Merope Gaunt: Underdog or Underestimated?
The Gaunts may be half-cracked, inbred, and violent, but they are still powerful wizards. Morfin, the least sane of the three, can cast nonverbal hexes, and Merope is at least as powerful once she is free of her father and brother. So why is the Gaunts' house so filthy?
The obvious answer is provided by Tonks in OOTP, where she explains that she never got the hang of household spells. Her "scourgify" is so wimpy that it only cleans up a few feathers. I'd bet that Marvolo and Morfin never got the hang of household spells either. They seem to feel household chores are beneath pureblood males of Slytherin's line. Since they're not going to stoop to doing their own cleaning, why bother to practice? Add to that their extreme aversion to the Muggle way of doing things (to the point of looking at the act of bending down to pick something up instead of using magic with contempt), you know they won't be picking up a mop anytime soon. Any housecleaning at the Gaunts' is done by Merope.
But I don't think the "not good at household spells" excuse works for Merope. She appears to be at least a competent cook, even if she's not up to Hogwarts house-elf standards (and we don't know that she's not). For all that Marvolo berates her for being practically a Squib, we know she must be a fairly powerful witch. She did manage to either cast the Imperius Curse or brew up a powerful love potion, either of which would require a great deal of skill. I'm inclined to side with Dumbledore and say she used the potion. Potions-brewing has a lot of crossover with magical cooking. It seems likely that Merope does use magic to cook, or at least can. She certainly has had plenty of oportunity to practice.
We don't know for sure that skill at one sort of household spell guarantees you'll be good at another sort, but what else is she likely to be doing around that house but household chores? After nearly two decades of housecleaning, is it really plausible that she hasn't mastered Scourgify?
I think what we're seeing with Merope Gaunt is a classic case of passive-aggressive resistance.
Merope's situation is similar to a house-elf's: she's can't openly oppose her family, but she has the ability to make their lives a little more miserable so long as she operates under the radar (her dress might not blend into the walls just because she washed the whites and the darks together) and doesn't technically contradict their commands: all she has to do is play up her tendency to flub spells when her father and brother are around (probably not difficult to do) so it appears she just isn't very good at magic. She can pretend she isn't good at household spells. Every time she is mistreated, she can retaliate by burning the meat, flubbing the magical mopping (a la The Sorcerer's Apprentice?), or scorching the sheets with the ironing spell. If Morfin and Marvolo have left her alone or (unbelievably) been decent to her, she'll suddenly improve a bit, and they'll have cleaner sheets and tastier food. They probably suspect she's doing something of the sort, but they can't prove it.
If you re-read the scene Harry sees in the Pensieve with this in mind, you get a very different picture of Merope's actions. She overhears that Bob Ogden is from the Department of Magical Law enforcement and has come to summon Morfin to a hearing for a serious crime he committed. This is her lucky day, if she can play it right.
Merope starts fiddling around on the shelf and sends a pot clanging to the floor, drawing her father's ire. She doesn't use magic to pick it up, further irking him, as he's trying to impress upon Ogden the superiority of their Slytherin lineage. Then she apparently performs a banishing spell instead of a summoning spell and sends the pot shooting across the room. Then she fails to repair the pot. The nice man from the Ministry helps her, which, as she knew it would, brought forth further abuse from her father. He's been angry ever since the Ministry man arrived, and if she can just provoke him enough, maybe the Ministry will take her father away as well as her brother.
Her plan worked perfectly.
Admittedly, she probably was nervous and thus prone to making completely unplanned mistakes. And that Tom Riddle rode by, provoking Marvolo and Morfin even further, was a coincidence. But again, this a a witch who managed to convince the snobby Tom Riddle to stop at the filthy hut of a "plain" girl with "eyes staring in opposite directions" to get a drink. (I'll bet she cleaned that glass, at least!) I think Merope took the situation she was given and flew with it. No, she didn't have the whole event planned to the last detail; what happened was probably a combination of genuine fright-induced clumsiness and improvisation. That she was usually twitchy and accident-prone anyway made things that much easier. I do think there was at least a little planning involved, though. Merope didn't waste any time bewitching Tom and running off with him once her family had been incarcerated--she'd probably been planning her escape for years, and Bob Ogden's arrival was like a draft of Felix Felicis.
If I'm right, then magical talent and the ability to speak to snakes aren't the only things Tom Jr. shares with his mother. Deviousness, manipulation, and mind control are also part of the legacy. That Merope probably stopped giving Tom Sr. the love potion (or lifted the Imperius Curse) doesn't erase the fact that she essentially enslaved him in the first place. What a classic Slytherin pair Tom Jr. and his mother are--using any means to achieve their ends.
