The Gaunt Shack

• Type: Residence / Hovel
• Location: A wooded coombe overlooking the village of Little Hangleton, England
• Owner/Residents: The House of Gaunt, most notably Marvolo Gaunt, Morfin Gaunt, and Merope Gaunt.
• Key Features: Extreme squalor, advanced state of decay, a dead snake nailed to the front door, and later, the hiding place for a Horcrux.

The Gaunt Shack was the dilapidated and isolated home of the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin, the House of Gaunt. Located in a thicket of trees off a winding lane near Little Hangleton, the shack was barely visible, surrounded by a tangle of overgrown vegetation. Its walls were thick with moss and several slates were missing from the roof. A dead snake was nailed to the front door, a clear and grim symbol of the family's lineage and their ability to speak Parseltongue. The interior of the shack consisted of three small rooms and was described as being even more squalid than the outside. The main room was filthy, containing a grimy table, crusty pots, and broken-down furniture. The general atmosphere was one of extreme poverty, filth, and malevolence. In the summer of 1925, Bob Ogden, an employee from the Ministry of Magic's Department of Magical Law Enforcement, visited the shack to deliver a summons to Morfin Gaunt for attacking a local Muggle, Tom Riddle Sr.. During this visit, Ogden witnessed the cruel and arrogant nature of Marvolo Gaunt, who proudly displayed his pure-blood heritage through Slytherin's Locket and a Peverell ring, while demeaning his daughter, Merope Gaunt. After Morfin and Marvolo were imprisoned in Azkaban, Merope was left alone. She used a Love Potion to ensnare Tom Riddle Sr. and left the shack, never to return. Years later, after Marvolo had died and Morfin had served his time in Azkaban, he returned to live alone in the decrepit shack. Around 1943, a sixteen-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle sought out his maternal family and came to the shack. There, he met his uncle Morfin, from whom he learned about his heritage. Tom Riddle stunned his uncle, stole Marvolo Gaunt's Ring, and used Morfin's wand to murder his Muggle father and grandparents at the Riddle House. He then modified Morfin's memory, causing him to confess to the murders. Morfin died in Azkaban, and the shack was left abandoned for decades.

The Gaunt Shack is central to understanding Lord Voldemort's origins and motivations. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore shows Harry Potter Bob Ogden's memory of the shack in the Pensieve. This memory provides Harry with his first glimpse into Voldemort's maternal family, revealing their fanatical pure-blood ideology, their poverty, and the abusive environment that shaped Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt. The shack's primary significance, however, is as the hiding place for one of Voldemort's Horcruxes. After turning Marvolo Gaunt's Ring into a Horcrux, Voldemort returned it to the abandoned shack, hiding it in a golden box beneath the floorboards and protecting it with powerful enchantments. In the summer of 1996, Dumbledore and Harry visited the ruins of the shack to retrieve this Horcrux. Dumbledore successfully located and destroyed the Horcrux within the ring, but not before being afflicted by a deadly curse placed upon it, an event that sealed his eventual fate.

• Main Room: A squalid, combined living and cooking area. It was here that Bob Ogden confronted the Gaunts and where the family's poverty and cruelty were on full display.
• Hidden Compartment: A small hollow beneath the floorboards of the main room. This is where Voldemort hid the golden box containing Marvolo Gaunt's Ring after it had been made into a Horcrux.

In the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the scene depicting Bob Ogden's visit to the Gaunt Shack is omitted. Instead, Dumbledore's retrieval of the ring is shown in a brief Pensieve memory, where he finds the ring's box in a different container and uses his wand to reveal it. The shack's exterior is shown when he and Harry visit its ruins in the present day (film).