CHAPDISC: HBP10, The House of Gaunt

[lealess]

No: HPFGUIDX 148506

Thanks to Penapart Elf for reading my draft and making invaluable
corrections and suggestions.  lealess
---------

CHAPTER DISCUSSIONS: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter
10, The House of Gaunt

Harry continues to do well in Potions thanks to the Half Blood
Prince's instructions. He offers to share these notes with Hermione
and Ron, but Ron can't read them and Hermione prefers the "official"
and less effective instructions. Harry has examined the book, which
has notes on almost every page, plus spells. He has vaguely wondered
who the Prince was. As the three study in the Common Room, Hermione
suggests that the writing might be a girl's. She simultaneously
discourages Ron from cheating off her essay by pulling it away from him.

Harry excuses himself to go to the first training session with
Dumbledore. He sees Trelawney in the hall and ducks behind a statue,
crouching down to remain hidden. Trelawney is shuffling cards: Two of
spades: conflict; seven of spades: ill omen; ten of spades: violence;
knave of spades: dark young man, troubled, dislikes the questioner.
Trelawney distrusts the reading, and leaves, smelling of cooking sherry.

Harry issues the Acid Pops command and goes into Dumbledore's office.
Dumbledore knows Harry has his first detention of the year, which he
has deferred so Harry can train with him. Harry is quite enthusiastic
about this training, which he expects to be dueling practice. The
office has not been modified for dueling, however: it is full of
silver, puffing instruments, supposedly sleeping former Headmasters,
and an interested Fawkes.

Dumbledore explains he intends to journey back through memory into
guesswork. Dumbledore remarks that he may be "woefully wrong," that
being more clever than most, his mistakes are "correspondingly huger."
 Harry is somewhat apprehensive. He seeks promised information,
especially about the prophecy, information that will help him survive. 
Dumbledore pulls out his Pensieve. Harry is uneasy, remembering
unwelcome revelations about his father he saw the last time he looked
into it, in Snape's office. Dumbledore notices and jokes that this
time Harry has permission to look into it. Dumbledore also assures
Harry that he will accompany him into the Pensieve. The Headmaster
produces a crystal bottle with a silvery-white substance, has trouble
removing the cork with his damaged hand, and uses his wand to remove
it. Harry asks how he injured his hand. Dumbledore says now is not the
time to explain.

He pours a memory into the Pensieve, and they embark on a journey to a
country lane in summer. Bob Ogden, whose memory they are viewing, is a
short, plump man with thick glasses, dressed like a wizard trying to
look like a Muggle. He is reading a signpost. They follow him to a
view of Little Hangleton, which includes a village and a great manor
house. They descend a steep slope.

A path to the right is untended and leads to a dark thicket of trees,
which hides a house in a state of natural ruin. The house is occupied,
however, as a window opens and steam or smoke trickles out. Ogden
draws his wand, moves cautiously ahead, and stops to stare at a dead
snake nailed to the door.

A man with thick matted hair, who is wall-eyed and missing teeth,
drops from a tree to warn Ogden, "You're not welcome." Ogden seems not
to understand him. Harry understands him, however, because the man is
speaking Parseltongue. The forbidding man, holding a bloody knife in
one hand and a wand in the other, hexes Ogden's nose.

A short, ape-like, elderly man hastens from the house, calling out the
name of the attacker, Morfin. The old man is Mr. Gaunt. He is not
pleased at the unexpected visit by the Ministry of Magic's Mr. Ogden,
who is looking for Morfin for a serious breach of Wizarding laws. Mr.
Gaunt did not expect the Ministry's visit -- he does not accept
letters. Ogden says he can't complain about not getting any warning,
then. While Ogden tries to assert authority over Morfin, Gaunt's
primary concern is the blood purity of Ogden, stating his nose looks
like some in the Muggle village.

They enter the hovel, where Morfin tangles an adder in his fingers,
crooning a threatening rhyme to it in Parseltongue. Harry realizes
there is a girl standing by a steaming pot in the corner. She is
wall-eyed, and has a "plain, pale, rather heavy face." She blends into
the gray of the wall, and looks completely defeated. Gaunt introduces
her as his daughter, Merope, but she does not speak. While Ogden tries
to explain that the reason for his visit is that Morfin performed
magic in front of a Muggle, Merope drops a pot. Her father calls her a
"useless sack of muck" and a "pointless lump," emphasizing her
apparent lack of magic. It is clear she is terrified of her father.