The obvious answer is provided by Tonks in OOTP, where she explains that she never got the hang of household spells. Her "scourgify" is so wimpy that it only cleans up a few feathers. I'd bet that Marvolo and Morfin never got the hang of household spells either. They seem to feel household chores are beneath pureblood males of Slytherin's line. Since they're not going to stoop to doing their own cleaning, why bother to practice? Add to that their extreme aversion to the Muggle way of doing things (to the point of looking at the act of bending down to pick something up instead of using magic with contempt), you know they won't be picking up a mop anytime soon. Any housecleaning at the Gaunts' is done by Merope.
But I don't think the "not good at household spells" excuse works for Merope. She appears to be at least a competent cook, even if she's not up to Hogwarts house-elf standards (and we don't know that she's not). For all that Marvolo berates her for being practically a Squib, we know she must be a fairly powerful witch. She did manage to either cast the Imperius Curse or brew up a powerful love potion, either of which would require a great deal of skill. I'm inclined to side with Dumbledore and say she used the potion. Potions-brewing has a lot of crossover with magical cooking. It seems likely that Merope does use magic to cook, or at least can. She certainly has had plenty of oportunity to practice.
We don't know for sure that skill at one sort of household spell guarantees you'll be good at another sort, but what else is she likely to be doing around that house but household chores? After nearly two decades of housecleaning, is it really plausible that she hasn't mastered Scourgify?
I think what we're seeing with Merope Gaunt is a classic case of passive-aggressive resistance.
Merope's situation is similar to a house-elf's: she's can't openly oppose her family, but she has the ability to make their lives a little more miserable so long as she operates under the radar (her dress might not blend into the walls just because she washed the whites and the darks together) and doesn't technically contradict their commands: all she has to do is play up her tendency to flub spells when her father and brother are around (probably not difficult to do) so it appears she just isn't very good at magic. She can pretend she isn't good at household spells. Every time she is mistreated, she can retaliate by burning the meat, flubbing the magical mopping (a la The Sorcerer's Apprentice?), or scorching the sheets with the ironing spell. If Morfin and Marvolo have left her alone or (unbelievably) been decent to her, she'll suddenly improve a bit, and they'll have cleaner sheets and tastier food. They probably suspect she's doing something of the sort, but they can't prove it.
If you re-read the scene Harry sees in the Pensieve with this in mind, you get a very different picture of Merope's actions. She overhears that Bob Ogden is from the Department of Magical Law enforcement and has come to summon Morfin to a hearing for a serious crime he committed. This is her lucky day, if she can play it right.
Merope starts fiddling around on the shelf and sends a pot clanging to the floor, drawing her father's ire. She doesn't use magic to pick it up, further irking him, as he's trying to impress upon Ogden the superiority of their Slytherin lineage. Then she apparently performs a banishing spell instead of a summoning spell and sends the pot shooting across the room. Then she fails to repair the pot. The nice man from the Ministry helps her, which, as she knew it would, brought forth further abuse from her father. He's been angry ever since the Ministry man arrived, and if she can just provoke him enough, maybe the Ministry will take her father away as well as her brother.
Her plan worked perfectly.
Admittedly, she probably was nervous and thus prone to making completely unplanned mistakes. And that Tom Riddle rode by, provoking Marvolo and Morfin even further, was a coincidence. But again, this a a witch who managed to convince the snobby Tom Riddle to stop at the filthy hut of a "plain" girl with "eyes staring in opposite directions" to get a drink. (I'll bet she cleaned that glass, at least!) I think Merope took the situation she was given and flew with it. No, she didn't have the whole event planned to the last detail; what happened was probably a combination of genuine fright-induced clumsiness and improvisation. That she was usually twitchy and accident-prone anyway made things that much easier. I do think there was at least a little planning involved, though. Merope didn't waste any time bewitching Tom and running off with him once her family had been incarcerated--she'd probably been planning her escape for years, and Bob Ogden's arrival was like a draft of Felix Felicis.
If I'm right, then magical talent and the ability to speak to snakes aren't the only things Tom Jr. shares with his mother. Deviousness, manipulation, and mind control are also part of the legacy. That Merope probably stopped giving Tom Sr. the love potion (or lifted the Imperius Curse) doesn't erase the fact that she essentially enslaved him in the first place. What a classic Slytherin pair Tom Jr. and his mother are--using any means to achieve their ends.