Adalbert Gaunt

"*You see? It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father’s name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, much like you, Nathara, my own second cousin, through my mother’s side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, you two. I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!*"
— Adalbert Gaunt's transformation into Lord Voldemort

## Biographical information

### Died

2 May, 1998 (aged 71)
Hogwarts

### Also known as

* Lord Voldemort
* You-Know-Who
* He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
* The Dark Lord

## Relationship information

### Family members

* Marvolo Gaunt (great-grandfather)
* Castor Gaunt (maternal grandfather)
* Kailani Gaunt (née Evergreen) (maternal grandmother)
* Salazara Gaunt (mother)
* Ascella (daughter)

## Affiliation

### House

Slytherin

**Adalbert Castor Gaunt,** (17 October, 1926-2 May, 1998) later known as **Lord Voldemort** or, alternatively as **You-Know-Who**, **He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named**, or the **Dark Lord**, was an English pure-blood wizard of Scottish ancestry, great-grandson of Marvolo Gaunt, son of Salazara Gaunt, and the grandson of Castor and Kailani Gaunt, considered to have been the most powerful and dangerous Dark Wizard of all time. He was amongst the greatest wizards to have ever lived, often considered to be the second most powerful wizard in history, his only superior being Albus Dumbledore.

His grandmother, Kayla was murdered when he was only four years old, and the memory of her corpse served as a fuel of revenge against muggles and wizards alike. Soon after he started attending Hogwarts, his mother passed away.

Gaunt began attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1938 and was sorted into Slytherin house. Some of his early activities included the opening of Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets and the use of its monster to attack Muggle-born students, several months' service as a purchasing agent for the Dark artefacts shop Borgin and Burkes, use of the ability to speak Parseltongue, and the attainment of immortality between the years of 1943 and 1998, a process begun upon the creation of his first Horcrux at the age of sixteen.

Splitting his own spirit into a total of eight fragments, Gaunt created seven Horcruxes, one unintentionally and without his knowledge — Harry Potter. Abandoning his name, he became the self-proclaimed Lord Voldemort, which was an anagram of his birth name. He commanded a veritable army of wizards and Dark creatures, committed countless murders and atrocities personally and through his followers, and on one occasion nearly succeeded and on a later occasion did succeed in taking over the Ministry of Magic, installing a puppet Minister, Pius Thicknesse, who was controlled with the Imperius Curse.

Voldemort was ripped from his body in 1981 after attempting to kill Harry Potter. Although unable to die, he was not able to regain a permanent and physical body until 1995, thus spending the intervening fourteen years as "*a shell, less than the meanest ghost*", but alive. He was finally killed by his own backfiring curse after Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter, following Dumbledore's death, succeeded in destroying all of his Horcruxes.

Unknown to most, however, Voldemort's legacy and bloodline would live on through his daughter Ascella, whom he conceived with his loyal follower Emberly Comet; sometime after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in 1996 and before Voldemort's death at the hands of Harry in 1998.

Gaunt's broken and mutilated soul was then trapped in Limbo for eternity, unable to move on to the afterlife or even return as a disembodied spirit.

## Biography

### Family lineage

"*The Gaunts, a very ancient wizarding family noted for a vein of instability and violence that flourished through the generations due to their habit of marrying their own cousins.*"
— Description of the House of Gaunt
By Harry Potter's time, Adalbert's family on his mother Salazara's side were the last known members of the House of Gaunt. The Gaunts were an ancient, and formerly wealthy, wizarding family, noted for producing individuals with violent and unstable personalities due to generations of inbreeding. Previous, named members of the Gaunt family — Adalbert's distant relatives — included Corvinus Gaunt, Adalbert's maternal ancestor, and a Parselmouth who hid the Chamber of Secrets entrance in a girls' restroom at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; Rionach Gaunt, the mother of Ilvermorny founder Isolt Sayre; and Gormlaith Gaunt, the sister of Rionach; maternal aunt of Sayre; maternal great-aunt of Rionach Steward and Martha Steward; and, it is believed, the "last of the Irish branch of the Gaunt family". Because of the Gaunt family's liking for grandeur, along with little sensibility at their indulgences, the family gold was gambled away and gone long before the last known heirs of the lineage were born. Likewise, a tendency to "marry their own cousins" to "keep their bloodline pure", following the beliefs of their ancestor Salazar Slytherin, caused the heirs to the Gaunt name to suffer the ill-effects of generations of inbreeding and incest. In North America, in what would later become the state of Massachusetts in the United States, the descendants of the Irish branch of the Gaunt family, through the Sayre's line, were thought to have died out sometime in the 17th or 18th century. Rionach Steward, Sayre's Half-blood daughter and the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Ilvermorny, was also rumoured to have inherited the ability to speak Parseltongue from her mother. Unwilling to further Slytherin's bloodline, since she viewed him as a Dark Wizard, Rionach never married or had children, and she later died without heirs. However, Rionach was unaware that another branch of the Gaunt family was still present, alive and well, across the ocean in England. It was from this line of Gaunts from which, centuries later, another Pure-blood descendant, Adalbert Castor Gaunt, would be born. Rionach's sister Martha, unlike her sibling, married a No-maj (Muggle) friend of the nearby Pocumtuc Native American tribe. Born a Squib, without any magical powers, Martha felt ostracised within the growing American wizarding community, despite being the child of an important family. In the end, due to the emotional pain caused by being unable to perform magic, and the stigma of being the the only Squib to grow up at Ilvermorny, Martha decided to live her life henceforth as a Muggle.
Adalbert's maternal great-grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt, and his father, Castor Gaunt, claimed to be the last known male, pure-blood descendants of Slytherin by the early 20th century. As such, they regarded themselves as "royalty" for their ancestry, despite their poverty; squalor; lack of education; and mental and physical disorders from centuries of familial inbreeding. Adalbert's father was a wealthy wizard living in the village of Little Hangleton, near the Gaunt shack, who died when he was still a young child.