Ogden, the Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad, is visiting to
summons Morfin to a hearing at the Ministry. Gaunt feels his family's
honor has been insulted. He first thrusts a ring with the Peverell
coat of arms on it into Ogden's face, then drags his daughter by a
gold chain around her neck to show Ogden the locket on the chain,
little caring that she is choking on the pulled chain. Gaunt explains
that the Gaunts are the heirs of Slytherin, generations of pureblood
wizards. Ogden is not impressed. Gaunt, on the other hand, is
unconcerned that Morfin hexed a Muggle, as he hates Muggle-coddling.

Ogden reads the summons aloud, while outside the hut, sounds of horses
and laughter arise. A young woman comments loudly on the dilapidated
house. A young man explains that while his family owns practically
everything they can see, an old tramp owns the house. Gaunt's children
react strongly to the sounds: Morfin looks hungry and gets up; Merope
turns stark white. The passersby notice the snake on the door, and
Tom, the young man, says to his "darling" that the tramp's son, who is
not right in the head, nailed it there.

Morfin picks up on the "darling" comment to torment his sister, who
has a crush on the Muggle Tom, the man Morfin hexed to make him look
less pretty. Gaunt loses control of his temper and begins to choke
Merope for "hankering after a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle." Ogden frees
the girl, but is attacked by Morfin and runs for his life. As the
screams of Merope echo in Ogden's ears, he runs right into the
horse-riding Muggles. Their response is to laugh at Ogden. Harry
notices the young Muggle man is handsome and dark-haired.

Dumbledore leaves the memory with Harry. Harry wants to know what
happened to Merope, or "whatever her name was." Dumbledore explains
that she survived. Morfin and his father were removed from their house
by the Ministry 15 minutes later. Both were convicted by the
Wizengamot and given sentences in Azkaban, Morfin for 3 years, his
father, Marvolo Gaunt, for 6 months.

When Harry hears the name Marvolo, he discerns that Marvolo was
Voldemort's grandfather and Merope was his mother. The handsome Muggle
was Tom Riddle Sr. Dumbledore explains the Gaunts were an ancient
Wizarding family prone to instability and violence. Merope was indeed
a witch, but incapable of performing magic under her father's terror.
 She was free for the first time when her father and brother were
imprisoned.

Dumbledore speculates she used a love potion to attract Tom Riddle Sr.
A few months after Tom Sr. eloped with Merope, he reappeared at his
home, claiming he had been tricked. He left Merope while she was still
pregnant. Dumbledore believes she stopped giving him the love potion,
mistakenly hoping he would have come to love her for herself, or stay
with her for the baby's sake. Marvolo, meanwhile, died early, due to
the shock of either Merope's desertion or of her marriage to a Muggle.

Harry, confused, asks if knowing about Voldemort's past is important
to understanding the prophecy. Dumbledore confirms that it is very
important and has everything to do with the prophecy.

Harry sees a ring on a spindle-legged table and discerns it is the
ring Dumbledore was wearing when they first visited Slughorn, the same
ring Gaunt showed to Ogden. Dumbledore says he acquired it recently,
at about the same time Dumbledore injured his hand.  Harry asks again
how his hand came to be injured, but Dumbledore says it is late and
Harry will hear the story another time.

-------

1. Harry goes to great lengths to hide from Trelawney. In spite of
this, he overhears a fortune-telling. Trelawney's card reading has
been the subject of examination by those who know the Tarot. Why did
Rowling put the card reading in this chapter? Is it necessary
foreshadowing? Who is the "dark young man, possibly troubled, one who
dislikes the questioner"?

2. Merope does not really speak in this chapter, or anywhere else in
the book. Her few words are related by other characters. Yet,
according to Dumbledore, she does speak for herself through her
subsequent actions, although he speculates those actions are
underhanded. Not allowing a voice to a character is a striking
narrative device. Does Merope have a voice? What is its character?

3. The Gaunts are said to have married their cousins, a line which
dwindled to the present Gaunts. Marrying cousins is claimed to be a
bad thing because recessive genes can become dominant in resulting
children. Here is an article with another view on cousin marriage,
which is apparently common in some cultures:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2002-04-04-cousins.htm. 
Dumbledore comments that the Gaunts were "noted for a vein of
instability and violence that flourished through the generations due
to their habit of marrying their own cousins." They had also been
high-living profligates. If we accept that specific personality traits
can be inherited in the Wizarding world, what did Voldemort
specifically inherit from the Gaunts?

