Gormlaith Gaunt is a minor antagonist in the Harry Potter franchise, although she only appears in the expanded lore. She is the main antagonist of Illvermony School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, published by series author J.K. Rowling on the official series website Wizarding World.
Biography[]
Gormlaith, a descendant of Salazar Slytherin (whose wand she owned), was born into the Irish branch of the Slytherin-descended Gaunt line. Like her ancestor, she was a fervent believer in the ideology of Pureblood supremacy (the belief that witches and wizards with no non-magical blood are superior), and hated the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry she attended for admitting those with no magical blood. Gormlaith's pureblood beliefs led her to become estranged from her sister Rionach, who did not share her bigotry and angered Gormlaith by helping her Muggle (non-magical) neighbours with magical cures.
Rionach's helpfulness to her Muggle neighbours led to her death when Gormlaith, believing that she was setting her daughter Isolt on a dangerous path to intermarriage with a non-magical man, murdered her and her husband William Sayre by burning their house down and abducted Isolt, intending to indoctrinate her into Pureblood supremacy. She isolated Isolt from the outside world, refusing to let her attend Hogwarts or have her own wand and forcing her to watch as she cursed and jinxed any Muggle or animal that strayed too close to her home in order to set an example. Although she banned Isolt from attending Hogwarts, she told her stories about it in great detail in order to denigrate it as a dangerously egalitarian establishment full of Mudbloods and blood traitors, lamenting that her ancestor Slytherin's dream of a racially pure Hogwarts was never fulfilled. This only made Isolt want to go there, but Gormlaith prevented her from escaping with powerful Dark magic. Isolt came to believe that her aunt was dangerously unstable and probably insane.
Isolt finally managed to escape after twelve years of captivity, taking Gormlaith's wand with her. However, Gormlaith was very good at finding people and soon tracked her niece to England. Isolt fled again before Gormlaith could reach her, escaping to the New World on the Mayflower while pretending to be a boy named Elias Story.
Gormlaith would not find Isolt again until around 1634, when she heard that a magical school named Illvermony had been set up in the colony of Massachusetts by an Irish witch known as "Morrigan". Remembering that Isolt was descended from the famous witch Morrigan through her father, and that the home she had burned down was named Illvermony Cottage, Gormlaith realized that "Morrigan" was actually Isolt. She soon found that Illvermony, like Hogwarts, was open to anyone with magic rather than a select few Purebloods and that Isolt had married a Muggle named James Steward. Infuriated, she bought a new wand and travelled to the New World on the ship Bonaventure under the guise of a man named "William Sayre" after Isolt's father who she killed. Her plan was to do what she had done to Isolt's parents: murder Isolt and James and kidnap their daughters Rionach and Martha in order to indoctrinate them.
Upon arriving at Illvermony, Gormlaith used a curse to put Isolt and James into a deep sleep. She then spoke a single word in Parseltongue, the language of snakes, which caused the Basilisk horn that powered Isolt's wand to become inactive. However, what Gormlaith was unaware of was that Isolt had adopted two powerful wizard children named Chadwick and Webster whose wands were powered by serpent horn. Her Parseltongue therefore awoke these wands, which sensed danger and emitted a sound that warned their masters. Chadwick, who had dreamt of a dark witch coming to Illvermony, sprinted outside to confront Gormlaith.
Chadwick expertly duelled against Gormlaith, who became unwilling to kill him because she thought he was very talented and, not knowing the details of his parentage, was unwilling to risk killing such a talented Pureblood. Webster soon joined his brother in duelling Gormlaith, with the twin cores of their wands increasing their power tenfold, but they were still unable to overcome the more powerful Gormlaith, who slowly but surely drove them back into the house. The sounds of the duel awoke Martha and Rionach, whose cries in turn broke through the enchantments on their parents and awoke them. Isolt attempted to join the duel, but was unable to help because her wand was still inactive. Gormlaith had soon driven her adversaries upstairs and into the room where Martha and Rionach were, where she found James standing in front of his daughter's crib and prepared to kill him. At this moment, Isolt cried out for her murdered father William, accidentally summoning a pukwudgie she had befriended some years earlier and had named William. Seeing what was happening, the pukwudgie shot a poisoned arrow into Gormlaith's heart, killing her. The dark magic she had used to make herself more powerful reacted with the poison, causing Gormlaith's body to be reduced to nothing more than ash and a broken wand.
Trivia[]
- Gormlaith was a distant relative of Lord Voldemort through the English branch of her family.
