflection in the Mirror of Erised

Unquestioned pure-blood dominance, with the House of Gaunt sitting proudly at the top (conceivably)

Affiliation

House

Slytherin

Loyalty

House of Gaunt

Character information

Seen

The House of Gaunt (Short 2021)

Played by

Rupert Wynne-James

Marvolo Gaunt (fl. 1925) was a well-known pure-blood wizard from the House of Gaunt and a direct offspring of Salazar Slytherin. As the father of Merope Riddle (née Gaunt) and Morfin Gaunt, he served as the maternal grandfather of Tom Marvolo Riddle, who is infamously known as Lord Voldemort, through his daughter Merope. Besides, he was the great-grandfather of Delphini.

Marvolo and his children lived in radical deprivation and wretchedness. His violent and intolerant nature described his life, and he met his end shortly after being discharged from Azkaban, where he had been detained for attacking Ministry personnel. Notably, he owned a large golden ring and Salazar Slytherin's locket, both of which he considered valuable relics of his respectable pure-blood lineage.

Magical abilities and skills

"Get in the hut. Don't argue."

— Marvolo communicating to Morfin in Parseltongue

• Parselmouth: Like his ancestor, son, daughter, grandson, and great-granddaughter. Marvolo could communicate with serpents from their ancestor and even transmitted with his children that way.

• Martial magic: Marvolo opened fire on Merope to discipline her for lusting after a Muggle, but Bob Ogden prevented the attack, stunning him to protect her. It is also said that he damaged some of the Ministry wizards that Ogden brought back with him, leading to his arrest, showing he had some skill in duelling.

• Duelling: Marvolo was not a formally qualified or famous duellist, but rather a forceful and unstable man who relied on natural, warlike magic. He had basic power and enough capability to impair Ministry officers when they came to capture him. Yet, he was readily stunned and surpassed by Bob Ogden, Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad. 

Relationships

Family:

Not much is known about his relationship with his parents, but he tortured his younger brother, Ominis, along with his other two brothers.

Children

Morfin Gaunt

Marvolo's relationship with his children was horrible. He seemed to tolerate and sustain a tenuous association with his son Morfin, who was furiously loyal to Marvolo and his family's purposes, while just as treacherous and forceful. He seemed to be the only man Morfin feared and admired, as evidenced by his demands that Morfin go indoors and not backtalk him when Ogden paid a visit.

Despite Morfin's mainly approving relationship with his father, he still feared Marvolo's irritation. Morfin obeyed the order to enter the house without question and fell into a state of insane dread that Marvolo would slay him for losing the family signet ring for the rest of his life, unknowing that the ring had been robbed by his nephew.

Merope Gaunt

Marvolo seemed to have no respect whatsoever for his daughter Merope, whom he criticized as being a Squib and expected to do all the cookery and cleaning. He and Morfin were both emotionally and physically vicious towards Merope.

When Marvolo learned of his daughter's limerence for Tom Riddle, he bolted into an outrage and attempted to harm her, completely unaware of the fact that a Ministry Official was in his cottage, and he was witnessed red-handed. Marvolo also communicated with his children in Parseltongue. It was never noted about Marvolo's wife or how she was missing from the Gaunt hut (arguably most probably passing sometime before the arrest of her spouse and son), but it could be surmised that given his horrible treatment of Merope, Marvolo also made for a horrendous husband.

Marvolo never saw Merope again after he was detained, since she ditched the hut for good, which led to her father never speaking of her presence again either. Despite genuinely despising Merope to the point of attempting to discipline her for her offenses against the family's views, Albus Dumbledore suspected that her desertion was what contributed to Marvolo's earlier demise, either due to the amazement or because he never learned how to feed himself (as he had foolishly thought that Merope would dutifully wait for his return from lockup with a hot dinner on the plate). This shows that he is at least hanging on to her for survival. Marvolo never saw Morfin again after being discharged from Azkaban, since Marvolo passed before his son's sentence was concluded; his family signet ring, the last heirloom, was left for Morfin to wear.

Despite being at the receiving end of Marvolo's abuse, Merope apparently cared enough for her father to use his name for her son's middle name. Alternatively, it could be that "Tom" and "Marvolo" were the only names that Merope could think of in her dying moments. This was likely due to Merope's Gaunt upbringing, during which she was ignored by both Muggles and wizards. This left Marvolo and Morfin as the only men that she regularly interacted with before her union to Riddle Sr.