4. Considering they are the heirs of Slytherin, why are the Gaunts so
far outside the Wizarding world? It does not seem likely the Gaunts
married into any other pureblood families. Gaunt himself may have been
prepared to let the Slytherin bloodline die with Merope and Morfin.
The Gaunts even seem to be unaware of the Wizarding world's laws. 
With this degree of separation, how did the Gaunts come to possess
wands, or make their living? How did Merope learn the magic she used
once her father and brother were gone?

5. Inviting guesswork, as Dumbledore does: what is the story with the
ring? It is an "ugly" ring that someone (Borgin & Burkes?) offered
Gaunt a lot of money for at one time. The ring meant enough to the
Gaunts that it and Slytherin's locket survived the family's
squandering of its fortune. Is the Peverell connection important? Why
is it necessary to keep the ring's story untold until book 7?

6. Dumbledore initiates this journey with Harry, but on two occasions,
he does not answer Harry's questions about the heirloom ring. This is
an opportunity to see Dumbledore as a teacher, although not in a
classroom – in specialized circumstances. What is he teaching Harry in
this lesson? Why was it important to use the Pensieve in this instance
instead of just telling Harry the information? Dumbledore admits to
being really clever, but capable of making correspondingly huge
mistakes. What if Dumbledore is wrong about his "guesswork"? Who is
Dumbledore answerable to if he is wrong?

7. Dumbledore confirms that it is very important that Harry know about
Voldemort's past, that it has "everything to do with the prophecy."
What do the Gaunts, as part of Voldemort's past, have to do with the
prophecy? Here is the prophecy, for reference: "The one with the power
to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... Born to those who have thrice
defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... And the Dark Lord will
mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not
... And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live
while the other survives ... The one with the power to vanquish the
Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies... ."

8. Who teaches morality in the wizarding world in the absence of
parents, if not teachers? Dumbledore has in Harry a virtual orphan,
like Tom Jr. was, a person raised with a dearth of love and with
ineffective parental guidance. But Dumbledore, when faced with an
opportunity to reinforce the message of a teacher who gave a detention
based on disrespect or to address a lesson in privacy based on
Pensieve misuse, sidesteps the issue. Dumbledore says he has told
Harry the truth, but he hasn't told him the complete truth; for
example, he didn't tell him that Snape was the eavesdropper at the
Hog's Head. Dumbledore trusts Harry to know right from wrong, based on
years of observation – but observation alone did not work with Tom Jr.
It seems that Rowling is concluding, through Dumbledore, that people
are born with a "blood"-derived moral sense. Voldemort was descended
from the debased Gaunts and the selfish Riddle Sr.; they were bad, and
he is therefore evil. Harry was descended from Lily and James Potter;
they were good, and Dumbledore can therefore trust Harry to be good,
even if Harry was raised without love. It becomes pointless to teach
moral lessons. All Dumbledore has to do is sit back and observe how
people show their moral character. Is this, in fact, the assumption on
which Dumbledore operates? In shielding Harry from the entire truth,
is Dumbledore continuing to do what he was doing pre-office scene in
OOTP: namely, choosing easy over right when it comes to Harry?

9. The Wizengamot is responsible for enforcing Wizarding law at the
time Morfin broke the law by performing magic in front of Muggles. But
as Gaunt pointed out, there was no real consequence to breaking the
law. The Ministry corrected the harm done to Muggle Tom and erased his
memory of the hex. Morfin's violence might have been bound to
escalate, and he did admit to hexing Tom Sr. But he may also have been
inbred to such a degree that he could not form a concept of right and
wrong. Similarly, it may have been difficult for Merope to form a
concept of right and wrong, especially as she had no outside guidance
or help. Ogden provided only personal protection for Merope when she
was abused by her father, but did not charge Marvolo with assault.
Merope herself was not imprisoned for enchanting Tom Riddle Sr., a
Muggle previously targeted by her family, and one who was subsequently
spirited away under mysterious circumstances. What does the Gaunts'
interaction with Wizarding law, especially as regards Muggles, say
about that law?

10. This had probably been discussed to death, but: Why can't Ron read
the Prince's instructions? Hermione won't try to read them because she
is opposed to "cheating" with the HBP book – is this the real reason?
 Why does she insist the handwriting is a girl's?

NOTE: For more information on HPfGU's chapter discussions, please see
"HPfGU HBP Chapter Discussions" at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database