Gaunt Shack

> "*It was a few seconds before Harry’s eyes discerned the building half-hidden amongst the tangle of trunks. It seemed to him a very strange location to choose for a house, or else an odd decision to leave the trees growing nearby, blocking all light and the view of the valley below. He wondered whether it was inhabited; its walls were mossy and so many tiles had fallen off the roof that the rafters were visible in places. Nettles grew all around it, their tips reaching the windows, which were tiny and thick with grime.*"
> ― Harry Potter's impression of the Gaunt shack upon seeing Bob Ogden's memory of it in Dumbledore's Pensieve[source]
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The **Gaunt Shack** was the ancestral home of the Gaunt family, located in the woods just outside the village of Little Hangleton. It was shabby little shack housing Marvolo Gaunt, his wife, their son Morfin, and daughter Merope. Soon after Morfin died in Azkaban, the residence was later used as a hiding place for one of Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes, the ring that he stole from Marvolo.

## Description

The shack was small, dilapidated, and thick with filth, but was somewhat kept in check by Merope. The shack was poverty stricken and shabby, due to the family's lack of money. Morfin had nailed a dead snake to the front door of the shack. After Merope stopped taking care of the place due to her marriage and subsequent death, the house plunged even deeper into deterioration and declension. The insides became littered with a mass of filth, rusty pots and mouldy food that Morfin did not bother to clear out.

The house was surrounded by trees that partly hide it, which made Harry Potter consider a peculiar location to choose for a house or to have trees growing around it. The thickset of woods surrounding the shack blocked all light and view from reaching it, leaving a dark and secluded view.

The Muggle village resident Cecilia considered the shack and surrounding area an eyesore compared to the rest of the beautiful land owned by the Riddle family, and wanted it to be cleared away were it not inhabited by the Gaunts.

## Inhabitants

It was the home of Marvolo Gaunt, Morfin, and Merope. They were the last remaining descendants of Cadmus Peverell and Salazar Slytherin living there in poverty, speaking Parseltongue to each other in deplorable conditions. It is unknown if the shack was passed down from descendant to descendant, as the family gold was squandered several generations ago, thus it is possible that the family moved into the shack when their funds ran dry before Marvolo was born.

After the deaths of the last three inhabitants, the shack was deserted completely, yet it was not cleared away by the villagers of Little Hangleton. Voldemort would deter anyone from even approaching the shack by placing powerful enchantments on the area, in order to protect his second Horcrux he hid under the rotting floorboards.

## History

The Gaunt Shack and its inhabitants were once visited by the Ministry of Magic official Bob Ogden, who came to question Morfin about his habit of using magic in front of villagers. This is noticeably the first time Harry Potter, watching this memory in the Pensieve, sees Tom Riddle Snr.

Six months after Marvolo served his sentence, he returned to the shack in arrogant expectations that his daughter would be dutifully waiting for his return with a hot meal at the table. Instead, he found a clear inch of dust and her note of farewell. In another two and a half years later, Morfin returned and found his father dead and the family signet ring as the last heirloom for him to inherit.

About sixteen years later, when Tom Marvolo Riddle came to visit Marvolo to learn about his heritage, he instead found Morfin, along with a mass of filth, rusting pots, and mouldy food, which made the house nearly unrecognisable before Marvolo and Morfin's incarceration, due to Merope no longer taking care of the cleaning. In lieu of fear for Morfin's derangement, young Riddle showed only disgust and disappointment at the deplorable household, having expected better for a long line of pure blood supremacists. After killing his father, Riddle framed Morfin for it, and left the Gaunt's house with Marvolo Gaunt's Ring. With that, the house became abandoned for years, and continued to deteriorate.

### Horcrux Hiding Place

After the death of the Gaunt family, the house was left deserted. Lord Voldemort decided to use this place to hide one of his Horcruxes, which was Gaunt's Ring taken from Morfin himself. The ring was left under the floor boards in the ruins of the house in a golden box with a curse of sorts placed upon it. Voldemort further placed many powerful spells to protect this location from possible intruders. In the summer of 1996, Albus Dumbledore visited the shack and retrieved the ring, reasoning that Voldemort would store his Horcruxes in locations relevant to him.

In 1998, Voldemort returned to the Shack to check on the Horcrux, after learning that one (Helga Hufflepuff's Cup) had been stolen from the Gringotts vault of Bellatrix Lestrange. Fearing for its loss, Voldemort travelled to the shack, as well as the Horcrux cave. To his fury, he discovered that the ring had been taken from the Shack.