In-laws

Tom Riddle Senior

It is unspecified if Marvolo and Tom Riddle Senior had met in person, but it is known that Marvolo loathed him very much. When Morfin announced that Merope was in love with him, Marvolo became enraged and sore, since he was a pure-blood supremacist and didn't want any non-pure-bloods in his family line. Marvolo presumably thought him more despicable when he learned that she took advantage of his internment in Azkaban to elope with Tom.

Riddle Snr also seemed to be one of the contributing causes of Marvolo's demise, because since Merope left the hut, Marvolo had been stunned by this fact to the point that he never publicly mentioned that Merope lived from that day on. It could have been possible that the shock was sharp enough that it harmed Marvolo's body with conditions such as hypertension. This, in pair with the mental damage he suffered while in Azkaban, as well as Dumbledore's assumption that he likely failed to learn self-adequacy, contributed to Marvolo's ruin by the time of his reunion with his kids.

Grandchildren

Tom Marvolo Riddle/Lord Voldemort

Tom Riddle: "Where is Marvolo?"

Morfin Gaunt: "Dead. Passed years ago, didn't he?"

— Morfin declares to the immature Tom Riddle that Marvolo is dead

Marvolo had never met Tom Marvolo Riddle since he had either been dead when Tom was born, or passed away shortly after the birth of his only grandson. Nevertheless, his forename became Tom's middle name, which, after thorough research of the family names, Tom used to delineate his lineage from the House of Gaunt. In the summer of 1943, when Voldemort set off for Little Hangleton, he was hoping to meet Marvolo; yet, he was welcomed only by Morfin, the last male Gaunt, as Marvolo had been dead for many years by then. The deteriorating condition of the home had deeply disenchanted the immature Tom.

After slaying his father, the more immature Tom robbed his grandfather's ring and took to wearing it. He later turned it into a Horcrux.

Although Tom never got the chance to meet his maternal grandfather, elements of Marvolo's disgusting traits survived into the latter part of the 20th Century via a control of terror against Muggles, Muggle-borns, Squibs, and blood traitors. Marvolo Gaunt's loathing of non-wizards manifested itself when Tom (as Lord Voldemort) controlled the Death Eaters. It could be that Voldemort's own adult personality was not only due to his conception due to his mother's use of either the Imperius Curse or the Love Potion, but also the "vein of fluctuation" caused by centuries of inbreeding in the Gaunt line. In straightforward terms, Voldemort confirmed himself to be Marvolo's grandson and inheritor.

Despite this, it can be assumed that, had they met in person, Marvolo would have loathed or at least looked down on his grandson due to his half-blood status.

Great-Grandchildren

Delphini/The Augurey

Delphini is the great-granddaughter of Marvolo, but she was born decades after his death. Like him, she is a Parselmouth and the last heiress of Salazar Slytherin.

He would see Delphini as living proof of the Gaunt/Slytherin bloodline's survival and triumph. Because she is the direct descendant of both Tom Riddle (himself a descendant of Salazar Slytherin through Marvolo) and Bellatrix Lestrange (from the ancient and noble House of Black), Marvolo would see her as having some of the purest, most "royal" magical blood in existence. However, Marvolo's disappointment regarding the surname (The "Riddle" Stain)

Marvolo’s disgust for "Muggles and Mudbloods" was matched only by his hatred for his daughter Merope, whom he beat for consorting with the Muggle Tom Riddle Sr. While he would love that Delphini carries pure blood on her mother’s side, he would despise the fact that her presence is tied to Tom Riddle Jr. (Lord Voldemort). Marvolo despised Voldemort’s Muggle-derived name and abandoned heritage. Marvolo would likely order that Delphini disown the "Riddle" essence completely and adopt her Gaunt/Slytherin heritage exclusively, viewing her as a marred vessel if she showed any sympathy for her father's half-blood lineage (though Voldemort hid his half-blood status, Marvolo knew the truth).

If Marvolo were alive to see Delphini's actions in The Cursed Child—specifically her attempt to rewrite time to resurrect her father's authority—he would likely view her as a magnificent instrument of vindication. He would see her as a warrior sent to finish the work he and his grandson (Voldemort) started: the subjugation of the wizarding world and the cleansing of bloodlines. Despite his obsession with pure blood, Marvolo’s extreme misogyny means he would likely not view Delphini as an equal leader or independent thinker. He would see her as a tool—someone whose sole purpose was to bear children to continue the Slytherin line or to blindly enforce the intention of her male ancestors.

To Marvolo Gaunt, Delphini would be a double-edged sword: a sacred symbol of unadulterated Slytherin and Black blood that he would praise, but also a product of the shameful Riddle lineage that he would demand be corrected, all while expecting her to be a subservient soldier in the war for pure-blood supremacy.