Merope Gaunt

Um, the first one is in, I forget, no, it's not the first mem- no, maybe it is the first memory, whatever.

When, uh, Harry and Dumbledore go in the Pensieve, uh, for Bob Ogden's memory to the Gaunt house, uh, the way that Marvolo pronounces his daughter's name is, I forget if it's Merope or-

...

Mer- Merope.

Merope.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So let's start at the beginning, or actually, I suppose our story begins a little before our story begins.

In early 1925, when through the memory of Bob Ogden, we see a young and perhaps not so lovely Merope Gaunt pining out the window over the handsome muggle Tom Riddle, on the very same day her brother Morfin is sent to Azkaban Prison.

And later that very year, freeing of her brother and father's control of her life, she takes the reins and ensnares Tom Riddle with a love potion, causing quite a scandal in the neighboring town of Little Hangleton.

Several months later, in April of 1926, Merope then becomes pregnant with Tom Riddle's baby and lifts the enchantment of the love potion from him, believing that he would stay for the baby.

[laughs] Or he stole one from another girl, I don't know.

Well, th- they both make a lot of sense.

He only has Marvolo to work off of, but eventually discovers the existence of Slytherin's surviving line, the Gaunts.

And that is bad news for them, because in the summer of his 16th year, he travels to the Gaunt shack and discovers his uncle Morfin, a fellow Parselmouth, who quickly informs him of the missing Slytherin locket and of the Riddles and of how similar Tom looks to their son.

Which is

the city that Tom Riddle Sr. and Merope Gaunt come from.

But my thoughts on it – like you guys picked up on everything in the car.

Like there's other tiny little details where it's like the tree itself is growing leaves.

Of course, what he means is the family name, but it's also the name of the house, and without context, it warps into pureblood superiority rather than the safeguard that it was meant to be.

The terrible irony is that this very unintentional elitism holds the prophecy in check for 1,000 years until, at last, the inbreeding produces the Gaunts, where at longer last, Merope Gaunt ensnares the handsome Tom Riddle with a love potion, which of course does not create true love, and the result is the first ever half-blood in the Slytherin line, Lord Voldemort.

[laughs]

And tragically, the man who left the school for love and gave up everyone he knew for it accidentally pushed the first domino that centuries later led to the creation of a man born and capable of zero love.

The next theory is Another parallel.

So basically thinking that Romilda Vane's story is a parallel to Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Sr.

Because in that story, it's obviously Merope was pining after a man who didn't love her.

And she did give him a love potion to the point where he married her and had a child with her and then eventually seemed to feel guilt about that and thought that he might fall in love with her naturally and stopped giving him the love potion.

[laughs]

Two siblings, bad dad, so I've got to mention Merope Gaunt and the off-camera Mrs. Gaunt because she's already gone by the time we first, we first see them.

Yeah.

And, and, and seriously, that...

I mean, that's so important.

Not only do we have the manor house next door and the, and the bad dad, and I hope she's not saying that her sibling is like that, but anyway, that, that, that, um, that model there, because Merope Gaunt, the crime against Merope Gaunt of, uh, the abuse from her father and her, her brother is the core foundational crime of Harry Potter.

Yeah.

If Mrs. Gaunt survives and Merope Gaunt grows up happy and healthy, goes to Hogwarts, who knows, um, we don't get anything to do with the Dark Lord.