The House of Gaunt

[Dave Hardenbrook]

No: HPFGUIDX 134403

Here's some musings while reading the _House of Gaunt_ chapter:

-- In the whole scene Morphin speaks only Parseltongue.  Why?  Is that
   all he *can* speak?

-- How are the Gaunts able to talk to each other in Parseltongue?
   In _CoS_ when Harry tries to speak it to anything other than a
   snake, he can't do it.

-- If the Gaunts are all Parselmouths, why does Diary!Riddle tell
   Harry that the two of them are the only Parselmouths to come
   to Hogwarts since Slytherin himself?  Were the Gaunts homeschooled?
   Maybe after Slytherin's departure all his decendants refused to
   go to Hogwarts on principle?

-- Merope seems an interesting figure: An odd mixture of oppressed
   desperation and sleezy shrewdness. -- I'm envisioning her as a
   cross between Cinderella and Fanny Squeers (from Dickens'
   _Nicholas Nickleby_).

-- Does anyone have any insight into the name "Merope"?  There seem to
   be several of them in the Classical Mythology Phonebook.  The most
   likely seems to be the Merope who is one of the Seven Sisters of
   the Pleiades, but she seems not to have married a Muggle or given
   birth to a psychotic manaic.

   
-- 
Dave